immigration

The 'politically incorrect' issue of whether or not a society such as a Australia has the right to control its population levels through immigration controls

CBC condemns South African rioters

Sun, 2008-05-25 10:35 by tim

This was previously posted to Canada's tvo.

Anybody catch the report filed by a CBC journalist assigned to South Africa to give Canadians a trustworthy account of what is actually happening there? He might have just as well stayed in Toronto or better still, huddled with his former journalism professor of political correctness at Carelton to compose the right storyline. You know, xenophobic rioters take out their misery upon poor foreigners who have a right to displace their jobs.

I am thinking that we are better without the CBC. We are better without any news reports from South Africa. I would rather be uninformed than misinformed. I would rather have my eyes shut than have the CBC hold up a lens for me to look through. When did the CBC tell me about the truth about Canada's futile foreign aid policies in Haiti, Africa and Afghanistan? When did they give me some investigative journalism and explode the myth of the demographic transition? When did they focus on birth control rather than on Stephen Lewis and his heroic death control plans?

I notice that among the chattering classes it is a mark of sophistication to be a supporter of the CBC. At parties and social gatherings those with college degrees and professional jobs often name drop CBC programmes that they listen to. I take that to be an index of their idiocy. If the country needs to be knit together by a common broadcasting theme, I think we'd be better off with re-runs of the Howdy Doody Show, now that Lister Sinclair is long gone.

See also:

Xenophobic violence in South Africa of 20 May 08 in which Phillip Adams' interviewed Loren Landau, Director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Podcast which may be unavailable after 4 weeks (roughly 17 June) is now here. There is no transcript. Phillip Adams, accustomed to his secure middle class Australian lifestyle shows as little empathy for black South African workers economically threatened by large influxes of immigrants as he does for Australian workers.

For an example of a use of the demographic transisition argument, if somewhat oblique in this case, is a #comment-470513">contribution by Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett to a discussion about immigration: “It is not a coincidence that the countries and regions that have the highest birth rates are also amongst the poorest, and amongst those with the lowest per capita greenhouse emissions”

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The fraudulent case for immigration and population growth

Sat, 2008-05-24 20:04 by James Sinnamon

This was posted to an online discussion concerning the dramatic increase in the rate of immigration to this country at larvatusprodeo.net.

Here are some articles which show how the increase in population of recent years has demonstrably degraded the quality of life of most Australians (and also residents of some overseas countries) in recent years:

Redland City to pay with increased water charges for population growth, Shared accommodation a necessity and no longer a choice for many in Brisbane, How to end the Queensland economy's addiction to population growth?, Working man's vegetable plot under attack again, Exhibition documents erosion of childhood by overdevelopment and overpopulation, Channel 7 markets unlivable Melbourne to a helpless audience, Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress', Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community, How illegal immigration into the US harms poor US Hispanic citizens and More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland.

In regard to the supposed economic benefits of immigration, a House of Lords Committee recently demolished the economic case for immigration (see House of lords tells UK government to limit immigration and the original article in the UK's Telegraph newspaper). The British Optimum Population Trust, whilst welcoming the stance by the House of Lords committee, pointed out that the report understated the environmental damage caused by immigration-driven population growth (See House of Lords’ immigration report ‘forgets environment’).

In Australia in January 2006 the Productivity Commission found very little economic benefit from immigration. In fact, it actually showed that that GDP would rise slightly whilst average hours worked would rise proportionally even more. So, in most peoples' understanding, even defined in extremely narrow economic terms, we would be worse off rather than marginally better off as a result of immigration. And then, let's not forget that GDP is an utterly stupid way to measure our prosperity in the first place. As anyone, more economically literate than the Productivity Commission should know, and as John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australiareminded us in a media release (pdf) of 19 January 2006:

“Both GNP and GDP count many costs as benefits adding them to the index rather than subtracting them. The report draws attention to the increased population adding to congestion and pollution but fails to recognise that the costs of ameliorating these adverse effects will appear in the national accounts as additions to, rather than subtractions from, GNP and GDP.”

Incidentally, this Productivity Commission Report is the straw that the Australian seized upon in order to dismiss objections to increased immigration in its editorial More workers are a positive force of 19 May.

Does anyone here still seriously maintain that having millions more people here to help us dig up and export more of our non-renewable mineral resources in order to help China further pollute its own environment and melt the polar ice caps, will help make this country a better place to live, even in the short term?

In 1942 with a population of only 7 million, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth as Andrew Ross showed in Armed and Ready - The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia 1900-1945, 1995, Turton and Armstrong (see The myth of the Howard Government's defence competence). Increasing our population has directly correlated with this country losing its technological edge over other countries So, let's, for once and for all bury the lie that population growth is necessary for economic prosperity.

Because we have surpassed what is this country's optimum population size, increasing population actually results in dis-economies of scale rather than the economies of scale that pro-growth economists promised us. As the population density becomes greater it actually costs more per person to build all the necessary roads, footpaths, traffic lights, noise barriers, electricity substations, power lines, water pipes, hospitals, schools, etc., etc. That is one reason why our water rates, council rates and electricity charges are rising. Has anyone contemplated that this may be one reason why it is so difficult for governments to fund road building these days without resort to tolls?

What population growth does―and what common sense and intuition should have long ago warned us, in spite of the claptrap peddled by economists in the pay of land speculators and property developers―is decrease the amount of natural resources available to each of us. Consequently, the demands that each of us make on this largely arid and infertile land are increased. That is the principle driver of soil salinity, land erosion, and the threatened loss of the Murray Darling river system. To add to the these demands upon our continent by adding more human inhabitants, before the existing problems are solved, is environmental recklessness.

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Doug Cameron in the cross-hair of the Murdoch press

Thu, 2008-05-22 22:17 by James Sinnamon

Labor Senator-elect Doug Cameron is the only Federal politician, so far, to have summoned up the courage to raise a critical voice against the Government's recently announced plans to raise the annual immigration level to 300,000. For this, he has earned the wrath of The Australian newspaper.

An editorial Closing the shop of 21 May 08 did not even attempt to dispute Cameron's warning that immigration will depress the wages of Australian workers, rather, it welcomed the prospect:

Mr Cameron's worries about migration most likely stem from fears that accepting unskilled workers from the Pacific islands and elsewhere will put downward pressure on wages for union members.

His comments reflect the fact that unskilled migration may be used to offset the inflationary impact of scrapping the Howard government's Work Choices legislation.

Those who have followed The Australian's pushing of the immigration barrow in recent days will know that, in the moral Universe inhabited by News Limited, the only right and proper end, towards which any responsible Labor government can work, is not towards controlling housing hyper-inflation, rising water and electricity charges, council rates and—all driven by population growth—but rather towards controlling 'wages inflation'. Because the Rudd government has been so enormously generous to unionists in having scrapped aspects of Howard's "Work Choices" legislation, they are now beholden to unquestioningly accept whatever other means the Rudd government decides to use in its place to erode their standard of living, including the raising of immigration levels.

The editorial raises the familiar spectres of xenophobia and the White Australia policy in order to place itself indisputably on the high moral ground:

… the immigration debate has already pricked the raw nerves of xenophobia and self interest that lie just below the surface of many within the labour movement. …

It is a rerun of the views that underpinned the ALP's support for the discredited White Australia policy, which grew out of a deal between labour and capital to protect Australian jobs from Chinese immigration.

Of course The Australian's editorial writers, who clamoured to have this country join the war to seize Iraq's oil assets, is, in contrast to ‘self interested’ Australian workers, fearful of their living standards being destroyed by the further crowding of this country, are acting only out of pure altruism and love for for their fellow human beings.

Mr Cameron's comments are held to be “proof that the extreme Left and extreme Right arms of politics join hands around the back.”

