Population growth and religion

[orathaic]

Given the recent murders by white supremacists, i think it is worth talking about population growth, and the anti-immigrant theory of 'the great replacement'.

This has been a concern among certain racists for decades, if not centuries. As population growth in predominantly white nations drops the 'fear' of white nations being replaced has been used to try to justify all manner of racist policies.

It is commonly phrased in Islamaphobic terms, specifically looking at Christian family sizes vs Muslim.

On this issue there is actually very good data, and the results are pretty clear: https://youtu.be/ezVk1ahRF78

For those who don't have 13 minutes, the conclusion is that religion is not the deciding factor in family size, wealth and child mortality (aswell as access to family planning) are the main contributing factors.

I have to say, race is a social construct, and as such, it doesn't matter if interracial couples mix, or if population growth changes the majority 'race'. There would be nothing wrong with a 'great replacement', it just happens to be a conspiracy theory peddled by the most racist element of white supremacist groups.

[Randomizer]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/el-paso-shoo ... 51391.html

The El Paso shooter in his manifesto talks about "great replacement."

However for all the rants about how immigrants and their children are taking away jobs, those are the people creating them in Fortune 500 companies not to mention smaller businesses.

https://www.newsweek.com/immigrant-foun ... dp-1450498

[MajorMitchell]

The nation of which I am a native born citizen is built on immigration. However I will suggest that whilst immigration has delivered many benefits, immigration is not an "all wonderful panacea", one example of the damage caused by immigration was the dispossession & discrimination inflicted on our First Nation peoples, our Aboriginal people. A simple division of immigrants can be made based on the factors that influence their decision to emigrate between refugees and immigrants. So I would describe it this way .. Refugees are persons fleeing for reasons like the need to be able to live safely & immigrants are moving for reasons other than simply the need to live in safety.
So in this construct, refugees are those fleeing disfunctional States, immigrants can come from a wider variety of States.
What I'm trying to work towards is the proposition that the "more desirable, destination countries" cannot provide the only solution for all time and that the "exodus countries" must be fixed, so that the opportunities their people seek in destination countries become available "at home".
Here's a conundrum I struggle with. The "you must give us safety for my family" argument used by many refugees and immigrants to the citizens of destination countries. Is it totally callous to ask in response ? .. You two parents knew that your country was unsafe, disfunctional before you had children, you knew that you didn't have the resources to safely raise children and you could have chosen to not have children in those extremely unfavourable circumstances and instead worked towards solving the problems of your disfunctional country, even if it cost you your lives. Yet you chose to breed, have children and you now use their needs to justify your demands that the citizens of another country provide sanctuary, better economic opportunities. Is it unreasonable for me in a destination country to suggest that I would prefer the supplicants made their first priority fixing the problems within their own country ? ( With assistance from my nation) So for example, I'm more prepared to see a portion of our taxes provide educational opportunities that give supplicants the tools to help solve the problems in the exodus countries. For example, come here and get medical professional training, not so you can become a wealthy professional living in a desirable suburb in this country, but so you can return to your country and work to improve conditions there.
I look forward to being castigated in scathing replies.

[Octavious]

@ Major

Or indeed the argument that you must provide them asylum from a barbarous and tyrannical regime when they're currently living in Calais. Some may note that I'm not the biggest fan of France, but even so it's more or less tolerable.

Immigration in the US is a bit of a strange one. Being concerned about the number of Spaniards in a place called El Paso that's been full of them ever since they got rid of the Indians hundreds of years ago seems very peculiar, especially when you have a name like Crucius.

Both sides of the US debate should be wary of their contribution to atmosphere that encourages this nonsense. The recent Trumpian demonisation of those south of the border, and the stream of arguments the left keep sprouting about demographic change heralding in a new Democrat led future. I imagine it's very easy to believe in replacement when both sides of the debate are talking about it.

