A scarier strategic problem - no people

[medaid]

From someone that looks at Refugee and Illegal migrant cases all day... Everyday...

Keep dreaming about legislative change. Before people criticize immigration policies and procedures,
Let me ask you this, how many of you have looked at the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act?

All 5inch thick at font 9 of it? It is not as simple as some of you have made it out to be, in terms of Refugee status, definition of Refugee under the Act, and gaining citizenship as a Refugee (nearly freaking impossible)...

Anyways... Just saying... From some one who has seen the otherside...

 

[a_majoor]

Mark Styen on how the structural changes in our demographics will probably have more to do with how our ecponomy and society evolve than anything that politicians can come up with:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmU0MWFkODk5MTUxZWI4YWQzNGI0NGMzYmRjZWQyMTQ=

No future  [Mark Steyn]

The "alarmism" of my book seems to be going mainstream. Newsweek's economics editor Daniel Gross belatedly joins the demographic deathwatch on Japan:

Japan's population peaked in 2004 at about 127.8 million and is projected to fall to 89.9 million by 2055. The ratio of working-age to elderly Japanese fell from 8 to 1 in 1975 to 3.3 to 1 in 2005 and may shrivel to 1.3 to 1 in 2055. "In 2055, people will come to work when they have time off from long-term care," said Kiyoaki Fujiwara, director of economic policy at the Japan Business Federation.

Such a decline is cataclysmic for an indebted country that values infrastructure and personal service. (Who is going to maintain the trains, pay for social benefits, slice sushi at the Tsukiji fish market?) The obvious answers—encourage immigration and a higher birthrate—have proved difficult, even impossible, for this conservative society.

Mr Gross isn't quite there yet. One can be pro- or anti-immigration but, either way, it doesn't solve a baby bust as severe as Japan's. Up north, Leonard Stern writes:


A nation that doesn't replace itself becomes an aging nation, and that's why economists are terrified. Old people no longer generate wealth, yet they require huge amounts of state support in the form of health care, pensions and other programs...

If Canada has never really sounded the alarm about the low fertility rate, it's because we had an antidote — immigration...

Now it turns out that the curative power of immigration was vastly overstated. The sobering revelation arrived last month courtesy of the C.D. Howe Institute, the eminent Canadian think tank.

The C.D. Howe folks crunched the numbers, did the modelling and discovered that the current influx of immigrants — about 0.67 per cent of the resident population — barely makes a dent.

The data show that the only way immigration could offset the declining birth rate is if Canada dismantles border controls and floods the country with well over a half million immigrants a year.

Even then, the government would need to impose rigid "age filters" to ensure that only young people are among the new arrivals.

The transformation of developed societies - either into old folks' homes (like Japan) or semi-Islamized dystopias (like Amsterdam, Brussels, etc) - will lead, in fact, to emigration. A young German or Japanese circa 2040 will have no reason whatsoever to stay in his native land and have most of his income confiscated in a vain attempt to prop up an unsustainable geriatric welfare system. So many will leave. Where will they go? At one time the obvious answer would have been America - but Good King Barack seems determined to saddle us with the same unaffordable entitlements that have scuttled the rest of the west.

For much of the developed world, the "credit crunch", the debt burden, and the rest are not part of a cyclical economic downturn but the first manifestations of an existential crisis.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I remain convinced that the “answer” for Canada (maybe Australia, too) is immigration: tightly focused and controlled immigration.

As I see the available data, and I may well “see” it incorrectly, we have immigration success stories and immigration failures. Our immigrants tend to find their work at two ends of the spectrum: some are able to use their advanced education to fill the jobs for which too many Canadians are unqualified. For proof, go look at your local university – especially at the graduate schools in science and applied science. Immigrants and foreign students (many of whom will become immigrants) are disproportionately highly represented – especially immigrants from Asia. Now stay a bit late at the office and watch the cleaning crew. They too are mostly immigrants but they are from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Some have more than one degree but “we” are unsure that a doctor trained in Chittagong Medical College or an engineer who graduated from the Yemeni University of Science and Technology is quite “up to snuff.” So they work at the dirty, hard, low paying jobs most other Canadians do not want.

As long as we have employment above about 3% we do not need to import workers for low paying, low skill, unattractive jobs – there is (when unemployment is at 8.6%) no shortage of Canadians who should be willing to take those jobs.

But, as long as our elementary and high schools will not teach enough young people what they need to know/do in order to complete six to ten years of scientific/technical post secondary education then we do have to import the people we need to provide our heath care, do our R&D, design our bridges and satellites, programme our computers and so on.

We need a whole lot fewer of the people who lack the skills and knowledge to do the jobs for which we have too few qualified Canadians; conversely, we need a whole lot more of those who can fill those jobs. Put simply: we need more and more Asians – East Asians (mostly Chinese) and South Asians (mostly Indians). Conversely: we need fewer and fewer Africans, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners, West Asians, Caribbean peoples, and so on. Most Europeans and Americans, who come in numbers too small to mention, remain welcome.

We need to do a couple of things:

First, and most importantly – separate immigration and refugee policy and operations from each other. They are not even remotely related, one to another, except that people come to Canada. Immigrants are not refugees and refugees are not immigrants and mixing them, even allowing low level bureaucrats to deal with both together, is poor policy and bad administration.