It is not known whether Doug Cameron, himself, would accept The Australian's labelling of him as ‘extreme Left’. In any case, this ignores the fact that most of the Australian far left are in agreement with The Australian's support for high immigration. For decades, anyone on the on the Australian far left who would have dared question immigration in the way that Doug Cameron is now doing would have found themselves very quickly ostracised. Members of the wider community opposed to population growth also encounter irrational opposition. #harrassment" id="harrassment">For instance, the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia encountered a demonstration outside Prosper Australia and members were publicly defamed and threatened with violence by members of the Socialist Alliance and others in 2004 until they ceased to associate there.

It is to be hoped that Doug Cameron will stand up to the Murdoch newsmedia and resist the pressure to become corralled with all of his fellow Labor Parliamentarians into supporting Chris Evans' high immigration program.

See also Doug Cameron: guest workers threaten Australian wages and conditions of 20 May 08, Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration? of 16 Dec 07 (also on Web Diary)

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Iceland, the most peaceful country on earth

Wed, 2008-05-21 20:25 by tim

Being half-Icelandic in background I'd like to believe in intrinsic Norse wisdom but …

The reason my great grandfather's trade (carpenter) was so revered was because Icelanders deforested their country (like the English).
Icelanders are worse than Kiwis for being travellers. They are dumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in their constant trips to hot climes.
They still think its their cultural right to hunt endangered whales.
I think they are building or have built with big corporate dough a smelter with terrible implications for the atmosphere.

They are a wealthy people, but they pay a big price for that. As Scandinavians, they simply out-work most of the human race. A CBC documentary compared the Newfoundland economy with that of Iceland and really couldn't come up with anything much more than the fact that Celts are lazy drunks and Icelanders are hard working drunks. Work hard, Play Hard. Their hygiene and housekeeping standards reflect that too.

Both Newfoundland and Iceland are big islands dependant on fishery except now the Newfies have oil money to help. But the difference is that the Icelanders know that if they don't work hard, they starve, with no one to bail them out.

Newfies have been able to rely on constant welfare inputs from Ottawa and took on an Aboriginal work ethic. Whole joke books have been published exploiting that character trait. Except it is PC to tell Newfie jokes (the jokes are published in Newfoundland) but First Nations jokes are off-side. With the Alberta oil economy to lure them out, this welfare culture, five decades old, is disappearing.

Now Newfoundland and Iceland are both beginning to resemble each other more, especially in their disregard of the environment.

Other interesting parallels, both cultures, Celtic and Norse, place a huge value on literary accomplishments, writers and poets are highly esteemed and political debate is a pastime. Both societies boast a tradition of feisty women, but Icelandic women are actually more independent because they broke free of the church. They go on strike once a year and shut the whole country down to prove their importance to the economy.

Because it has always been a socialized welfare state with free health, education, employment and child care benefits and total female employment participation, taxes are sky high and inflation as well. This latter fact is something you should reflect upon. Because double-digit inflation discourages savings so much—in fact it makes it nonsensical to put aside anything—people are encouraged to be hyper-consumers.

They run out and buy things and blow everything they have on cars, clothes and trips. Live for today has always been the motto. So being seen in fancy clothes in a smart car and in a well-furnished apartment becomes a cultural requirement. I would be looked upon as a hillbilly. Also the pressure to work long hours at two jobs—not an Icelandic phenomena exclusively obviously—just to get the money to pay the huge rent and grocery bills ($5 for a lettuce) creates the stress that makes young people and everyone turn to alcoholism big time.

Promiscuous sex is also a cultural trademark with all its emotional and physical costs. It is like when socialist Gunnar Myrdal was criticizing the Swedish welfare state. Whatever model of society we design, whatever set of problems we solve, a new set arises with the better model. There are always trade-offs. But somehow the grass is always greener in other countries.

BTW, my mother's cousin, Helgi Seljun was a Communist deputy (Peoples Party) deputy in the Icelandic parliament. There were 7 parties at the time and I think 5 of them were left of centre. Today there would be a very interesting coalition I'm sure. The president I believe is still a woman whom I saw in Vancouver about a decade ago I think.

One positive statement I would like to make about the land of my mother—and obviously don't circulate this—is that they have always pursued true National Socialist_#main-fn1">1 objectives. They know they are keepers of a precious culture that is 1200 years old and have no right to let that be absorbed or diluted by the influx of other cultures.

As matter of fact, whenever a foreign word invades the language, a special government commission replaces that word with a Norse neologism. Anyone who becomes an Icelandic citizen through marriage must change his or her name to old Norse names. Thus the language spoken today would have been entirely intelligible to Eric the Red a millenia ago, and he could have read the Icelandic Bible that sits in my living room.

Icelandic libraries are full of Norse sagas, poems, ghost stories and debates. The food they eat is second to none. Fish and lamb and all the deserts my grandmother made for me, and coffee made like no one else did. Only you hold the sugar cubes in your tongue when you drink it. Point being, there is nothing “deficient” in Icelandic culture that needs “enrichment” from the immigration of other cultures that would threaten it and also rob the people of their irreplaceable low-density living.

Tim Murray, 27 Dec 2007
Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1.#main-fn1-txt">↑ This means ‘national socialist’ in the earlier sense, which pre-dated the appropriation of that term in the 1920's by Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

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Doug Cameron: guest workers threaten Australian wages and conditions

Wed, 2008-05-21 00:05 by admin

Radio Australia has reported NSW Senator-elect and former national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, Doug Camereon as warning that experiences overseas show that guest workers push down wages and conditions for all workers. He said Australia should not have a two-tiered immigration system.

"I don't think this can simply be an economic analysis, this has to deal with the social consequences of what you do as well," he said.

"Overseas - in the UK, the US, Europe and in Asia - problems with migration schemes are there and we just can't sweep it under the carpet."

The Melbourne Age reported Doug Cameron as also warning against plans to bring in Chinese labour to work on major national infrastructure projects. He warned that this could undermine efforts to develop engineering and construction skills among young Australians.

Senator-elect Cameron's claims were disputed by Paul Howes the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union and by The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's chief executive, Peter Anderson.

Peter Anderson told, "Very few employers would see scope for the creation of a migrant labour force to the exclusion of local workers."

"It would probably be more costly. We need to bring in people who can adapt, with long-term language skills. Business prefers a stable labour force."

However, this has not been the experience of many of Australia's IT workforce, who have found in recent years found themselves systematically discriminated against in favour of overseas IT professionals.

The opposition leader, Brendon Nelson, said he does not support a proposed unskilled guest worker scheme.

#UnpublishedLetter" id="UnpublishedLetter">Appendix: unpublished letter to Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper

Dear editor,

If the Pacific Island guest worker scheme works, as Steve Lewis ("Guest workers a foreign policy challenge", 16 May) claims it will, it will, in effect, be an apartheid labor scheme. If it breaks down as many fear, it will result in a further permanent increase to our population and make worse all the resultant problems which fill the pages of the Courier Mail almost every day of the week - traffic congestion, housing unaffordability, the water, health and eduction crisis and the ever growing financial costs of fixing them.
If we accept claims about there being a labour shortage, then why don't, we instead of further degrading our quality of life, change our priorities as a society. For example, must we dig up all of our mineral wealth now, when it is clearly making global warming worse? Indeed reducing our mineral exports and generous foreign aid programs, including aid for birth control, would be far better ways to help Pacific islanders.
James Sinnamon

The Courier Mail's letters sub-editor told me, when I phoned her on Sunday 18 May her, that my letter sent on Friday 16 May did not address the issues raised in an article in favour of the proposed Pacific Island guest workers scheme in Friday's Courier Mail (I am unable to find the article on the web unfortunately).

The letters sub-editor said that mine was the only letter she received concerning this question, which I found surprising. I asked if she were to receive other letters on the question which she deemed to be more suitable, would she print them. She said she probably would.

No other letter was published as of Tuesday 20 May. It is striking that in the Courier Mail, as opposed to the Australian, which has been stridently pushing the immigration barrow, there has been no coverage of the issue of immigration or guest workers since Steve Lewis's article was published on Friday as far as I have been able to detect.