[MajorMitchell]

Indeed Octavious our Oracle. I'm not surprised that you might have some reluctance to complying with instructions from those suffering in the Gulags of Calais that inform you and your fellow citizens of the UK that you are all compelled to provide a sanctuary. Desirable destination countries didn't just appear fully formed, generations of their citizens worked hard to create them and fought & sacrificed to defend them. There has to be a balance, I want to be part of a compassionate society, but I reject the notion that being compassionate requires us to be subservient doormats

[orathaic]

Mitchel, I have to say, the US is in no way desirable to me.

But let me talk about Ireland, because that is where I live and know. For decades (after the famine) people fled this country. The population continued to shrink (from ~8 million to slightly more than 3 million) for about 120 years. Many fled to the US, and helped build the railways.

Even ignoring their contribution to the US, we're talking about 'improving the conditions in the less favourable country'. Many generations left because there was no work, nothing in Ireland but poverty. When there is no money in the country to invest, because the economy keeps shrinking, because the population keeps dropping... Your country is on a downward spiral, and nothing an individual can do is going to change course.

My parents lived through a recession in the 1980s (after the population had started to grow again), many Irish we leaching to head to the UK for work. Many went to Australia, never to return. I have cousins in Texas, Connecticut and Toronto, whose grandparents left Ireland in the 60s. But my parents managed to survive and thrive because they were able to find work any work during the recession leaves you fairly well off, but not everyone can find employment.

The existence of skype and facebook has changed things, now people who leave are far more connected to Ireland, more likely to return (even from as far as Australia), to Skype their parents when they want to see their grandkids. But I digress...

Many economic migrants send money home to do the precise thing you are suggesting, improving their home countries. Many stay only for the wages and would prefer to go home. And yet I reject the original premise. The 'free market' would let people move state to choose to live in the best one, and punish those states where dictator's and corruption hurt the public; by taking money away from those. And by working and paying tax contribute to their new country's economy. That is precisely what has left the US grow faster than any European nation over the last 250 years. Millions of Europeans migrated.

What is the objection to economic migrants now? Is the economy not going to benefit from increased demand? Is the state not capable of setting up a visa system to allow a predictable number of migrants so they can plan for increased stress on public services? Other than racism, what right do you have to the land that anyone else does not have?

[Randomizer]

@Major Mitchell - Countries change quickly with a new government or just an economic down turn. So most families don't plan to have children in a country where there are problems.

How many families in the US knew in 2016 that there would be a dramatic rise in mass shootings aimed at Jews and dark skinned minorities? Would you condemn them for having children in the US and not fleeing to other countries?

[MajorMitchell]

"Countries change quickly with a new or just an economic downturn. So most families don't plan to have children in a country where there are problems" ... I'm just wondering how Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran fit in with that description.. they were all good and then suddenly 18 months ago it all changed... Give me a break.. or Sri Lanka.. lovely place and then all of a sudden...that vicious civil war just started recently ? Or has it been a problem for decades ? Pakistan ? Masses struggling in poverty, corruption, race based and religious strife from the day it was created, or is all of that just some recent, radical change ?

[MajorMitchell]

Dearest Orathaic.. "other than racism what right do I have to the land that anyone else does not have" Please keep your scurrilous insinuations about racism to yourself.
My citizenship rights derive from being born in the country in which I live and are not property ownership or land use rights. I purchased my property in a lawful way. Yes I am.a descendant of immigrants, five generations back on Father's​ side, six on Mother's, so for several generations my ancestors were also born in the country in which I live. There is the military service of several generations of my family to defend the country in which I live, not just the men, but also women.. Nurses who also served. We've all contributed to the country's economic growth, paid our taxes, and taken seriously our responsibility to engage in the democratic political process. We contribute to our community, eg I will be doing volunteer work at a new community Art Gallery next few weekends, making tourists welcome. Oh there's the historical steam railway that's another tourism asset.. as a volunteer I did restoration work on one of the buildings and other unpaid cleaning, gardening & maintenance work. I'm currently considering whether to accept the offer of membership to/request to serve on a local Council Advisory Board (Historical, Arts & Cultural) There's more I could blab on about to do with my links to community, but I think you are being ridiculous Orathaic if you are suggesting that some hopeful character suffering in the Gulags of Calais has the same citizenship rights in the country in which I was born and live as I do. ( Unless the Government of this country decides to grant those citizenship rights to those applicants)
I have also done a small bit to try and help persons struggling in disfunctional countries elsewhere in the world, one way was to sponsor children through reputable charity organisations by donating my hard earned money consistently over two decades so that young girls in countries where Islam is the dominant religion got access to basic health services, education services & other assistance to their families. Going by the photos and letters I received, the several girls had parents who were mostly peasant farmers kept in ignorance by the local religious authorities. Their Imans use religion to keep them and their families subjugated in ignorance. I used my relative wealth to help provide educational opportunities that might enable those young girls to break those bonds of servitude and poverty.