Second – use the Notwithstanding clause to deny newcomers Charter protection just because their feet touch Canadian soil. We need to follow Australia’s example. No one “enters” Canada until an immigration or refugee officer decrees, in writing, that one is “landed.” Those who cannot be “landed” can, then, be returned, forthwith, to their point of origin. The business of “landing” anyone, immigrant or refugee, is serious and must be taken seriously by politicians and civil servants.

Third – establish a sane refugee policy. Refugees, by and large, do not want to be immigrants. Some do, but they need to be moved to a different line.

We have a human duty to provide refuge to those in danger; that refuge need not be, and generally should not be in Canada. Canada should operate and maintain refuge camps near, but not in, dangerous places around the world so that those in need may find a safe haven from which, soon rather than later, we hope, they may be able to return to their own homes.

Part of our refugee policy should involve removing the danger that creates refugees in the first place. Often that will require a robust military capability.

Fourth – find and recruit the immigrants we want rather than just waiting at the counter to see who shows up. Open new immigration offices in India and China – that need not be as expensive as it seems if every single immigration office in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, West Asia and the Caribbean is closed and those in Europe are cut in half. That doesn’t mean people from regions outside East and South Asia cannot immigrate – it will just take longer to get the paperwork done. Canadian immigration agents should be out visiting universities in China and India looking for the young, smart people we want to come here and help us build our country. They, and their spouses, should be offered quick approvals and, even, assisted passage. We should not cancel the family reunification programme – by which parents and aunts and nieces and nephews come to Canada -  but we should make the whole process slightly slower and more difficult.
 

 

[chanman]

Mark Steyn seems to miss another possible alternative - working for life - retirement is a recent, and possibly temporary phenomenon.

Population aging was also very recently the subject for an Economist special report:  http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13888045

Edward - in the long, *long* run, isn't poaching the best and brightest of other countries only feasible so long as Canada remains a desirable destination for immigration, and said countries continue to produce a steady supply of would-be immigrants?  Will the needed numbers of future immigrants continue to be available when China hits their own demographic crunch?  Many East Asian countries already sport very low birth rates.  Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea all have fewer average children born per woman than Japan, but in the case of the first three, are bolstered by immigration, and in Korea's case, the fall in child bearing rates likely occurred much more recently in Japan.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Mark Steyn seems to miss another possible alternative - working for life - retirement is a recent, and possibly temporary phenomenon.

Population aging was also very recently the subject for an Economist special report:  http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13888045

Edward - in the long, *long* run, isn't poaching the best and brightest of other countries only feasible so long as Canada remains a desirable destination for immigration, and said countries continue to produce a steady supply of would-be immigrants?  Will the needed numbers of future immigrants continue to be available when China hits their own demographic crunch?  Many East Asian countries already sport very low birth rates.  Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea all have fewer average children born per woman than Japan, but in the case of the first three, are bolstered by immigration, and in Korea's case, the fall in child bearing rates likely occurred much more recently in Japan.

Yes, indeed. In the immigration game we have to become and remain a "winner:" a more desirable goal than, say, America, Argentina or Australia and, especially, more desirable than China, itself, or Hong Kong and Singapore.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s National Post, is a column that is, loosely, related to the topic at hand:

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1814572

Jihad rules! Jews suck!

George Jonas, National Post
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Great moments in opera include memorable entrances, such as the villain Scarpia's in Puccini's Tosca. The late Tito Gobbi did it unforgettably. Interviewing the Italian baritone in Rome near the end of his life, I asked how he could make such an impact before singing the first note. What did he do?

"Ah!" Gobbi replied, perhaps a little smugly "I tell you. Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. I let the music play."

I was reminded of Gobbi when someone raised the question of how we should integrate immigrants into Canadian society. The answer (if you ask me) is we shouldn't. We should let immigrants integrate themselves. Should we offer incentives for integration? No, integration is its own reward. Should we penalize failure to integrate? Whatever for? The penalty is failure itself. Let the music play.

Three years ago I was looking at web postings by young Muslim women married to young Muslims allegedly flirting with terrorism. (Dubbed the "Toronto 18," charges were dropped against some, one pleaded guilty and others are yet to be tried.)What struck me wasn't the women's hatred for the West and its ways, but that it was expressed almost entirely in the idiom of the culture that was its target. The odious sisterhood chatted on the Internet almost exclusively in English --pretty idiomatic English, actually. In their web postings, the young women revealed themselves, quite unconsciously, as typical products of the Canadian society that was the object of their venom.

I don't mean their feelings and opinions, but the words used to express them. Their feelings were appropriate for wives of men accused of planning to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange (or fantasizing about it). Such women may be expected to admire the Taliban and hate Jews. The remarkable thing was seeing their admiration and hatred posted, not in a foreign language, not in misspelled, broken English, but in the colloquial idiom of soccer moms in Toronto's bedroom community of Mississauga.