The Australian's April fool's joke

Tue, 2008-05-20 17:22 by James Sinnamon

Until I saw the date of publication, 1 April 2008, the Australian newspaper's article Population soaring across country, purportedly 'celebrating' Australia's current record high rate of population growth of 1.53per cent, up from 1.48 per cent the previous year, had me mystified.

The 1.53 per cent increase represesented an extra 316,000 in 2006-07. This comprised 10,000 extra births (273,000, up from 263,000) and 31,000 extra people gained through migration (178,000, up from 147,000), but also 1000 more deaths (135,000, up from 134,000).

The article features “Bernard Salt”, who I now realise is not real, but rather an invented and extreme caricature of a pro-population growth demographer. Salt implausibly tells of a rivalry that has developed between Sydney and Melbourne, the respective inhabitants of which want to outdo each other in efforts to have the most congested traffic, the longest average commuting times and distances, the highest per-capita tollway charges, the most crowded trains, the highest number of stranded bus passengers, the highest water charges, council rates and electricity bills and longest hospital waiting lists.

In this competition, Sydney which only grew by 51,000 people last year has fallen behind Melbourne, which grew by 62,000. However, Sydney appears to be making up a lot of ground as it grew by only 36,000 the previous year. Mr Salt said, "They love their rivalry, Sydney and Melbourne, and it'll be interesting to see next year if Sydney keeps growing and can get back in front."

However, in relative and not absolute terms, the Gold Coast and Brisbane remained the fastest-growing areas, with an extra 17,000 and an extra 16,000 people respectively. Brisbane residents can now boast at having exceeded one million and eagerly look forward to the pleasures of shared room rental accommodation when they achieve their next million.

The

nutty Mr Salt

rejoiced over what every thinking adult in this country recognises as a demographic and environmental disaster:

“It's everything coming together at the same time.

“Generation X has finally realised they can have babies; migration is very high, mainly because of the skills shortage and the need to fill jobs to keep the mining boom going; and the baby boomers aren't dying yet.”

The Australian's efforts to employ humour in order to draw the public's attention to the threat of over-population is to be applauded.

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Redland City to pay with increased water charges for population growth

Mon, 2008-05-19 14:31 by James Sinnamon

In 2007 the Queensland Government forcibly acquired the water assets of South East Queensland local governments. Because local governments are not recognised under Australia's constitution they are totally subject to the whim of their respective state governments. That is why the Queensland government was also able to forcibly amalgamate many local governments in 2007 against their objections and the objections of their the constituents_#main-fn1">1. Having lost control of their water assets, the residents in these areas have now found that they now face hikes in their water bills.

As Redland City Mayor Melva Hobbs explained in a media release of 14 May_#main-fn2">2 Redland Shire will now have to buy bulk water from the Queensland Government at prices significantly higher than what it now costs council to produce it. Redland Council plans to meet with the state Government in order to have the bulk water pricing regime reviewed. Bob Abbot the Mayor of the Sunshine Coast, another affected council has noted that his constituents will be effectively paying more rates so that water can be taken out of their regions to meet the water needs of other regions, principally Brisbane, which do not have enough water to cater for their own needs_#main-fn3">3.

The principle reason for the price rises is the cost of construction of a water grid to cater for the increased population largely caused by the Queensland Government. Today's newspapers are full of stories about further blowouts_#main-fn4">4 of the grid. These blowouts are due to factors, such as rising costs of petroleum and other materials, the economic crisis and the higher cost of credit, all of which should have been anticipated. It would seem that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's past self-congratulation at the Queensland government's claimed progress in the construction of its water grid was premature_#main-fn5">5.

Whilst the Queensland state government and the Federal Government continue to recklessly encourage the population growth that is driving up water costs, Redland City, for its part is prudently attempting to slow it down.

The new Redland City Council was elected on 15 March on a platform of opposition to the breakneck pace of development of the previous Seccombe administration. It has moved quickly to reverse those pro-developer pro-growth policies. The Bayside Bulletin of 28 April 2008 reports_#main-fn6">6 that the new Mayor Melva Hobson plans to withdraw the council's draft planning strategy agreed to by the Seccombe administration which was to cater for an additional 55,000 new residents over the next 20 years, with a population of 188,000 in 2026.

Neverthless, as positive a development as this is, a few local Councils, on their own cannot hope to indefinitely stem the tide of population growth. If this is to happen, the Australian community will have to force the Federal Labor Government to re-think it's plans to increase our anual immigration intake to 300,000

See also: Water prices to surge of 19 June 08 in the Bayside Bulletin, The Australian's April fool's joke of 20 May, More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 29 Mar 08, Water prices to soar of 15 May 2008

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ See also No Forced Amalgamations

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See media release of 14 May downloadable as pdf file linked to from the Media Room of May 2008

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ See also More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08

#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ See Water projects' $2.4b blowout in the Courier Mail, Water bills on the rise to pay for Queensland's $9bn grid in The Australian,

#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ I can't cite the sources, but I have somewhere newspaper clippings of Anna Bligh congratulating herself and her Government on the progress of the construction of water grids in recent months. She anticipated being able to sell the Queensland Government's expertise in this field to other governments, presumably governments who had also created problems of overpopulation in the first place to be ‘solved’ with water grids.

#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ State steps back on figures in the Bayside Bulletin of 28 Apr 08

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Introducing "Biodiversity First"

Mon, 2008-05-19 00:08 by admin

Introducing "Biodiversity First" Friends in the population reduction movement, You are acquainted with many anti-immigration groups in the Anglophone world, particularly the United States. Some might wonder at the need to duplicate their efforts. But our initiative has come with the frustrating realization that while these groups address issues that are important, the most important one of them all, the biodiversity services which underpin human survival itself, is largely being ignored. It is our sentiment that if we could make a pact with the Devil so we would forfeit the English language, Christian customs and all of our traditions if we could in return defend wildlife habitat from runaway population growth in Canada, we would gladly do so, for that is our true heritage. It is not people's headscarfs or the mosques they worship in that is important, but the wetlands and the farmland that are paved over to house them. Thus we feel the need to build an anti-immigration organization with a new emphasis, and a name that reflects that emphasis, Biodiversity First. It is not, as critics might characterize it, a misanthropic or even biocentric enterprise. The point, again, that we are making, is that in order to survive, we humans must allot more space to other species than we have been doing, OR WE DIE WITH THEM. It is not them or us. It is us together, or nothing. This is the point Captain Paul Watson tries to make over and over again but the media will not listen. They think that the weatherman should be attacked for warning of the storm to come. With one per cent of Watson's courage we will try to repeat his warning in a different voice. "Here is our mission statement: biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/index.htm Please take the time to sign our petition. We need your moral support for reaching a critical mass. If you enthusiastically agree with our principles, consider sending an e-mail to join Biodiversity First at biodiversityfirst [AT] gmail.com. Membership is free and it entitles you to communicate with us via our e-mail discussion group." Sincerely, Brishen Hoff, President Tim Murray, Vice-President

No commitment to sustainable future by Rudd Government

Sat, 2008-05-17 17:57 by admin

Sustainable Population Australia media release, 17 May 2008

"With the announcement by Minister, Chris Evans, that Australia is opening its doors to a massive increase in unskilled migration, the last vestiges of any appearance that the Rudd Government is committed to environmental sustainability or social equity have been swept aside", said Dr John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australia, today.

"The total intake is planned to exceed 300,000, the largest intake since the migration scheme started in 1947 according to Minister Evans."

