It's election season in the UK, and the issue of immigration has crept reluctantly into the debates. It's not an issue that politicians like to discuss much, and there's a reason why. Here are some truths about immigration that many involved in the debate would rather you didn't know or think about. They are simple truths.
Small scale immigration is easy for a society to assimilate, and causes no problems. Large scale immigration causes problems for every society that experiences it.
When people complain about immigration, they are not complaining about immigration per se, but about large scale immigration.
The contemporary obsession with racism means that immigration is often treated as a moral issue, rather than an economic one. This is how it is taught in schools today: It's cool to be okay with immigration, and racist not to be okay with it, because the Nazis were racist and they're evil, and it's not cool to be evil.
Immigration before World War II was statistically insignificant. It rose significantly in the 50s and 60s. Immigration in the late 90s and after 2000 is two to three times higher than it was in the 50s and 60s. Immigration in the past twenty years is higher than at any time in UK history.
Population growth in the UK recently is entirely due to immigration. Without large scale immigration, the UK population would have shrunk.
In the southeast of England, schools are overcrowded, and councils have introduced arbitrary rules to cope with parental demand. In the rest of England, rural councils are closing small schools because there are not enough children to fill the necessary places.
The majority of recent immigrants live in the southeast of England.
Overcrowding in the southeast of England puts pressure on housing, raising the prices. It puts pressure on the NHS, increasing waiting times. It puts pressure on any infrastructure that has not been improved in time to cope with it.
The southeast of England is the economic powerhouse of the country. Whatever happens there affects the rest of the country. This is why house prices remain high, even after the 2007 credit crunch.
Indigenous UK born white people are not having enough babies to sustain their numbers. UK born black and Asian people whose parents arrived in the 60's are not having as many babies as their parents did.
The elderly population is growing, with more old people in the UK than ever before.
The majority of immigrants are young. The ones that stay will grow old some day.
Large scale immigration into cities creates enclaves of foreign born nationals who do not assimilate into UK society. They bring their home cultures with them instead.
Multicultural societies are not harmonious. The boundaries between the sub-cultures are a constant source of tension. When times are hard, these tensions easily become violent.
Austria used to be a multicultural empire. When it collapsed after World War I, it disintegrated into numerous nationalist and fascist states.
Yugoslavia used to be a multicultural country. When it collapsed, it disintegrated into numerous nationalist and fascist states.
Liberal society encourages immigration. Immigrant enclaves are socially conservative, and often suspicious of, if not hostile to, liberal norms.
Large scale immigration changes the nature of societies.
Most immigrants arrive as poorly paid manual workers and live in the poorest areas. They increase the number of poor people in a city, and compete with them for jobs, housing, school places and health care.
Liberal values are middle class values. Most immigrants do not live in middle class areas, nor take middle class jobs in sufficient numbers to drive down wages. This is why the middle classes are not threatened by the thought of immigration.
Most inner city teachers do not live in the same areas as their inner city pupils.
A nation's prosperity is entirely dependent on its population. A large, dense population is necessary for a thriving economy, even in the internet age.
An industrialised nation needs enough young people coming into the system to remain productive.
Elderly people in a society are a cost that is paid for by the work of the young.
The costs to the NHS of an aging society are huge. The costs to the country, with regard to pensions is huge. These costs are larger than at any time in UK history.
The indigenous population in the UK is growing older and is not having enough babies.
Among the middle classes, babies are seen as a lifestyle choice. Nobody sees them as vital to the nation's integrity. Nobody thinks like that anymore.
Mass immigration is a Capitalist phenomenon. Capitalism is about the liberal breaking down of boundaries. Money can now travel freely around the world, investing in whatever country it likes. Jobs can now travel freely around the world, with companies moving their offices and factories to where the wage level is cheaper. Now, with immigration, cheap workers can cross boundaries too.
Corporations love mass immigration, for the same reasons that they love other aspects of capitalism. Cheaper workers and lowered wages mean less cost and more profit. For managers of companies, it's simply a matter of economics.
The NHS needs immigrant nurses and doctors to cope with the aging, sicker society it serves.
Without a big influx of immigrant dentists in the last decade, NHS dentistry would have collapsed.
The UK has been in decline since the end of World War I. The two world wars bankrupted the country and destroyed its empire. The post-war influx of immigrants helped stave off a chronic shortage of workers for a while, but it could not prevent the economy from going into free fall during the seventies. Prosperity arrived in the eighties only because of the massive inflow of East Asian credit into the Western economies. It was a temporary solution.
In the nineties, the UK economy was still weak. Its industry was gone, its population continued to age, and its costs continued to rise. As did its debt, because it could only borrow its way out of trouble. This was unsustainable.
From the late nineties onwards, UK governments have quietly opened the door to mass immigration like never before, as a way of saving the economy.
Every nation in Europe suffers from an aging population. Only Germany has a strong industrial base. The rest are struggling to balance their books. Some seem stuck in permanent recession. Greece is bankrupt.
The only reason the UK seems to be doing so well economically compared to the rest of Europe is not because of the strength of its Pound, or its brilliant approach to business and innovation. These are fictions. The only reason it is doing so well is because of the number of young immigrants keeping our economy afloat and churning.
Immigrants travel the length of Europe to get to the UK. They pass through perfectly civilised nations to get to us. Clearly there is something about the UK they like.
It is illegal, under EU law, to discriminate against immigrants. Many EU countries, however, manage to circumvent these laws, placing administrative barriers to immigrants entering their health care systems, housing or welfare schemes. The UK is attractive to immigrants because these barriers are reduced or non-existent.
The UK is an island. Its borders are easily sealed, if the government really wanted that. Instead, our government quietly encourages that border's infiltration. They publicly posture against the issue of asylum seekers (a tiny number compared to other immigrants) to appease public unease, and pretend to be concerned about the UK working class's concerns.
But the truth is, if mass immigration were to be stopped now, then in less than a generation we would become like Greece. In other words, we would be in serious economic trouble.
Immigration is eroding and splintering UK society. It is also the only thing holding it up.
Behind the scenes, the UK economy has been in decline for a long time, and mass immigration is just one of the sticking plasters being used to hold it together.
Like all sticking plasters, it's a temporary solution that won't last.
