UN predicts continuing mass immigration into West

Fjordman writes:

This UN report confirms what most of us already knew: The waves of migration that the Western world will be facing over the coming generations are far, far greater in scope and speed than those who brought down the Roman Empire. Can our democratic system survive this? Unless we take harsh measures, including military ones, to uphold our borders at all costs, our countries will simply be destroyed and will cease to exist because of this immigration, and Western civilization itself will collapse.

An Indian living in the West writes:

They say that all “rich nations” will face mass immigration. BUT, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and even Malaysia are also rich nations. Immigration to those countries is close to zero.

I was discussing immigration with a work colleague. I told her that in order to stem the flow of illegal immigration from Bangladesh into India, the Indian Government has constructed a barbed wire fence which is electrified in certain portions—so that those trying to cross would be immediately electrocuted. She was horrified.

I think that immigration is matter of government policy and national will. If the will is there, you can have zero immigration or limited immigration. But there isn’t the will to do anything about immigration in the West. There is a lot of hand wringing but there is no real will. Without a will, it is impossible to stop the trend.

LA replies:

Our Indian friend has said it all. If the Western nations wanted to stop it, they could stop it like that. But, as I showed in my phantasmagorical entry, “When you gonna wake up? (II),” they don’t want to stop it. They only want to wring their hands about it. Handwringing is liberalism.

Indian living in West replies:

As an example, notice the hand-wring in the comments following this article in the Telegraph on the prospect of nine million more immigrants in Britain. It really cracks me up. Almost no one on that thread says, “There is nothing inevitable about it. All we’ve got to do is what Japan, Singapore or South Korea do and then its not a problem”. Instead they sit and wring their hands—some hope it will work out, some hope that they can escape or will escape, others simply look forward to it with complete gloom. If there was ever a picture of a society that has been completely finished, this is it. Even on a supposedly “Right-wing” newspaper’s web site, no one it seems, has the gall to suggest the simplest solution—just turn off the spigot! What is so difficult about it? You don’t have to discriminate on racial grounds or religious grounds, just reduce the annual quota to 1000 or 10000. Nothing illiberal about that. But they cannot contemplate even that! Westerners amuse me. Even the worst cowards in the so-called “third world” have more spine than this. And to think that the ancestors of these people once ran an Empire is almost unimaginable.

LA replies:

I would also direct readers to the comments thread following a Times of London story about the latest in a steady stream of murders by and of black youths in London. in this case the shocking murder of a black youth who was chased by a gang of black youths though a well-to-do London neighborhood while many people looked on in fright, the kind of event that comes right out of South Africa. And of course all the blacks now in England are there as a result of the postwar immigration from Africa and the Caribbean that is still continuing and even increasing. But in the 185 readers’ comments that discuss, from almost every conceivable angle, this African-style mayhem in the streets of Britain, the words “immigration” and “immigrants” do not appear once.

J. writes:

An Indian living in the West is usually very clear-sighted, but misses something with his comment that “no one it seems, has the gall to suggest the simplest solution—just turn off the spigot!” The mayhem occuring now in the West is the result of the large, unassimilated blocs of non -Western immigrants and their descendants already here. What does he propose to do, after the spigot is turned off? This, perhaps, is the real reason that the option remains off the table—it is only the first step. The West is already so adulterated that even the status quo spells endless internal conflict and decline. The second step (re-asserting European/Western cultural control, as you suggest, with the possibility of encouraging reverse immigration) is obvious but unthinkable, and therefore the first step remains taboo. Imagine—the fourth century Romans suggesting that the Germanic legions and foederates be encouraged to leave the Empire.

Also, I have to ask: Why is the Indian living in the West, if the Westerners merely amuse him?

LA replies:

The Indian living in the West is not an immigrant and plans to return to India. If J. goes back and reads his various comments at VFR over the last couple of years, he will see that he loves Western and particularly English culture, is in despair as he sees it destroying itself, and has the strongest views on the need for immigration control.

Also, how does J. know that the Indian reader does not favor reverse immigration? I find it sad that J. singles out for criticism a non-Western friend of the West for not having explicitly taken a position of Western self-defense that virtually no Westerners have taken either.

J. replies:

Mr. Auster, you make a good point, but I didn’t intend to criticize ILW so strongly, or single him out for blame. As I said, he is usually very clear-sighted, and as you remind me has always been unabashedly pro-Western. So his disgust with the English over such an apparently easy solution to their problems was a surprise. But that made me think: If he can see the need to cut immigration, why can’t the English? The answer, I suggest, is that they can, but pretend not to, because they know that’s not the end of it for them. The English would still have to live with their existing situation, which is bad enough that it apparently paralyzes them. My thought was that ILW’s status as a non-Westerner was preventing him from seeing this angle—they’re stuck with the current problems seemingly forever, immigration cut-off or no, whereas ILW isn’t because he can return home. ( I had already been assuming that ILW was not a permanent immigrant). So, ILW is not at fault for failing to shoulder an English burden, just perhaps overlooking a reason for their spinelessness on the issue.