Despite having been asked, Dr Coulter said that "Nowhere has the government answered the following questions:

How does increasing our population by more than a million every three years make our climate change/greenhouse emission problem easier to solve?
Every city in Australia is water stressed. How does increasing our population by an additional 5% every three years make our urban water problem easier to solve?
It is doubtful whether in a climate changed, post peak oil world Australia can maintain water supply to its farmers. How does such rapid population growth make it easier to maintain our rivers, soils and food production?
Australians have one of the highest per capita environmental impacts in the world. An increase in the Australian population has a larger global impact than the addition of a person just about anywhere else in the world. How does the Rudd Government morally justify increasing Australia's demand on the global environment at the expense of many peoples far less well off?
Australia has an acute housing shortage. More and more Australians cannot afford the rising price of a house or rent. One of the main drivers of this situation has been clearly identified as our already high immigration intake. How does Kevin Rudd justify making this situation even worse for 'working families'?
Australia has approximately 5% unemployment and another 5% of under employment. How does the Rudd Government justify bringing in unskilled workers when there are Australians unemployed and underemployed seeking work?
There is a rapidly growing global food shortage. Increasing Australia's population is leading to more and more high quality, well watered, food producing land going under housing and related urban infrastructure. Where is Kevin Rudd's much advertised Christian morality?

This push for large population increase both by increased immigration and by measures to increase fertility rates lays bear the hollowness of the Rudd Government's claim to be concerned about the environment and environmental sustainability. It reveals a government saying one thing but, with no understanding of or thought for long term sustainability, relentlessly pursuing a greatly expanded business-as-usual course" concluded Dr Coulter.

For further information or comment: Dr John Coulter Tel: (08) 8388 2153

The Australian proposes apartheid 'solution' to Australia's labour shortage 'crisis'

Thu, 2008-05-15 14:07 by James Sinnamon

In the article "Bring in the Chinese", of 14 May in The Australian newspaper Robert Leeson proposed what would effectively be an apartheid system involving imported chinese labourers. These workers are said to be needed to build necessary additional infrastructure. This infrastructure would enable Australia to help China further pollute its environment and fuel global warming with our mineral exports.

This article is yet another addition to the almost deafening crescendo preaching the necessity of yet more immigrant labour.

Chinese companies are expected to soon be awarded contracts to build some of the planned infrastructure, but to do this, Leeson argues, they will need to import Chinese labor as happened with the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, which was built by Chinese capital and labour.

If this is not done, he implies, an economic opportunity for Australia will be lost.

Leeson proposes a number of conditions to be met which he would have us believe answer all possible objections to the scheme:

the projects must be subject to rigorous cost-benefit analyses;
the contract winners might have to provide their own infrastructure (temporary accommodation etc);
the winning tenders would have to abide by Australian health and safety standards;
the tenders would have to include an incentive mechanism that would minimise the chances of imported workers overstaying their contract (for example, partial payment in the country of origin);
the trade union movement would have to be persuaded that these arrangements were temporary responses to full employment, rather than a permanent source of competition to their members. Former ACTU president, Simon Crean is ideally placed to "perform an ... educational role with respect to infrastructure".

What Leeson is proposing effectively amounts to an apartheid system in the same way that 'immigrant' black workers from bantustans within South Africa once provided cheap labour for South Africa's mines and factories. However, if Leeson's plan fails, then it is not hard to imagine how this could lead to an effective invasion of parts of Australia. In the event of any future conflict with China, having such large numbers of foreign citizens on our own soil, would well pose a serious threat to our national security. An alarming statistic provided by this article, is that there are currently 150 million internal migrants in China, enough to overwhelm the current Australian population many times over. (Of course, because we are mostly Europeans and not Tibetans, drawing attention to this fact practically guarantees that this country's opinion-moulders will dismiss objections to Leeson's scheme as coming from an old troglodyte "yellow peril" school of thought.)

Solutions to the claimed labour shortage problem, other than that proposed by Leeson, could include:

simply leave the raw materials in the ground, at least until such time as the necessary labour from within Australia can be found, or
if we must dig up all of our minerals now then cut back on immigration and use the labour freed up from building the necessary houses to instead build the additional infrastructure. Another area of the economy which could be wound back is tourism.

However we eventually solve Australia's supposed economic difficulties, a calm discussion, in which all possible options are rationally considered taking into account all the environmental, social, economic and geo-political factors, will first be necessary.

See "Bring in the Chinese" 14 May 08 by Robert Leeson.

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Rudd government to conduct 'review' as 457 visas as annual intake set to reach 130,000

Thu, 2008-05-15 13:58 by dave

The ABC reports that the Rudd Government has ordered a review of the 457 visa scheme for foreign workers.

The same report cites Heather Ridout of the Australian Industries Group warning against any action that might ‘stem the flow’ of workers to Australia.

Meanwhile, Jewel Topsfield of The Age reported yesterday that the number of 457 visas granted has jumped from 39,500 in 2003-04 to more than 100,000 in 2007-08.

Sounds like - far from being stemmed - the flow has become a flood.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is running a campaign (see also below) on its web site against the abuse of 457 visas and points out the corrosive effect that the scheme is having on the employment of apprentices in Australia. It strikes me that whatever the causes of Australia’s skills crisis at present, one sure way of making it worse is to make it easier to engage skilled tradespeople from overseas as an alternative to taking on apprentices.

Anyone concerned about the effect that 457 visas are having on Australia's local skills base could do worse than to support the AMWU’s initiative (see below).

#WhatYouCanDo">What you can do: Visit AMWU's stop 457 visa exploitation page and send e-mail to the The Minister for Immigration.

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A 16 year old English Canadian fears becoming a minority in his own land

Wed, 2008-05-14 10:08 by admin

Canada is not for sale

By Andrew Miller, 16, High School Student

Canada is one of the most interesting countries in the world. From west to east and south to north, it has incredible biological diversity and beauty. It is a large country and because of this, there are regions which contrast with each other in every way imaginable. Because we have been lucky enough to settle here, why would we sell it? The truth is that a price cannot be set for it – it is invaluable. Despite this, as a result of mass immigration over the past 18 years, Canada has been put up for sale. New immigrants now account for close to 20% of Canada's population. If immigrants keep arriving at the present rate, the immigrant descendant population will account for half of Canada by 2050. My question is this: Why would we ever allow this to happen?

Many people like to say that the creation of cultural diversity, that bringing the world to us and that turning Canada into a laboratory in which a social experiment is being conducted, is in the best interests of the country. Those who say this and promote this idea are deceitful and unpatriotic to say the least. The fact is that Canada was settled by the native people, then Europeans. After having been a colony, we as a people aspired to becoming an independent land and succeeded in forming the Dominion of Canada. From then on, we worked with the struggles which confronted us and slowly built Canada into what it is today: a fair minded, relatively wealthy society but a society which quite frankly lacks respect for itself. If we worked so passionately to make Canada great, why would we ever even consider surrendering our country? Why would we support policies such as multiculturalism and high immigration which contribute significantly to surrender?

It would be shallow and extremely naïve to suggest that multiculturalism and high immigration are in our best interests because in reality they result in Canadians changing themselves and making way for people who have nothing to do with Canada and its accomplishments. A great example of this is the Christmas Holiday which has been transformed unnecessarily, into a celebration which no longer recognizes the birth of Christ. For instance, someone I now go to school with had attended, up until a year ago, a school which had been absolutely flooded by immigrants from the Middle East. In three years, the immigrant students accounted for one third of the school. Last year, at Christmas time they demanded that Christmas celebrations not take place in the school in days leading up to the Christmas Break, claiming that it excluded them. However, when Ramadan came along in May, they insisted that the Canadian students (still the majority of the school) join in the celebration.

As that case and many others demonstrate, multiculturalism and high immigration have resulted in discrimination against the majority in Canada. We are headed into becoming second class citizens in our own country. What’s worse is that we have Canadians encouraging minorities to force us to celebrate their traditions and saying that this is a positive occurrence.

Some may argue that cultures have changed and evolved in the past and that limiting immigration levels and selecting which cultures should be allowed into Canada would be interfering with a natural process. The difference between evolution and what is now taking place is that Canada's high immigration levels are not an example of evolution and they are the very opposite of being natural.