I am not deluded with some fantasy that I am a wonderful, philanthropic person without faults and bound for heaven. I like to indulge in sinful & selfish pleasures.
If you Orathaic want to assert that a refugee from Syria or the Balkans who has managed to get to West Germany has, on their say so, on their demand, without making a lawful application through the processes set up by the government of the country in which I live (& without having their application for citizenship rights approved), the same citizenship rights as I hold, then that assertion has, in my opinion, no basis in law, logic or reason.

[Carl Tuckerson]

Both sides of the US debate should be wary of their contribution to atmosphere that encourages this nonsense. The recent Trumpian demonisation of those south of the border, and the stream of arguments the left keep sprouting about demographic change heralding in a new Democrat led future. I imagine it's very easy to believe in replacement when both sides of the debate are talking about it.

Do you realize one of these is in reaction to the other? When the political strategy of one half of the country is gleefully cheering on the shrinking share of white people in the country and openly importing a new voting base to invalidate the people already here, it is entirely natural and healthy to resist an invasion of your home by electing candidates who promise to be tough on border security.

I don't think demonizing the people fleeing to the US is correct, but that's just a failure of those who are upset to recognize the cause of their problems, not an indication the problems don't exist. You have a right to be angry that you were knocked over even if the person that did so were shoved by someone else, and yet the political left in the US likes to pretend otherwise.

orathaic, I have no idea how you can call the idea of demographic displacement a "racist conspiracy theory" when leftist political junkies crow and celebrate every single election that "demographics are destiny and they're on our side" and cheer on the likes of Texas turning Democratic because of an influx of pro-Democrat immigrant voters who are predominantly a different race from the (formerly) majority race in Texas. It is literally exactly what is happening, and many leftists and certainly almost all left-wing political strategists openly and cheerfully admit to it.
Nor do I see how you get off thinking that you have some kind of right or privilege to tell people that they have to accept displacement in their home. Even if you're willing to accept it for your own home, that doesn't mean you can force other people who have real concerns to shove it and accept what you want them to do.

It's amazing that anyone can even wonder why people become violent and lash out against innocents with horrific mass shootings. What the fuck do you expect a cornered animal to do? Probably lay down and die. Bet you'd like that.

[orathaic]

@

orathaic, I have no idea how you can call the idea of demographic displacement a "racist conspiracy theory"

Because the theory is racist. Like the idea of mixing white people with 'others' as somehow bad is inherently racist. But the idea usually quotes family sizes and population growth (a seperate issue from migration) which is precisely what the video I linked was about.

I have no problem with migration. But as populations continue with replacement rates, 'white people' (however that happens to be defined) will continue to replace themselves with children. The fact that relative population density in the US may shift Texas toward the Democrats is, em, politics, and honestly, I really don't care... Especially not since Texas was a part of Mexico until white settler migrated there and then started a war to take it... Like, if you are OK with Texas being in the Union due to migration, how can you be against it turned into a blue state due to further migration? (unless of course you are racist. Which I'm not saying anyone here is, I am just claiming the racism is the root of a lot of paranoia about brown skinned people coming to their country...)

So I am NOT saying the existence of migration and demographic change is a conspiracy. Rather what I AM saying is that the 'great replacement theory' is basically using fear of migration to paint a genocide picture in the minds of many.

And that this picture of white genocide is a lie. Peddled by racists. Used to push for keeping asylum seekers out of the US, because clearly there isn't enough wealth (in one of the wealthiest countries on earth) to go around.