Take, for instance, Ms. N (an order by Ontario Superior Court Justice Bruce Durno bans naming names while sentencing procedures are being put on hold until August): Ms. N is married to one of the alleged ringleaders among al-Qaeda's Canadian acolytes. "Look at these pathetic people," she wrote about a group of Muslim homosexuals. "They should all be sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in public."

Pathetic? Sicko? By offering the views of Wahhabist Islam on homosexuals in words she borrowed directly from our culture, Ms. N was demonstrating that acculturation, a much-touted remedy for the risk of fragmentation in immigrant societies, isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The fact the web postings of Ms. N, or her sister R, or Ms. M or Ms. C, contain only isolated words or phrases of Urdu or Arabic underlines that a person need not retain Urdu or Arabic language skills to retain Urdu or Arabic sentiments. This isn't because culture is less important than "blood" -- there's no comfort here for believers in racist nonsense--but because the roots of culture go deeper than our generation suspected.

Our great-grandfathers assessed matters more accurately. They had taken it for granted that integration is a process of considerable complexity that occurs over historic time. It isn't achieved by a quick immersion in another culture, even when the immersion is, as in the case of Ms. N & Co., superficially complete. Our generation not only overestimated the effects of such cultural silver-plating, but tried reducing it even further by the imposition of multiculturalism.

Cultural silver-plating may not achieve much beyond teaching al-Qaeda idiomatic English anyway, but multiculturalism makes it stick even less and wear off even quicker. Cultural silver-plating may produce amusing incongruities, like jihadists with pre-nuptial agreements and Wahhabi feminists who retain their maiden names after marriage. But computer-literate fundamentalists take us no closer to a harmonious society. They only illustrate how ultra-liberal policies, slogans and practices confuse and alienate vulnerable youngsters of foreign ancestry and increase the number of our solitudes.

"You don't know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!" offered Ms. C in a 2004 posting. Ms. R saw things in even simpler terms: "May Allah curse the Jews," wrote this 19-year-old product of Canadian inclusiveness and tolerance.

Multicultural Canada is turning from a country of two nations into a country of a dozen xenoliths: Inward looking, hostile fragments, jealously guarding their ethno-religious distinctions as entitlements, while resenting the entitlements of others as privileges. It's scant consolation that, being culturally silver-plated, such groups are likely to express their sectarian sentiments in idiomatic suburban English, sometimes peppered with current slang, Internet lingo or even mock-liberal concerns.

"By their fruits shall ye know them." We disdained the American melting pot and embraced multiculturalism instead. We forgot that the opposite of integration is disintegration. Unlike Maestro Gobbi, we weren't content to let the music play. We insisted on acting, emoting, hamming it up. Now nobody is clapping.

He is quite right: Canada is becoming ”a country of two nations into a country of a dozen xenoliths: Inward looking, hostile fragments, jealously guarding their ethno-religious distinctions as entitlements, while resenting the entitlements of others as privileges,” and “the opposite of integration is disintegration.”

Two nations/deux nations is a silly enough mythology that that has done serious harm over the decades, especially when it received explicit support from the national government. Multiculturalism is completely misguided claptrap.

We have a national culture. We are an essentially liberal, democratic, capitalist people – less liberal and less democratically inclined that either our American or English friends; more liberal and more capitalist that, say, the French. We are rather akin to the Scots, with many of their virtues and equally many of their vices – especially in fields like labour relations, a deeply conservative faith in collectivism and a distaste for our bigger, richer, more liberal Southern neighbour.

We should expect immigrants to adapt, slowly, to be sure, but surely, to “our” culture; they don’t need to embrace bagpipes or even maple syrup but they do need to embrace, to integrate into a tolerant, secular and resoundingly pluralistic society.

Tolerance, I repeat, does not mean that one approves of another’s beliefs or customs; it means that you understand and believe that the other’s right to believe what she wants outweighs your distaste for that belief.

Being secular is vitally important, especially in a pluralistic society. We must all understand and accept that NO religion is, in any way, “better” than any other. We are not, any longer, a Christian nation, much less any specific sort of Christian nation. Religion, of any sort, should have no place in our public life. The Navy’s new Queen’s Colour should not have been “blessed” by a veritable phalanx of priests, imans, rabbis and assorted other shamans; it should have been “dedicated” to Her Majesty’s service in a wholly secular manner. "We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground," Abraham Lincoln said, at Gettysburg, because “brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

By and large, left to our own devices, most Canadians manage pluralism very well. The few who do not must not be allowed to “hide” behind the curtains of multiculturalism; they must be exposed, by the lights of tolerance and secularism, as the failures they are, by the failures they make of their own lives in Canada.

 

[TCBF]

- Our best hope for success is to limit immigration to those who come from  cultures that can seamlessly and peacefully adapt to and adopt our culture.

 

[The Bread Guy]

- Our best hope for success is to limit immigration to those who come from  cultures that can seamlessly and peacefully adapt to and adopt our culture.

Any suggestions on how to determine/delineate such "cultures"?  As opposed to individuals from any culture who can seamlessly/peacefully adapt/adopt, regardless of the culture they come from?

 

[TCBF]

Any suggestions on how to determine/delineate such "cultures"?  As opposed to individuals from any culture who can seamlessly/peacefully adapt/adopt, regardless of the culture they come from?