The argument that we need immigrants for our economy is a weak one because it means that we are willing to give up Canada for the sake of an economy which ironically will no longer be ours. If this country is to continue to prosper, let it prosper through our hard work and dedication

In truth, when people have settled, worked with and developed an area, it is instinctive and moral for them to feel proud of it and to feel that it is theirs. It is a sign of national pride for a people to recognize that they are no longer newcomers but founders of country in which they live and that it is theirs to defend.

Lastly, I would like to address the argument that mass immigration and multiculturalism are inevitable and not allowing these to happen is resisting change. The question which needs to be asked next is whether or not in this case resisting change would be resisting progress. It is a common mistake to think that change and progress are the same. Change should never occur unless it is necessary. Any change which isn’t needed is change for change’s sake. Reforms which occur for this reason are often regretted later on because many times the damage they cause are irreparable.

In conclusion, I would say that this high immigration policy has to be abolished without delay. The idea that Canadian culture is equivalent to multiculturalism is wrong. In truth, multiculturalism and high immigration are things which have been thrust upon us and which some foolish Canadians have chosen to accept—along with the idea that one day we will no longer dominate this country which our people worked so hard to build into one of the most prosperous nations of the world.

Even though I am only 16 years old, I have felt this way for a very long time because I care about Canada and would never want to see it ever change beyond recognition.

It is time for Canadians to take their land back.

Economists talks about direct connection between overseas immigration and economic growth

Fri, 2008-05-02 22:58 by ilan

On the 1st May 2008, ABC Radio's PM program had a story about the latest slump in building approvals.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2233081.htm

Negative building figures continue
PM - Thursday, 1 May , 2008 18:14:00
JASON ANDERSON: This is a shocking situation and one that unfortunately by the time the real depth of the impact in terms of lower middle income households becomes apparent, it's going to take two or three years even if we get some policy response.
You know we put a lot of emphasis in terms of the contributions, say the infrastructure investment to the economy, but there's scant attention payed to housing which unless we start to address that, we will run into a position where it's going to start having negative feedbacks in terms of what we can sustain in terms of employment growth.
We know that a large proportion of our employment growth at the moment is being sustained by rising overseas migration and that's adding very substantially to rental demand. But we're at a point where we've almost exhausted the existing stock.
Unless we get some very substantial improvement in terms of the rate of supply, this is going to have feedback effects on the potential employment growth not in the next year or two but over the next five years.

Jason Anderson is an economic forecaster specializing in the building industry. He has come out openly to say that employment growth is being sustained by the increase in overseas immigration. Interestingly the way I interpret his remarks is that he has described the situation as a pyramid scheme that needs increasing growth to sustain itself. But we may have now may have reached the point where a combination of high interest rates, massive debt burdens, the credit crunch and past population growth may have ended the virtuous cycle of growth and could instead reverse itself without drastic action, and surprise surprise, Kevin Rudd has chimed in from the same song book:
from:
http://www.news.com.au/business/money/story/0,25479,23634094-5013951,00.html

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd says Australia needs one million new homes over the next six years to keep up with estimated population growth.
Mr Rudd spoke today at a Housing Industry Association (HIA) conference, where he also released a paper detailing his Government's new rental affordability scheme.
"Based on these numbers from the HIA, over the next six years or so this country is going to have to build an additional one million new homes,'' Mr Rudd said.
"It won't solve housing affordability, but it will make something of a difference.''
Mr Rudd said Australia was in a housing deficit which had led to rising house prices and an increasingly tight rental market.
"In the last 12 years, the median house price in Australia has risen by 200 per cent,'' he said.
"Home ownership for many these days is as much stress as it is security.''
Mr Rudd released the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) technical discussion paper, which is now available for public comment.
The scheme offers payment or tax offsets to property owners who lease out new homes at 20 per cent below market rates.
It only applies to new properties, to encourage the construction of new and cheaper homes for rent.
Participating landlords would receive a $6000 federal grant or tax offset plus a $2,000 State Government contribution every year for 10 years.
The paper says the scheme would aim to provide funding for 50,000 homes between now and June 2012.

so far the government has not offered anything beyond tinkering at the edges to increase supply and will continue to pump the demand side with increases in the skilled immigration program.

Skilled migrants causing problems

Wed, 2008-04-30 20:46 by frogpond

Skilled migrant workers from non-English speaking countries granted visas to help Australia's skills crisis are adding to the problem they were meant to assist, new findings show. Less than a third of the migrants coming to Australia on skilled worker's visas are working in their field and are simply adding to population growth and housing pressure, a report by Monash University researchers has found. Article in MX (Melbourne) 29/4/08 (MX is a free newspaper distributed on trains in Melbourne. It is owned by News Ltd (a division of the Murdoch empire) See also: Migrants add to skills crisis: study by Harriet Alexander in the Sydney Morning Herald of 29 Apr 2008.

Compendium of futility: Sierra Club brags of inconsequential achievements

Tue, 2008-04-29 15:40 by tim

Stephen Hazell,
Executive Director
Sierra Club of Canada
April 28/08

Mr. Hazell,

In your latest solicitation you enumerate the number of results that Sierra Club volunteers and staff have achieved this year owing to my support. You mention postponing the Kearl tar sands mine pending environmental impact assessment (climate change). You mention stopping the Digby Neck mega-quarry in Nova Scotia that would have proved harmful to right whales. You say you convinced the federal government to develop a new water strategy. You kept global warming at the top of the agenda by advocating "strong" action at Bali and providing needed criticism and analysis of the Harper governments (non) actions following this up. And then you successfully urged the Ontario government to "Grow the Greenbelt" and protect millions of acres of "environmentally sensitive" and "agricultural land" in Southern Ontario.

It sounds like, Mr. Hazell, that you and your team have been busy. Busy like a hyperactive janitor mopping a floor but ignoring that the tap is left wide open to continuously pour water over your work.

Do you remember the IPAT equation? Probably not, I suspect you were not even born in 1970 when the Sierra Club and the whole mainstream environmental movement accepted it as conventional wisdom. "I" (Environmental Impact) equals "P" (Population level) times A (Affluence or per capita consumption) times "T" (technology). Still makes sense to me. But no longer to the politically correct, who have taken the "P" right out to render environmental degradation incomprehensible.

Let's illustrate. We will have to cut global GHG emissions 60% just to make up for the increased emissions brought about by population increases globally in the next four decades. In Australia the population increased 30% from 1990-2006 and its GHG emissions increased by exactly the same number during that same period. In the United States, the population increased 43% from 1970 to 2004 and its GHG emissions increased 43% during that same period. The correlation is clear, is it not? Yet Sierra Club "analysts" in commenting on the governments emissions targets failed to even note Canada's immigrant-driven G-8 leading runaway population growth of 1.08%. Just as they were completely silent following the release of the March 07 census report. A stunning omission for an "environmental" organization.

Environment Minister Gordon Miller said that Southern Ontario can expect to have to jam another 6 million people into its agricultural region in the next 25 years if immigration rates are not curbed. And you want to "Grow the Greenbelt". How? "Smart Growth?" (Smart growth, Smart clear-cuts, Smart extinctions etc.) Check out what is happening to British Greenbelts, once 14% of the UK, now crumbling under development pressure. If Portland Oregon went down, anything will. There is no sanctuary from relentless population and economic growth. Renewable technologies? The energy produced by the 900 wind farm at Sarnia will be erased by the energy demands of 23 days of immigration. BC Hydro claims that if every British Columbian household turned their lights off for one hour it would provide enough power for 4000 households for a year. But the population growth rate in BC is such that in just one year everyone would have turn their lights off for 6 hours a day to power those 4000 households and in four years time everyone would have to leave their lights off permanently. Recycling is also futile. A British study revealed that one new citizen via the maternity ward or the airport wipes out 80 years of responsible re-cycling. I could go on. You get the point Mr. Hazell.