@

Orathaic if you are suggesting that some hopeful character suffering in the Gulags of Calais has the same citizenship rights in the country in which I was born and live as I do.

I am not suggesting they DO have the same rights. Merely that they should. You are not responsible for where your parents were born, nor their parents. I don't see how many generations of your family living in the same area in any way justifies your right to live and work in your country. Nor indeed your community involvement, if that is a qualifier, then all migrants should be given an opportunity to prove their community spirit and whether they are also worthy.

I don't think you've stated anything which makes me think you are more worthy than someone who happened to be born somewhere else, and possibly with less money.

[orathaic]

Also, as an aside, from talking to my Texan cousins about a year ago, I remember one wondering how the hell they will get enough labourers to work the farms [if tulrumo closes the border]. And you may be gladdebed to hear, Slavery was the answer. Yes, because slavery was only ever abolished for those not in prison. So current US policy of using slave labour to replace migrant labour is a way for privately operated prisons to profit off of the labour shortage. Just a small aside on the topic of migration and how America is going to be made great...

[flash2015]

I really want to respond to this thread...as there is so much to respond to. But I am too lazy at the moment and I know I will spend way, way too much time on it.

[Carl Tuckerson]

Also, as an aside, from talking to my Texan cousins about a year ago, I remember one wondering how the hell they will get enough labourers to work the farms [if tulrumo closes the border]. And you may be gladdebed to hear, Slavery was the answer. Yes, because slavery was only ever abolished for those not in prison. So current US policy of using slave labour to replace migrant labour is a way for privately operated prisons to profit off of the labour shortage. Just a small aside on the topic of migration and how America is going to be made great...

Amazing, if you don't want people to be economically displaced in their homes then you implicitly support slavery. There's no way you can simply want the government to represent the interests of its people by preventing both slavery and the deliberate mass importation of cheap labor to displace American workers, and instead by forcing companies to hire American and stop buying politicians to import competition so that wages will rise, and by getting rid of technocrats and politicians who seek to reduce the incredible miracle of humanity to mere replaceable widgets of labor, to be ground into dust and disposed of when inconvenient, stripped of any independent identity that might make them less efficient workers. You think yourself a socialist utopian, but you're the biggest useful idiot for capitalists on the planet.

You are dangerously ignorant, and I can only be thankful that technocrats like you lack the muscle and the balls to force your way of living on people AND that you're foolish enough to dispossess the men you depend on to enforce your dispossession. There is no reasoning with someone who cannot accept the axiom that people have a right to a home and a way of life and, in a representative republic, the right to protect that home and way of life from forcible dispossession by people who want to reduce them to wage slaves with no higher purpose, no connection to the divine, no community ties and no future.

[MajorMitchell]

So, Orathaic, I support not only the citizenship rights of, but also the land (& sea) use rights of our First Nations people (Aboriginal) based in generations of occupation and use and a cultural connection to their tribal lands... Yet I am supposed to have according to your convoluted logic absolutely no basic right to citizenship based on similar grounds, being born "on country" from a family with albeit significantly less generations, but still a family with strong connection to the country and contributions to community. According to your notions, persons with absolutely no connection to country or community (being totally foreign, never having been on country) should have the same rights to citizenship as those who are born on country in families with connection to country & community. ???? I will run that by a few of my colleagues who are First Nations people.. according to Orathaic, none of us born on country have any greater rights to citizenship than foreigners

[orathaic]

Amazing, if you don't want people to be economically displaced in their homes then you implicitly support slavery. There's no way...<snip>

Way to misrepresent what I said. You can intend one thing and it have consequences you don't support. Many Germans probsbly supported the Nazi party in the early 30sbecause they promised to put Germans first and stop paying the crippling reparations of the treaty of Versailles. That doesn't mean they supported the holocaust, but it still happened.

Likewise, you can support sensible migration policies... The consequences continue to exist despite your protest of not supporting slavery.