- I was hoping someone would ask me that!
;D
- No, I don't.  In any case, it would be politically and scientifically impossible to legislate a cultural ban.  However, there are many beliefs that are inconsistent with our beliefs - but we cant necessarily screen for those either - freedom of thought, and all that.  Perhaps a Human Rights Tribunal could give us a list of unwanted cultural attributes, but Human Rights Tribunals are a bunch of Totalitarians anyhow.
- So, when screening INDIVIDUALS, what SHOULD we use to assess their immigrant potential.

 

[a_majoor]

I'm sure that there are a battery of psyc evaluations we could use to test for tolerance, flexibility of mind etc, but this is just a mugs game.

Anyone who is determined to come to Canada fo whatever reason could wargame the tests, hire a coach, find a criminal enterprise that would steal tests and supply the "right" answers or just sneak across the border.

TCBF is sort of alluding to what Edward (and to a lesser extent I am) is saying, that is, it is about culture.

Our liberal, democratic, free market, Rule of Law culture is best reflected in the Anglosphere group of nations, but most of these nations also have a demographic bust going on, and in some cases are actually coming unmoored from their Anglosphere roots (the UK under New Labour is a very unsettling example). As well, while our culture may well have deep foundations and Scottish roots, generations of our "elites" have worked very hard to uproot these foundations (with great success in our urban areas).

What the actual "answer" really is I have no idea. I suspect that undoing a lot of this social engineering would cause a rebound in our birth rates, since humans have a natural inclination to reproduce (and have a history going back almost 5 million years to prove it), so how do you go about doing that?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Our liberal, democratic, free market, Rule of Law culture is best reflected in the Anglosphere group of nations, but most of these nations also have a demographic bust going on, and in some cases are actually coming unmoored from their Anglosphere roots (the UK under New Labour is a very unsettling example). As well, while our culture may well have deep foundations and Scottish roots, generations of our "elites" have worked very hard to uproot these foundations (with great success in our urban areas).

All this, at the same time as we see people from cultures some worry about integrating and living normal lives here (we hear a lot about the "car in the canal" incidents, but not so much about all the others who just want to keep working and paying the mortgage and tuition for their kids).

- So, when screening INDIVIDUALS, what SHOULD we use to assess their immigrant potential.

Sadly, I have to agree with Thucydides - there are rules in place, but like screening for recruits, you can't always tell the weiners from the keeners beforehand.

- I was hoping someone would ask me that!
;D

Happy to oblige!  ;D

 

[a_majoor]

Europe's demographic bust:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327271.800-population-europes-problems-will-grow-as-it-shrinks.html

Population: Europe's problems will grow as it shrinks
29 September 2009 by Reiner Klingholz


Birth policies and family attitudes are having an effect upon population demographics (Image: Tim Graham/Getty)

EUROPE, where the so-called population explosion got under way in the 18th century, is once again playing a pioneering role in demographic development. The continent has the lowest fertility rate and the most elderly population in the world, and this population will soon start to shrink. All this makes it a front runner in a demographic trend that sooner or later will reach most of the world.

Pioneers have to advance through difficult terrain. Economists are already fretting over the problem of how social security systems will cope when the post-war baby boomers start collecting their pensions in 2015. In hyper-ageing countries like Italy and Germany, where 1 in 7 people will be over 80 in 2050, it is unclear how a shrinking group of young people can generate the wealth needed to support the growing cohort of elderly citizens. Europe's competitiveness could fall behind younger and growing populations in other world regions.

On the face of it, fewer people seems like good news for the environment. The population of Germany, Europe's most populous country, will shrink by at least 8 million by 2050 and this trend is set to be replicated in many of its neighbours. Remote rural areas, mainly in central and eastern Europe, might become depopulated over time. This should benefit biodiversity as displaced plant and animal species recolonise their old terrain. Given that the world population is still growing by about 200,000 people a day, and the ecological footprint of the human race already lies beyond the limits of sustainability, fewer European mega-consumers will be a blessing for the health of the planet - and fewer North Americans would be even better.

But look a little deeper, and the picture becomes more complicated. Decreasing population does not necessarily promise environmental benefits. The cost per head of population for infrastructure such as sewage systems or electricity supply increases when population numbers go down, making clean water and non-polluting energy even more expensive than they are today.

So can Europe overcome its demographic and ecological challenges at the same time? The solution might be found in a rarely discussed concept: demographic sustainability.

High population growth, such as that now taking place in many African countries, is not sustainable. But very low fertility rates are unsustainable too. It will be hard for countries with persistently low fertility to remain competitive, creative and wealthy enough to keep ahead of their country's environmental challenges. What is needed is a middle ground.

A demographically sustainable Europe needs to have a stable or slowly shrinking population as the existing infrastructure operates most efficiently when the number of inhabitants remains fairly constant. What would it take to achieve this? At present, the average fertility rate in Europe is 1.5 children per woman, and in countries below this line there is an urgent need for family policies to encourage women to have more children. Countries with fertility rates above 1.8, including France, the UK and Sweden, do not need further pro-birth policies as immigration will fill the demographic gap.