No, no. The point is not to quit recycling. Or to abandon the search for more efficient technologies. Or not to make more efficient and rational land use decisions. Etc. Etc. Rather, it is to point out that without population stabilization all of those worthy goals are pointless. That is why the Sierra Club of the United States was committed to it for most of its recent history and why one third of its current membership are trying to restore that commitment, led by a group of Sierrans called SUSPS (Sierrans for US Population Stabilization).

But I doubt, if you are a typical Canadian like me, that you will be interested in rocking the boat.

So get back to your mop and whistle your happy tune. Who knows, maybe Walt Disney was right, if you wish something to be true and avoid nasty thoughts and phrases like "over-population", "immigration", "limited carrying capacity" and "over-shoot" your Al Gore fantasy just might come true. By living greener lifestyles and vesting our hopes in renewable technologies, you might wish away the fact that there are twice as many Canadians here now as when I was born and pretend that doesn't make a whit of difference to the habitat they're destroying. Just whisper the magic words, “Aba-ka-dabra, Smart Growth!”, and presto! Done!

PS. Is there a technological fix for an extinct species?

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC.

Topic:

Food or immigrants? That is America's choice on Earth Day 2008

Thu, 2008-04-24 10:17 by tim

By Brenda Walker April 21, 2008 This article was originally published on www.vdare.com See also “Redwoods Or Immigrants?” That’s America’s Choice On Earth Day 2007, by Brenda Walker. Just 40 years ago, Enoch Powell began his so-called "Rivers of Blood" speech on April 20, 1968 with a comment that could have been made by an environmentalist: "The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils." Thought for Earth Day, April 22 2008: Isn’t the immigration-fueled overpopulation of our beautiful country the most preventable evil of all? What a concept—that elected officials should actually look forward, and plan to reach an optimum future for the citizenry. Of course P-L-A-N is the four-letter word that has eluded the vocabulary of Washington, whose denizens can hardly foresee their way to the next election cycle. If America’s elected representatives cared about the country they have sworn to defend, they might consider the future prospects of Americans having an adequate food supply. The increasingly expensive commodity in the headlines recently is gasoline, but food prices are following close behind, with prices for basic staples like rice, wheat and corn rising over 80 percent worldwide in three years. As I wrote recently, the climate-change controversy has pulled attention away from environmental issues about which everyone can agree. There is no argument that human health and well being require clean air and water. We also need enough farmland to grow the food we eat. But prime agricultural acreage is lost to development at a rate of two acres per minute according to a 2002 study by the American Farmland Trust. The year 2008 may be remembered as the time when shortages of basic necessities became commonplace. Worldwide population growth, coupled with the affluence of China and India, has begun to create food shortages, even in First World countries. Japan has run out of butter, for example.

"Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis. A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand. While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the Third World, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term—perhaps permanent—reduction in the quality and quantity of its food."[Japan's hunger becomes a dire warning for other nations, By Justin Norrie, The Age, Melbourne, Australia, April 21, 2008]

If Japan's food shortages prove to be a preview for the United States, turning America's productive farmlands into housing developments for an ever-increasing population may seem like another bad policy choice. America is no longer a food-exporting nation, as it was for so long when our productive farmers grew grain to feed a hungry planet. Indeed, the first signs of food scarcity are already showing up:

"Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks." [Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World By Josh Gerstein, New York Sun, April 21, 2008].

Since we are in a "global marketplace" (as talking heads keep reminding us), Washington will do nothing to keep America's home-grown food from being sold to foreign markets, even in the case of food shortages here. Washington's policy on protecting Americans' food supply might be a good question for Presidential candidates, in fact. Even so, it makes no sense to use prime agricultural land for housing and other development. In this respect, the "smart growth" advocates are correct. It makes even less sense to continue open borders to the world as if there is no cost to be paid. California has one of the most managed environments in the US. The engineered water system has allowed California to pack in nearly 40 million residents, far more than the environment can support without damaging its natural resources. Every rainy season is faced with hope and dread, now that only one low year of rainfall puts the state at risk for mandatory household water restriction because of increased demand. Part of water management is wildlife control. That means no semblance of normal life cycles for creatures like salmon. Once the iconic fish of the northwest swam from the ocean to return to the place in mountain streams where it had hatched to breed before dying. Now those rivers have been dammed, diverted or dried up because of human intervention to control water. This year, the California salmon fishery crashed. Not only was the failure a surprise to experts, but the cause is not understood for sure—largely because there are so many possibilities of what could have gone wrong. Whatever the reason, it may well be the end of a way of life for hundreds of the state's fishermen, not to mention the loss of a valuable and delicious food source: End of coast's 150-year-old fishery looms [San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 2008].

"Now, for the first time since commercial fishing began on the West Coast more than 150 years ago during the Gold Rush era, no boats will be permitted to put to sea to fish for chinook, the fabled king salmon that is the mainstay of the commercial fishery. “The ban is only for one year, but it could be a death blow to an industry that has been in decline for years. As recently as 15 years ago, 4,000 small boats fished off the California coast for salmon; now the salmon fleet numbers only 400."

The financial loss in commercial and recreational salmon fishing to California is estimated to be over $20 million for one season. But the failing health of the supporting environment has other indicators as well, in particular the precipitous decline of the delta smelt last year. It's an ordinary little fish, but its plunging numbers show how rapidly the Sacramento River Delta has become more of a sewer than an ecosystem. In California, the health of fisheries has always taken a back seat to agricultural interests—and, of course, to the omnipresent needs of population growth. When Los Angeles demands more water, politicians salute and obey, if they want to keep their jobs. Not long ago, fish was an inexpensive source of protein and a tasty addition to meals. Now waste and poor resource management have put some species' survival at risk, not to mention removed them as a food source. With so many additional mouths to feed, it's tremendously short-sighted to treat our natural resources so unwisely. Overpopulation, both domestic and global, creates more difficult choices. One example is the use of food plants like corn to create ethanol, in order to achieve energy independence from the Saudi oil barons, a worthwhile effort that is decades late. However, food prices have shot up as a result, leading to rioting in countries like Haiti and Egypt that are already on the edge. Natural resources can only stretch so far. Technology cannot be a savior from human foibles. On Earth Day, we adults should be talking about reasonable limits—on immigration into the U.S. for example. In fact, although the environmentalist establishment ducks the immigration issue, responsible environmentalists who are honest about the overpopulation crisis are among the toughest critics of open borders. The word "zero" rolls from their lips far more often than among other groups. Conservationists who look at the numbers grasp that a hundred thousand newcomers today rapidly expand to a million because of children and America's family-based immigration policies are a Ponzi scheme from Hell. Skyrocketing food prices and looming shortages are a symptom that America is full up. For Earth Day, citizens should insist that politicians must "provide against preventable evils"—even if they don’t mention the controversial Enoch Powell as the source of that wisdom.

Topic:

US environmental groups polish furniture whilst house burns down

Sun, 2008-04-20 19:03 by tim

Sierra Club Ignores the Smoke of Rampant Growth

My somewhat caustic approach can be attributed in part to a sense of urgency that most environmentalists apparently don't share. I believe we are almost out of time, and I have lost patience with dissemblers.

When I am in a house that has caught fire I am not apt to say "Gee, I think perhaps we should maybe call the Fire Department, don't ya think?". I am more inclined to shout "Call 911 you Sierra Club idiots!" Anything to stop them from continuing to robotically polish the wood furniture and calling that valuable work while the smoke envelopes us.

It was the late great David Brower, three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sierra Club pioneer who said that overpopulation was the major cause of America's environmental ruin, and that since immigration was the main factor in overpopulation, "it had to be addressed". Even in North America. Even in the politically correct community where I live. Somebody has to mention the nasty "I" word. Somebody has to call the Fire Department. And somebody has to tell them to stop pissing around with the furniture polish, get the hell out and start fighting the fire of runaway population growth! This role is not the role of a politician or a salesman. It is the role of someone who must wear the mantle of unpopularity.