I don’t presume to know that ILW does not favor reverse immigration, and since in retrospect my “spigot” and ending remarks do seem unfair to him, I would be grateful if you would take them out of my original post. At a minimum I offer him an apology.

LA replies:

Rather than removing your remarks, which might require further editing of your comment and would also require that I remove my comment as well, it’s easier just to post your present comment with the retraction. Thank you.

ILW replies to J.:

The presence or absence of alien (in the ethnic sense) citizens in white nations is not the cause of the immigration mess. Even today, in most of Western Europe, 90 percent or more of the electorate is still white European. If the majority wanted a measure to pass, it would pass. It is that simple. In Malaysia, only 53 percent of the population consists of ethnic Malays. But no legislation that damages the interests of ethnic Malays could ever be passed because the Malay politicians would never allow it. There are numerous examples of this type that one could give.

J’s diagnosis is, therefore, false. It doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. And the heart of the issue is that white Westerners do not wish to take any measures that would ultimately curtail mass immigration. This is the problem. What the minority wants is irrelevant. America had a 15-20 percent black minority for centuries. In some southern states in America, blacks were close to 40 percent of the population. But those states practised Jim Crow for a century.

And in South Africa, blacks formed 80 percent of the population but South Africa was under white rule for a few centuries. And lastly, the Brahmins of India were never more than 2 percent of the population but ruled entire societies for thousands of years.

Number are actually irrelevant. The only question is the will and what the will extends to. In France, for example, where I have spent a great deal of time, most white French people now agree, at least privately, that France faces a catastrophe in the not too distant future. But the same people never demonstrate the will to do anything about it.

Blaming the immigration problem on the immigrants is a convenient way to escape responsibility for the white majority. The fact is, and I hate repeating this, it is successive generations of Westerners who have created this mess for themselves.

I don’t offer any perfect solutions. I am certain that life was good in the 1950s and most sensible people would agree that society, as it then was, should not have been wrecked. But it has been wrecked. And I do not propose any means to restore society to exactly the way it then was. But, almost certainly, there are fairly sensible and moderate methods available today that would go a long way in achieving that end. What is interesting, however, is that even the softest and most humane methods no longer receive a hearing in public discourse.

In democracy, the majority rules. And if nations wreck themselves, there is no one to blame but the majority.

As to the question, “Why is the Indian living in the West, if the Westerners merely amuse him?”, I am a trader and a businessman. There are white businessman living in Malaysia or Singapore or Japan, for example. Traders and businessmen have travelled and lived in alien countries for centuries. English traders had trading posts on India’s Eastern seaboard centuries before the country became part of the British Empire.

I am all for amicable relations between nations, where these are possible. As good neighbours respect their neighbours’ property, amicable relations can exist between nations when they respect each others’ sovereignty. But national sovereignty is not inconsistent with trading relations with other nations. Nor does the existence of tradesmen from other nations imply a loss of national sovereignty.

Even in countries like South Korea and Japan, there are expatriate populations of businessmen from Europe and America. The same is also true of India and China as well. We live in a time of commerce and industry. The presence of tradesmen from other nations would be a fact even in times of good immigration control, and within sensible limits, would do nothing to disrupt the host society.

Westerners do amuse me. One can be amused by the habits of a people that one lives in. The lack of spine among ordinary white people in Europe is a strange fact which when measured against thousands of years glorious and gallant history is very difficult to reconcile.

“But that made me think: If he can see the need to cut immigration, why can’t the English? The answer, I suggest, is that they can, but pretend not to, because they know that’s not the end of it for them. The English would still have to live with their existing situation, which is bad enough that it apparently paralyzes them. My thought was that ILW’s status as a non-Westerner was preventing him from seeing this angle—they’re stuck with the current problems seemingly forever, immigration cut-off or no, whereas ILW isn’t because he can return home. ( I had already been assuming that ILW was not a permanent immigrant). So, ILW is not at fault for failing to shoulder an English burden, just perhaps overlooking a reason for their spinelessness on the issue.”

I can see it and the English can’t because I grew up in a non-liberal society. Where I come from, you have your own people and you have foreigners. Recognising this fact does not make you a bigot. It is a hallmark of being mature and having common sense about the world in which we live.

The generations of Europeans that are now running European countries—I am thinking of the generation of Blair and Angela Merkel—grew up in a liberal society in which such thoughts were verboten. Anti-discrimination is their religion. It is the religion that replaced European Christianity after the Second World War. They cannot think this way, because to do so would be to defy the very basis of their own worldview. It would be like the Muslims thinking that Allah doesn’t exist. Such a thought is unthinkable.

I should add in the end that I was not offended by J’s suggestion that I cannot contemplate “repatriation”. And he is right to ask the question because large numbers of non-white citizens of European countries today are completely pro-immigration because to them, anti-immigration sentiment is a dangerous thing by definition.

I am indebted to Larry for pointing out that I am not an immigrant by definition, any more than an American business executive running the Indian operations of an American company in Delhi or Bombay is an immigrant in India.

But I also want to say that I was a graduate student in a university in the West, which despite its flaws, gave me an education that has served me well. I think that there are many people in the East who wish the West well. I would count myself as one of them.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 20, 2007 04:04 PM | Send