Europe's biggest challenge is to survive the peak of ageing, which will come around 2045. After that the baby-boom generation will leave the population pyramid, and Europe will enter a new phase of its demographic journey.

Until then, it is important to focus less on human quantity and more on human capacity; not on how many people there are, but on how productively they live their lives. Working life must be extended and Europe must invest heavily in education, as fewer young brains will have to deliver increased creativity and productivity. Every member of society will be needed, so Europe cannot afford to allow marginalised, socially underprivileged groups to languish.

Countries that learn to live in prosperity with an ageing, stagnant population, or even one that is shrinking, will be the trendsetters for a sustainable future. Europe has the chance to develop a blueprint for these modern societies - for economies that found their wealth and well-being not on growth but on stability.

 

[a_majoor]

And Russia's demographic crash. The big question is who's going to move in?

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/10/04/general-eu-russia-falling-population_6964469.html

UN: Russia must adapt to shrinking population
By DOUGLAS BIRCH , 10.04.09, 11:01 PM EDT 

MOSCOW -- Russia's population has fallen by 6.6 million since 1993, despite the influx of millions of immigrants, a United Nations report said Monday, and by 2025 the country could lose a further 11 million people.

The result could be labor shortages, an aging population and slower economic growth, the U.N. said.

Recent Kremlin efforts to reward women for having more babies have caused a surge in the birth rate, the report said, but won't make much difference in the long term.

It urged Russia to reduce its high mortality rate - similar to that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa - through reform of its public health system and by encouraging lifestyle changes - especially a reduction in alcohol consumption.

The United Nations Development Program report, titled "Russia Facing Demographic Challenges," predicted that Russia will be forced to adapt to a smaller population and work force.

"Efforts to resist the unfavorable trends must be combined with efforts to adapt to what cannot be resisted," the report says.

Population levels in many developed countries have stagnated and are expected to fall by 2025, but Russia's population, currently around 142 million, has been in retreat since 1992. Russia's mortality rate is among the highest in the developed world, with average life expectancy for males at barely 60 years.

For reasons that are not fully understood, Russians suffer very high levels of cardiovascular disease. But most experts blame the country's overall high death rate on one factor, alcohol. It has been linked to everything from liver disease to Russia's high number of murders, suicides and fatal accidents.

According to a 2007 U.N. report, in 1950 what is now the Russian Federation had the world's fourth-largest population. By 2007, the report said, Russia ranked ninth globally, behind Bangladesh and Nigeria. By 2050, the U.N. estimates, Russia will rank 15th, with a population smaller than that of Vietnam.

Monday's report notes that population decline in general reduces a country's "strength and dynamism." The report adds that the effects of depopulation will be magnified in Russia because of its huge territory.

An influx of immigrants over the past 16 years has helped soften the impact of Russians dying young and having fewer children. But the report says that many of these immigrants were ethnic Russians returning to their homeland from other former Soviet states, and this is mostly over.

Meanwhile, many skilled Russians could be lured abroad in the coming decades, the report says, as labor shortages develop in Western Europe, where a shrinking pool of working-age people is expected to drive up wages for the highly educated.

To cope with this demographic crisis, the U.N. report recommends that the government overhaul the health system to provide more efficient care, while encouraging lifestyle changes to reduce the number of deaths related to alcohol consumption.

A study published in June in The Lancet medical journal found that drinking has caused more than half of deaths among Russians aged 15 to 54 since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

President Dmitry Medvedev began an effort to restrict beer sales in early September, citing the effect of alcohol on public health.

But the move is politically risky, especially in a country where alcohol in general and vodka in particular plays such an important cultural role. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to restrict alcohol sales were deeply unpopular.

Russia can help compensate for fewer births and high death rates, the report said, by encouraging immigration. It estimated that the country will need to attract about 15 million migrants by 2025 to fill vacant jobs.

But the report notes that migration can also lead to tensions. It says the country will have to make a major effort to assimilate migrants, who today face discrimination, exploitation and sometimes violence.

In order to ensure that Russia's shrinking work force does not slow economic development, the report said, efforts should be made to raise labor productivity.

In part, that means cutting employment in many faltering industries where Soviet-era labor practices linger and encouraging people to move to more productive jobs in modern high-tech industries.

The report also predicts that the number of students entering Russian institutions of higher education will fall by half in the coming decades, forcing universities and technical schools to compete for students in order to survive. The report predicts this trend could lower the quality of education and professional training, handicapping economic development efforts.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The problem, according to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is not “no people,” but it begs the question: are we getting the people we need?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadas-visible-minority-population-to-nearly-double-by-2031/article1494651/

Canada's visible minority population to nearly double by 2031
Statistics Canada reports that two out of every three Torontonians would be non-white in 20 years

Jill Mahoney
Globe and Mail

Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2010

The number of visible minorities in Canada is expected to nearly double in the next two decades, according to new projections that highlight the country's growing diversity.

One in every three Canadians will be non-white by 2031, StatisticsCanada  said Tuesday. In Toronto, the country's most diverse city, nearly two in three faces will be non-white.

“The visible minority population is likely to increase rapidly among the Canadian-born, many of whom are children and grandchildren of immigrants,” Statscan said in a release.

