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July 18, 2009
Recursion
Leonard Stern cites a C.D. Howe Institute study suggesting immigration is not the silver bullet for Canada's declining population.
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 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.
This via Mark Steyn who point out an important knock on effect.
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.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 18, 2009 09:58 AM
