Something I’ve been noodling over for the last day is the net costs or benefits of its migrant population to European countries. Most immigrants to European countries are economic migrants—relatively few are refugees. The European countries have made conscious decisions to import this migrant population. Many explanations have been brought forward, the most common being that they had aging populations and needed more young workers to pay for their ambitious social programs.
What is clear from the terrorist attacks that have become all too common in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and now Belgium is that the countries of Europe have imported their new residents’ social problems along with them and they haven’t adjusted to that fact yet.
Concurrently with this European countries that we blithely think of as “our NATO allies” have been scrimping on their defense spending. Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium all spend considerably less than the 2% of GDP to which they’ve committed to spend on their military as part of their responsibilities as NATO members and their forces are no longer at the highest level of readiness. As a consequence they have lost the ability to project power. They are dependent on the United States and U. S. military spending.
Just as European countries aren’t spending enough on their militaries, the terrorist attacks over the last couple of years show they aren’t spending enough on domestic security.
With the exception of the United Kingdom, all of our major NATO allies’ economies are growing at less than 2% per year. Spending more on security will decrease that even farther. They need more growth if they are to ameliorate the economic conditions that some say underpin the alienation promoting radicalization and terrorism.
I’m beginning to wonder if the countries of Europe can afford their immigrant populations.
How would you tell if they can afford it? They are unlikely to be properly accounting for all the costs and benefits of immigrants so it’s all guesswork that confirms a priori positions.
That’s a good question. I guess one of my points is that the assumption that seems to have been made is that immigrants only bring benefits and have no costs. That doesn’t seem to be the case and the assumption itself may be producing problems for the Europeans.
Just sticking their immigrants into ghettos doesn’t seem to be working out too well. IMO they should be devoting more resources to their immigrant populations.
“I guess one of my points is that the assumption that seems to have been made is that immigrants only bring benefits and have no costs”
I have never seen a European or American make that assertion, not even the most pro-immigration libertarian. It is always cost vs benefit, an they believe they benefits outweigh the costs. I think what they wanted was cheap labor, especially Germany. While i have UE estimates all over the place, if you use 50% (pretty common number) that also means 50% are working, and probably pretty cheaply. I suspect that it has helped to make some wealthy Germans wealthier. However, the costs to the general population look pretty high from here.
Steve
The MSNBC coverage yesterday had a number of foreign correspondents that painted a grim picture of immigration (which I assume was retracted or ignored by the evening shows). Prior to recent events, Belgium had accepted a large number of North-Africans that were employed in industry, but became unemployed as Belgium became post-industrial economy. I don’t think this should be surprising, post-industrial jobs value language and social skills.
The unemployed “foreigner” then moved into the underground economy, selling drugs and other contraband. A life of alienation and despair, ripe for the promise of a dignified death and gateway to Nirvana.
It is certainly the assumption made about trade. Present models assume that trade is employment neutral, i.e. has no net effect on employment. The models assume it.
The Germans, in particular, have certainly low-balled the costs. I haven’t been to Belgium in decades but apparently they’ve underestimated the costs, too.
TMLutas: “A report by the government’s labour oversight committee in 2013 found that 21 per cent of white Belgians were inactive, or not working for any reason, compared with 42 per cent for Belgians of North African origin and 51 per cent for Belgians with other African backgrounds.”
http://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/social-exclusion-leaves-belgium-ripe-for-extremism
Belgium cannot afford more immigrants, because they could not create jobs for the previous generations.
In addition the Belgian Nationalities Law that prevailed until about 10 years ago meant that many of the children of their immigrants, even children born in Belgium and who’d never lived anywhere else, were not Belgian citizens.
There has been a series of mistakes stretching back decades. It was clearly mad to import large numbers of folks from the MENA into societies that had roughly zero interest in truly assimilating them.
It was clearly mad having decided to treat MENA imports like a modern slave class not to then understand that you’d need enhanced police powers. More cops, more counter-terrorism, less individual liberty. ‘Cause that’s how one inevitably deals with disenfranchised, sullen, angry and motivated minorities.
It was mad to open Europe’s external borders. I can’t even imagine the stupidity behind that. What in God’s name were they thinking? Have they looked at a map? Their neighbors are not Canada and Mexico.
Yet if you check with the liberal commentariat as OTB, they are determined to repeat those mistakes one by one. Open borders, refugees, and yet no additional police powers. The difference being that at least Europe once had jobs for these folks. We quite clearly do not. So absolutely, let’s do exactly what the Europeans did but for no logical reason whatsoever. They’re like people who know they have cancer and choose homeopathic treatment: let’s pretend to do something but actually do nothing at all and just wait here stewing in our self-satisfaction.
We’re approaching the singularity where conservative stupidity is equaled by liberal stupidity and both brands of stupid are enthusiastically supported – by crazy white losers on the one hand and idiot college kids on the other.
Liberals need to learn from immigration more generally: if all we’ve got is impotent mush-mouthed platitudes and shrugged shoulders, someone will offer more active responses. Pussies invite dicks.