Overall, between 29 and 32 per cent of the Canadian population could belong to a visible minority group in 2031, double the proportion recorded in the 2006 census.

As well, at least a quarter of the population could be born outside the country in 20 years, with more than half of those from Asia . This would be the highest proportion ever of foreign-born Canadians, surpassing the 22 per cent level seen between 1911 and 1931.
The foreign-born population is expected to increase about four times faster than the rest of the population, driving much of the country's growth.

In addition, diversity will also increase among the Canadian-born population due to visible minorities' younger age structure and slightly higher fertility rates.

The country could have between 11.4 million and 14.4 million visible minorities by 2031, depending on the growth projections used. In 2006, the country had 5.3 million non-whites. By contrast, the rest of the population will grow by less than 12 per cent.

Visible minorities are defined as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”

Almost all visible minorities will live in large cities, with 71 per cent calling Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal home. By 2031, 63 per cent of Torontonians would be non-white if current demographic trends continue. Vancouver would be 59 per cent non-white while Montreal would be 31 per cent.

Newcomers settle in urban areas because the sheer size of the cities means more job opportunities, which then leads to the creation of ethnic communities, said University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Reitz.

“(They) become kind of magnets in themselves for people of similar backgrounds,” said the ethnic and immigration studies professor. “The existence of the communities in the cities sort of tends to become a self-perpetuating process.”

As is the case now, South Asians would still be the largest group, representing 28 per cent of the visible minority population. The community would more than double from 1.3 million people in 2006 to between 3.2 million and 4.1 million in the next two decades. The Chinese population is expected to grow from 1.3 million to between 2.4 million and 3 million. Overall, however, the share of Chinese would drop to 21 per cent from 24 per cent.

Statscan said the black and Filipino populations could double in size. The fastest growth is among Arabs and West Asians, groups that could more than triple in 20 years.

By 2031, Statscan said 47 per cent of second-generation Canadians would be non-white, nearly double the proportion of 24 per cent in 2006. Second generation means people who are born in Canada to at least one foreign-born parent.

The country's increasing diversity will also mean changes in Canadians' religious affiliations. By 2031, the number of people who are non-Christian would almost double from 8 per cent in 2006 to 14 per cent. Of those, about half would be Muslim, up from one-third in 2006. Conversely, the number of Christians would decline to 65 per cent from 75 per cent.

With a report from The Canadian Press

My ‘problem’ is not with visible minorities, a fact to which those who know me personally will attest, but it is with the socio-cultural baggage that some minorities bring with them and which does not disappear with the first native born generation.

Our biggest national problem is productivity and productivity is enhanced by people who, above all else, value education and achievement and ask little from the state, perhaps because they do not trust the state to protect their, personal and family interests. Some of the fastest growing communities in Canada come from collectivist, illiberal societies that tend to look towards elites and, inevitably, the state to solve problems for them – that’s precisely the sort of people we want to exclude.

 

[CougarKing]

Although the opposition parties claim that most of last week's throne speech was all "old stuff", the development below -as stated in the throne speech- shows that the current government continues to go in the right direction, ensuring that all skilled immigrants have a chance to become productive members of society, as discussed before in a number of earlier posts:

We are a country of immigrants. Our identities are bound up in the stories of ancestors from hundreds of lands. To share these stories, our Government will introduce legislation to establish Pier 21 in Halifax – the site where so many began their Canadian journey – as Canada's National Museum of Immigration. It will continue to work with the provinces to strengthen recognition of foreign credentials through the Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications. To better protect would-be immigrants, our Government will take steps to shut down unscrupulous immigration consultants. Our Government will also introduce legislation to speed up the revocation of citizenship of those who have concealed their war crimes.

Read more: National Post link

 

[Kirkhill]

Re: the visible minority issue....

The addition of more minorities is inevitable and necessary unless and until the caucasian community has more babies, or at least suffers more of their babies to survive.  Productivity increases can only take us so far.  1945 was 65 years ago.

But the tendency of those minorities to congregate in cities for jobs, to congregate in communities for mutual, together with the collectivist traditions of some/many - traditions that will be reinforced by self-imposed ghettoization, will increase the drift between rural Canada (Canada writ large) and urban Canada (or ToMoVa - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver).

The question is: at what point does Kenora separate from Toronto?  When does Sparwood separate from Vancouver?  When does Beauceville separate from Montreal?

A related question is:  are Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver sufficiently alike in polities as to be able to define kindred policies?  Or is the differential beween Montreal ( 70% white and predominantly francophone) and Toronto and Vancouver (40% white with a heavy seasoning of what Quebec chooses to  define as allophones) so great as to render it impossible to find a common path?

Toronto and Montreal were sufficiently reviled by their hinterlands when they were seen to be populated by the same peoples.  Will that gentle antipathy become more pronounced if the cities are not only separated by lifestyle and mores  but also by race?

Is there a likelihood that the visible minorities can be convinced to become farmers and ranchers, trade in their flash BMWs for a pickup truck with a gun rack in the back?