And I admire your solidarity with your fellow American worker, and the plight of migrsnt workers undercutting their wages. The capitalist system of exploiting workers for their labour is the problem though, not the migration in itself. I would rather you felt solidarity with the migrants, and insisted that they also be paid a decent minimum wage, granted a conditional right to work (possibly time limited based on seasonal work, and on condition that they not commit any crimes) and thus prevent them from under cutting American wages. A decent federal minimum wage (of ~$15 per hour) capable of paying a living wage would be a great start, but 8 see no reason to exclude low skilled migrant workers from this.

And even worse policies which make slave labour more attractive.

@Mitchel, I reject the concept of borders as a legitimate and moral system. They exist, but their legitimacy has no solid philisophically or moral grounding. You have yet to offer any arguments to base such a system on.

[StevenC.]

@Mitchel, I reject the concept of borders as a legitimate and moral system. They exist, but their legitimacy has no solid philisophically or moral grounding. You have yet to offer any arguments to base such a system on.

And there it is.

[flash2015]

The nation of which I am a native born citizen is built on immigration. However I will suggest that whilst immigration has delivered many benefits, immigration is not an "all wonderful panacea", one example of the damage caused by immigration was the dispossession & discrimination inflicted on our First Nation peoples, our Aboriginal people. A simple division of immigrants can be made based on the factors that influence their decision to emigrate between refugees and immigrants. So I would describe it this way .. Refugees are persons fleeing for reasons like the need to be able to live safely & immigrants are moving for reasons other than simply the need to live in safety.
So in this construct, refugees are those fleeing disfunctional States, immigrants can come from a wider variety of States.
What I'm trying to work towards is the proposition that the "more desirable, destination countries" cannot provide the only solution for all time and that the "exodus countries" must be fixed, so that the opportunities their people seek in destination countries become available "at home".
Here's a conundrum I struggle with. The "you must give us safety for my family" argument used by many refugees and immigrants to the citizens of destination countries. Is it totally callous to ask in response ? .. You two parents knew that your country was unsafe, disfunctional before you had children, you knew that you didn't have the resources to safely raise children and you could have chosen to not have children in those extremely unfavourable circumstances and instead worked towards solving the problems of your disfunctional country, even if it cost you your lives. Yet you chose to breed, have children and you now use their needs to justify your demands that the citizens of another country provide sanctuary, better economic opportunities. Is it unreasonable for me in a destination country to suggest that I would prefer the supplicants made their first priority fixing the problems within their own country ? ( With assistance from my nation) So for example, I'm more prepared to see a portion of our taxes provide educational opportunities that give supplicants the tools to help solve the problems in the exodus countries. For example, come here and get medical professional training, not so you can become a wealthy professional living in a desirable suburb in this country, but so you can return to your country and work to improve conditions there.
I look forward to being castigated in scathing replies.

I may be biased as my wife is a political activist who escaped from a horribly messed up country. Many of her political friends either got killed...or were tortured and spent many years in gaol (and the ones I have met that survived have been horribly messed up from the ordeal). So what you are trying to say is, after failing to affect political change in her country - how dare she decide to actually have a life? Not to be rude, but what kind of callous a**hole are you?

And going on to the children thing. At first glance, you are borderline making a eugenics argument. So what you are essentially saying is that how dare poor people have kids and how dare they take opportunities, however slim, to try and make a better life for themselves and their families? This is essentially the ideal about the "American Dream", it is the same drive which causes people to work hard and create businesses. So that is wrong now?

Again, I understand every country has to have limits on how many people they let in...but let's not demonize refugees and economic immigrants for not all willing to be martyrs to the cause.

[flash2015]

@ Major

Or indeed the argument that you must provide them asylum from a barbarous and tyrannical regime when they're currently living in Calais. Some may note that I'm not the biggest fan of France, but even so it's more or less tolerable.

Again, I don't think there is anything wrong with refugees and economic migrants (the distinction is much fuzzier than the strict legal definition) trying to make the best possible opportunities for themselves or their families.

Of course it is the UK's right to not allow them to immigrate.

[Jamiet99uk]

Population growth is slowing significantly, and will cease to be a major issue by the latter half of this century.