Examples of "polishing the furniture":

Investing great time and hope in Sustainable Energy options. The Jevons Paradox dashes all of these hopes. Technological efficiencies liberate cash, and this cash is spent on yet more consumption. When the efficiency of air conditioners improved by 17% consumers bought 36% more air conditioners. When the fuel economy of the average car improved 30% American drivers responded by driving bigger vehicles greater distances. And thanks to population growth there are 130 million more cars on the road. Fuel efficiency in aircraft improved by more than 40% since 1978 but over all fuel consumption rose by 150% since then because of the explosive growth in air traffic encouraged by cheaper transportation costs. Energy use per unit of US GNP has fallen 50% since 1975 after enormous efficiencies were effected after the Arab Oil Embargo. Yet total US energy consumption rose by 40% The name of the game is to reduce total consumption, not improve technological efficiencies. And without stabilizing population, all benefits from efficiencies are erased. The 900 solar farm in Sarnia will produce only enough energy to satisfy 23 days of BAU immigration. Energy gains from renewable technologies are erased by economic growth (population times per capita consumption)

Nature reserves and much vaunted park dedications. None are secure from p pulation and economic growth. Even Yosemite was invaded by logging and mining interests by the stroke of a Congressional pen. A protected park in Costa Rica was similarly violated. Nature Conservancy admits having to take people to court for trepass etc etc. There are no sanctuaries from population and development pressure. And it must be remembered that in the US 40% of all listed mammals are not even found in refuges, and it is in these unprotected lands that 40% of all housing units will be found in the United States by 2030.

Good works. The typical Sierran is like a singing janitor who keeps mopping the floor---doing good works---but blissfully and willfully ignoring the fact that the tap (population growth) is on and water is pouring across it. Then there is the happy fool of a cabin maid on the Titanic as the ship is badly listing, whistlling as she tidies things up. She feels good about her environmentalism, because she is removing anything that isn't recyclable from the cabin. Criminal negligence, the deliberate neglect and avoidance of population growth by environmental organizations despite its obvious correlation to GHG emissions and biodiversity loss, cannot be forgiven by their inconsequential involvement with "good works". The Moonies do "good works". The BDM (Hitler Youth) did good works building trails and doing conservation work. Capone did charity work too. Sorry. You can't buy salvation with good works.

Sustainable Living Practices. Of course it was Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth who made the absurd statement that we could through the individual choices we make as consumers in the things we buy, the electricity we use or the cars we drive for example that we could reduce our carbon emissions to zero. But Gore did not appreciate that green consumers can never reduce their consumption to zero, and that an increase in the number of the greenest consumers is going to increase total consumption. GHG emissions will have to be cut 60% just to keep pace with population increases in the next half century. And in the UK it was discovered that one new citizen, born or admitted as an immigrant erased 80 lifetimes of responsible recycling.

Polishing the furniture while the house is burning down. Welcome to the Green Fantasy World, where feeling good about yourself is more important than actually addressing the root cause of the problem---over-population, just as Jacques Cousteau said.

It's over-population stupid!

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC

Topic:

David Brower: An authentic environmentalist (1912-2000) Why the Earth Day co-founder quit the Sierra Club

Thu, 2008-04-17 11:39 by tim

Who was David R. Brower? He was the dean of the American environmental movement, to be ranked among John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt in importance. Nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, he founded the Sierra Club Foundation, the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute, North Cascades Conservation Council and Fate of the Earth Conferences. But it was with America’s flagship environmental organization that he was most associated with. He joined the Sierra Club in 1933, was elected to its board of directors in 1941 and was made its executive director in 1952. Under his leadership club membership grew ten-fold (7,000 to 70,000) from a group of affluent apolitical hikers to an aggressive player on the national environmental scene. David Brower was the catalyst in this transformation. He was the Sierra Club. Yet after 67 years this great crusader felt compelled to resign, “with no regret and a bit of desperation.” Brower, you see, had a problem. He had a problem with corruption, bribery, political correctness and myopia. He knew that demography drives not only human destiny but the destinies of the species we impact, and that unchanged immigration policies would double America’s population by 2100, or if liberalized, add as many as another 700 million by that time. He also knew that post-1970 immigrants and their descendants would be the decisive force fuelling American population growth. If unchecked, it surely meant ecological Armageddon for the country. In resigning Brower stated that “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.” Brower, of course, was not alone in advancing those beliefs. Earth Day co-founder and former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth First co-founder Dave Forman and Harvard professor and socio-biologist E. O. Wilson all warned of the environmental effects of current immigration policies. Just after the first Earth Day in 1970, the President’s Commission on Population Growth and America’s Future urged Congress to stabilize the population at 200 million expeditiously. Paul Ehrlich was among several ecologists who identified 150 million people, half the country’s present population level, as a number that would ensure sustainable habitat survival. The Sierra Club used to agree with them. It used to believe that population growth was a crucial variable in environmental degradation. After all the Ehrlich –Commoner equation (environmental Impact=Population x Affluence x Technology) was conventional wisdom and common sense. Population stabilization, a function of lower fertility rates and lower immigration quotas, were long a part of its program. According to its Population Report of 1989, “Immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the U.S.” And then suddenly in 1996 that policy was dropped. It became politically correct to ignore the “P” in the IPAT equation and focus on “A”, affluence or reducing per capita consumption, and “T”, more efficient technologies. Greener lifestyles and renewable technologies would save the day and with the oxymoronic fraud of “smart growth”, we could pretend that we could shoe-horn half the world into this continent merely by channeling, or “managing” growth. But when a group of Sierrans, including Brower, saw the folly of this approach and attempted to restore traditional immigration policy, in stepped a billionaire, David Gelbaum, who threatened that if it was restored the Sierra Club would “never see a dollar of his money”. The ruling clique complied and was dutifully rewarded with in excess of $100 million in bribes, tendered in 2000-1 alone. Elizabeth May, for her part, threatened to change the name of the Sierra Club of Canada if the dissidents succeeded in returning the US Club to its original course. She has obviously carried her globalist convictions into the leadership of the Green Party of Canada with a pledge to chase immigration targets into the stratosphere, even beyond that of other parties. American Presidential Green candidate Ralph Nader, by contrast, denounced open borders and liberal immigration as “absurd” in his 2000 campaign, and for that reason enjoyed Brower’s support. Mass immigration can be understood as a right wing project that benefits from left wing collusion, with progressives essentially lining up behind Bill Gates and 40 major technology companies and agribusiness to drive down wages so that conservatives obtain their cheap labour and socialists obtain their cheap cause. Donations to conservation groups to look the other way while the invasion continues is an excellent return on corporate investment. No wonder Canadian members are kept ignorant about who gives money to environmental NGOs, how much is given and what directors are paid. No wonder sleazy arrangements are made between big corporations like the Royal Bank and Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Audubon Society of America and Toyota (a $20 million deal) and the Sierra Club’s deal to endorse the cleaning products of the Clorox corporation. Now you understand why this pioneer of the Sierra Club had to finally leave it just before his death. He could no longer stomach being a member of a corrupt, money-grubbing, corporate lackey that accepted a massive annual bribe to leave immigration, a vital ingredient of environmental degradation, out of the policy book. He realized that a clique purchased by David Gelbaum’s millions and intent on chasing after potential Hispanic members at the expense of defending the environment against the illegal invasion across the southern border could not be overthrown. And the organization was too irredeemably corrupt to be reformed. It had to be abandoned and by-passed. David Brower. An authentic environmentalist, a man of integrity and principle. A rare commodity in the movement. http://www.susps.org/index.html (The whole story on the Sierra Club) http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1631 (The Royal Bank and Nature Conservancy) Tim Murray April 22/08

Topic:

House of lords tells UK government to limit immigration

Fri, 2008-04-11 20:06 by admin

#2b2; padding: 8px 8px 8px 8px; margin: 16px 16px 16px 16px;">The following was sent to me by Immigration Watch Canada. It has also been posted to their site. The full article "Migration has brought 'zero' economic benefit" by Philip Johnston and Robert Winnett, together with comments, can be found on the UK's Telegraph newspaper (www.telegraph.co.uk).