Personally I think the answer lies in the creation of three more provinces - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and  revert to the oiginal Confederation concept which, after all, was designed to accomodate disparate cultures with little in common but economic interest and a desire by some to ensure that the Americans were kept out.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is a great column that addresses another of our major Canadian weaknesses:

More Americans than Chinese? A lot can happen in 100 years
Canada just can’t seem to maximize the advantages immigration offers

Neil Reynolds

From Monday's Globe and Mail

Canada has the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world – aside from a few eccentric countries such as the Cayman Islands (population: 50,000). How eccentric? The Cayman Islands serve as a depot for migrant Cubans seeking entry, one way or another, to Miami. Its apparent immigration achievement, for bragging purposes, is wholly deceptive.

By one measure, Canada accepts 5.63 immigrants a year per 1,000 population. The U.S. accepts only 4.32 immigrants – 30 per cent fewer. The tiny Cayman Islands accept 16.48 immigrants, 300 per cent more. What does this astonishing number signify? It means only that, at any given moment, 824 Cubans are using the nearby islands as a stop on their way to the United States. More than 50 years after the Cuban Revolution, thousands of Cubans a year still find their way to Dade County and beyond.

Viewed from a certain perspective, Canada’s immigration rate is as deceptive as the Cayman rate. It is not Canada that has “the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world.” It is Toronto. More than 40 per cent of Canada’s 250,000 immigrants choose each year to migrate to the GTA. Few of these immigrants have chosen “Canada.” If they had, they wouldn’t all be living in the same place – unless you define the GTA as Canada. (Yes, half a million Cuban Americans have crammed together in Miami – but another half million chose to live in the other 49 states as well.)

Assuming that immigration trends persist, the GTA will grow by more than 9 million people in the balance of the 21st century. Add the present population (5.5 million): Toronto will easily exceed 15 million by century’s end – enough people, given a fair share of seats in the Commons, to form a minority government all by itself. Yes, Vancouver will grow, too, along with Calgary-Edmonton and Montreal, but these cities will grow much more slowly. It is Toronto alone that gives Canada an extraordinary immigration rate. Without Toronto, Canada would quickly begin a persistent population decline. Canada needs this megalopolis for strategic demographic reasons – for survival.

Speaking of population decline, the U.S. Census Bureau says that the United States population could reach one billion by 2100 – assuming that the country keeps accepting immigrants in the same numbers it does now and that its birth rate remains high. The question arises: With most of the world’s affluent countries anticipating declines in population (or already experiencing them), why this American people boom? With its self-sustaining Total Fertility Rate, the coveted 2.1, the U.S. doesn’t need immigrants to compensate for a shortage of babies.

The U.S. admits lots of immigrants anyway. For the past decade, the U.S. has taken one million legal immigrants and 500,000 illegal immigrants a year: 1.5 million people. Thus, in absolute numbers, it takes six times as many immigrants as Canada. In a population of 330 million, the U.S. now has 40 million first-generation Americans. The more people the U.S. has, the more it appears to want.

For Canada, immigrants are another government program that never quite works the way it was intended to work. We haven’t even been able to get much entrepreneurial advantage from our troubled “investor class” program; many immigrants feel kept-down; government reports lament the poor economic performance of our immigrants. For the U.S., the problems of the U.S.-Mexico border aside, immigrants are an irrepressible expression of entrepreneurial capitalism, of the dynamic energy and creative imagination that built Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, that hoisted first-generation migrants to the top of Fortune 100 companies, that enticed 400,000 European scientists from their home countries to work in the States.

In perhaps the most powerfully symbolic celebration of this American embrace of immigrants, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, a first-generation Chinese immigrant named Li Lu is expected to assume the management of billionaire Warren Buffett’s financial empire when the legendary investor, now 80, retires. Amazingly, Li Lu was one of the student rebels whose democracy movement – two decades ago – briefly hallowed Tiananmen Square. “Free man,” he says, explaining his remarkable achievements. “Free market.” He gets it.

China is neither big enough, nor strong enough, to embrace the freedom that Li Lu represents. China’s population is 1.3 billion; its Total Fertility Rate is 1.7 – the same population-shrinking rate as Canada’s. China will hit its population peak in 2030. For China, though, immigration is not much of an option. As long as it runs a command economy, the best and brightest of its inventors and innovators will make their way to the U.S. – to join the best and the brightest from countries around the world.

A lot can happen in a hundred years. But when the U.S. hits one billion population on the way up in 2100, China will probably be approaching one billion on the way down.

First, a quibble: Reynolds is a good enough economist to know, based on overwhelming historical evidence, that the birth rate declines as per capita GDP rises. His thesis rests on the idea that the current fast growing crop of illegals in the USA will remain poor and, consequently, fecund. I doubt that’s going to happen; I expect the millions and millions of illegals to prosper; I also expect that America will find ways (the plural maters) to stem the flow of illegal immigrants – in part by strengthening the borders, in part by ‘buying’ better opportunities in Latin America.

That quibble aside, Reynolds raises two vital points:

1. ”For Canada, immigrants are another government program that never quite works the way it was intended to work. We haven’t even been able to get much entrepreneurial advantage from our troubled “investor class” program; many immigrants feel kept-down; government reports lament the poor economic performance of our immigrants.”

2. ”Free man,” he Li Liu says, explaining his remarkable achievements. “Free market.” He gets it.”

Canada seems unable to ‘get it.’ Several countries, e.g. Singapore, run very successful “investor class” immigration programs: they do so because the rules are designed to attract investors; Canada’s are designed to placate home-grown socialists who detest wealth and hate the idea that money might get one to the front of the queue. It is a socio-cultural problem that will continue to constrain our growth and productivity. We also tend to fail in the “free man, free market” arena; we are, vaguely, European in our approach which means we are most likely to become poorer and poorer, generation after generation. We tend to favour the European approach because it appeals to our sophomoric, knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

Canada needs more and, above all, "better" people if we continue to grow and prosper in the 21st century. The policies we need to attract them are fairly clear and simple but, unfortunately, also very American and, therefore, unlikely to find favour amongst Canadians - including amongst many Conservative voters.

 

[CBH99]

I know this is a bit of an old threat, but its 3am and I'm bored...SOOOOOO...

Question for people who are smarter than I am.  Why does the population of the world & individual countries need to grow??  Why is population reduction seen as a problem??

I would have thought that with population reduction we would see a reduction in crime, poverty, wars, etc, etc. 

Also, in economic terms, does a smaller population necessarily translate into a weaker or smaller economy??  In some cases, would a smaller population not translate into a stronger economy, due to less people relying on state provided programs??

I know this is an old thread, but as I was reading through it I got curious...

 

[Edward Campbell]

My opinion, put most simply: in a conservative, Confucian society (like China) reducing the population is a good idea. The Chinese do not have extensive social programmes, beyond very, very limited "free" health care and pretty broad "free" elementary education. Many , probably most Chinese people find it strange that one would allow much less want the state to e.g. care for one's aged parents. Now, that is changing but the change is slow and moderated by deeply ingrained (and 2,500 year old) social custom. Thus, in contrast to most Western socialistic states which are also, like Canada and the USA, highly 'advanced' welfare states, Chinese income taxes are low because there are few 'social' programmes to support. Most government spending is politically 'discretionary' - on things like infrastructure and defence.

Thanks to Bismarck et al we are in a different boat. We have 'social' programmes that are, by and large, politically necessary. And these programmes rely upon an ever growing population of workers and taxpayers to pay for e.g. my healthcare, pension, transportation and even continuing education in retirement. You don't want to mess with my 'entitlements' because my age group, 60+, is growing fast and votes at a much higher rate than, say, the 20 and 30 somethings. 'We' need more of 'you' to work and pay taxes.

Now it would be possible to live better with fewer people if we would become much more productive,* but see many of my old posts and you will understand that Canadians, especially, are happily wedded to the habits of low productivity.


__________
* Most Canadians think that "better" productivity means making workers do more for less. That's nonsense; productivity means making workers do more for the same (or less) 'effort' and for about the same, maybe even higher, wages. Poor productivity in Canada is not a labour issue; it is a failure in management and government.

 

[GAP]

Why Americans (and probably Canadians) Won't Do Dirty Jobs
In the wake of an immigrant exodus, Alabama has jobs. Trouble is, Americans don't want them
November 09, 2011, 11:00 PM EST
Article Link

Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.

Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. The law, known as HB56, is intended to scare off undocumented workers, and in that regard it’s been a success. It’s also driven away legal immigrants who feared being harassed.

Rhodes arrived at work on Sept. 29, the day the law went into effect, to discover many of his employees missing. Panicked, he drove an hour and a half north to Tuscaloosa, where many of the immigrants who worked for him lived. Rhodes, who doesn’t speak Spanish, struggled to get across how much he needed them. He urged his workers to come back. Only a handful did. “We couldn’t explain to them that some of the things they were scared of weren’t going to happen,” Rhodes says. “I wanted them to see that I was their friend, and that we were trying to do the right thing.”

His ex-employees joined an exodus of thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, chicken plant employees, and construction workers who have fled Alabama for other states. Like Rhodes, many employers who lost workers followed federal requirements—some even used the E-Verify system—and only found out their workers were illegal when they disappeared.

In their wake are thousands of vacant positions and hundreds of angry business owners staring at unpicked tomatoes, uncleaned fish, and unmade beds. “Somebody has to figure this out. The immigrants aren’t coming back to Alabama—they’re gone,” Rhodes says. “I have 158 jobs, and I need to give them to somebody.”

There’s no shortage of people he could give those jobs to. In Alabama, some 211,000 people are out of work. In rural Perry County, where Harvest Select is located, the unemployment rate is 18.2 percent, twice the national average. One of the big selling points of the immigration law was that it would free up jobs that Republican Governor Robert Bentley said immigrants had stolen from recession-battered Americans. Yet native Alabamians have not come running to fill these newly liberated positions. Many employers think the law is ludicrous and fought to stop it. Immigrants aren’t stealing anything from anyone, they say. Businesses turned to foreign labor only because they couldn’t find enough Americans to take the work they were offering.

At a moment when the country is relentless focused on unemployment, there are still jobs that often go unfilled. These are difficult, dirty, exhausting jobs that, for previous generations, were the first rickety step on the ladder to prosperity. They still are—just not for Americans.
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