The (House of Lords Economic Affairs) committee has rebuked the Government for using "irrelevant and misleading" economic statistics to justify the boom in immigration in the past decade.

The committee...includes the former chancellors (Finance Ministers) Lord Lawson and Lord Lamont, former City figures such as Lord Turner and Lord Vallance and leading economists including Lord Skidelsky and Lord Layard. Several ministers are members.

Lord Wakeham said: "The argument put forward by the Government that large-scale net immigration brings significant economic benefits for the UK is unconvincing. (Our 8-month study has) found no evidence to support their position.

There is little or no economic benefit to Britain from the present high level of immigration. The immigrants are not needed to fill labour shortages or help fund the state pension for retiring Britons.

High levels of immigration threaten to price millions of Britons out of the housing market over the next 20 years.
Government statistics on immigration are "seriously inadequate" and compromise the ability accurately to set interest rates and allocate £100 billion in public funding.
Certain groups, including the low-paid, some ethnic minorities and young people seeking to get on the jobs ladder may suffer because of competition from immigrants.
Immigrants have an "important economic impact" on public services with some schools struggling to cope with the rapidly-rising number of children who do not speak English as a first language.

See also

"House of Lords' immigration report 'forgets environment'" by the UK's Optimum Population Trust which is critical of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee for understating the environmental impact of immigration. Also published here.

"Migration has brought 'zero' economic benefit" By Philip Johnston and Robert Winnett, 29 March 2008 in the UK's Telegraph newspaper.

"Report says immigration costly" By Hsin-Yin Lee 9 April 2008, in the Washington Times

House of Lords’ immigration report “forgets environment”

Wed, 2008-04-02 14:16 by admin

#2b2; padding: 8px 8px 8px 8px; margin: 16px 16px 16px 16px;">

As reported in the UK's Telegraph newspaper, the House of Lords' economic affairs committee has rightly called into question "Government claims that foreign workers add £6 billion each year to the wealth of the nation." The report's conclusion was "that the economic benefits of net immigration to the resident population are small and close to zero in the long run." This finding is consistent with the findings of the Australian Productivity Commission's report of January 2007. Whilst the House of Lords' reports is a step in the right direction, the UK's Optimum Population Trust (www.optimumpopulation.org) argues that the report still overlooks many of the grave ecological and social costs of the overcrowding of the the UK. (My comment: As these should rightly be regarded as economic costs, a more accurate picture of immigration would reveal that immigration comes at a high economic cost to the host nation and is not simply neutral as could be interpreted by the wording of the report.)

Optimum Population Trust

News Release- April 1 2008

Peers’ immigration report “forgets environment”

Large-scale immigration poses threats to the environment largely overlooked by the House of Lords economic affairs committee, the Optimum Population Trust said today (Tuesday, April 1).

The committee’s report, which found “little or no” benefit for the resident population from current high levels of immigration, was published today. It echoes many of the arguments put forward in recent years by the OPT - notably on pensions, job vacancies and impact on GDP – but devotes relatively little attention to the environmental impacts of mass immigration, which are potentially just as serious as the economic ones and carry their own economic consequences.

Immigration is responsible for at least 70 per cent of the UK’s projected population increase, which will take the UK from 61 million today to 85 million by 2081, according to the latest principal projection from the Office for National Statistics, published last October. The high-variant projection from the ONS says the population could be as much as 109 million in 2081.

Valerie Stevens, OPT chair, said: “The environmental consequences of such a massive population rise are alarming. They include growing water and energy shortages, problems of food production and food insecurity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, loss of countryside and green space and all the psychological stresses that come with high population densities, overcrowding and loss of tranquillity. Britain is not only a small and crowded island – it is one already beyond the limits of sustainability.”

“Yet apart from a few paragraphs on what it calls ‘wider welfare issues’ [paragraphs 181-185 of report] the committee lays little emphasis on the environment. Even its section on housing, which points out what we have been saying for a long time – that increased population and immigration levels have contributed to higher house prices – deals largely with prices rather than the impact on green space or productive land.”

OPT analysis of the 36,000-word report shows that water, energy, food production and climate change are not mentioned at all, noise and congestion only once and the countryside only twice. The words “environment” or “environmental” are only used four times and “green” only once.

Valerie Stevens added: “For too long many people with environmental concerns about immigration levels have been afraid to speak out for fear of being labelled racist. If the Lords report succeeds in finally exploding this conspiracy of silence, it will be very welcome.

“Unfortunately, their primarily economic brief has had the effect of seriously underplaying the entire environmental dimension – even though environmental problems usually carry severe economic consequences. The Lords make the point that the Government ‘appears not to have considered these [wider welfare] issues at all’* - but it is time somebody did.

“A recent OPT study found that the UK could support a population of only 17 million if it had to provide for itself from its own resources. We urgently need a serious environmental examination of just how many people these islands can sustain.”

How does Chinese treatment of Tibet differ from treatment of native born Canadians?

Wed, 2008-04-02 01:00 by admin

#2b2; padding: 8px 8px 8px 8px; margin: 16px 16px 16px 16px;">The following was first published by Dan Murray of Immigration Watch Canada (www.immigrationwatchcanada.org) on 31 March 2008, with the title "'Free Tibet'? Of course. But equally important, free Canada". (Dan Murray is not related to Tim Murray, also of Immigration Watch Canada).

"Free Tibet"? Of course. But equally important, free Canada.

This week, a number of Canadians have enthusiastically greeted Statistics Canada census figures which state that the number of visible minorities in Canada continues to increase. Last week, the same group was expressing indignation and moral outrage at China's repression of Tibet. There is a contradiction between cheering Statistics Canada immigration figures and expressing disgust with China's repression, a significant part of which has been accomplished through immigration.

Immigration is a major issue in Tibet and Canada

(1) Although recent media focus has been on China's violence in Tibet, it should have been on one of the main causes of the violence. Han Chinese immigration into Tibet has been a major cause. The Tibetan government-in-exile has stated that immigration from China has been used to culturally and economically overwhelm and marginalize Tibet's host population.

Most countries in the world, including Canada, are very sympathetic to the Tibetan point of view and most are calling upon China to make amends with Tibet. But, it is impossible to imagine Canada or any other country telling Tibet that making amends means that Tibet should accept Han Chinese immigration so that Tibet can become more diverse and multicultural. In fact, no suggestion could be more nonsensical because, to most world observers, it is clear that China has used immigration as a weapon in its past and that it is doing it again in Tibet.

According to Denny Roy, co-author of "Ethnic Conflict In China: The Case of Tibet", and others, China's disrespect for Tibet has been blatant. China has regarded itself as a superior "older brother" which had entered Tibet to look after a backward "little brother". To China, Tibet was quaint, but really a feudal society in need of change. China's government has regarded all religion as an opiate. In dealing with formerly-theocratic Tibet, it has done what it could to eradicate Tibet's Buddhist religion. The Tibetan government-in-exile alleges that China systematically destroyed 6000 Buddhist monasteries and temples, under-funded and secularized Tibet's traditionally religious schools, and promoted the degradation of Tibetans by making cheap alcohol available. China has also interfered by appointing in 1995 the Panchen Lama, second to the Dalai Lama in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Tibetan Buddhism---after the Dalai Lama had already appointed someone else to that position.

But the overwhelming of Tibet's host population through immigration of Han Chinese has been the supreme cultural insult and humiliation. Accurate population figures are difficult to obtain, but the Tibetan government-in-exile and a number of Tibetan experts claim that China has moved significant numbers of its Han majority into Tibet in order to outnumber native Tibetans and achieve China's ends.

Here are two questions for Canadian media commentators, academics, immigration industry representatives and politicians who are cheer-leading announcements that over 16% of Canada's population is now visible minority immigrants and that soon it will be 20%:

(a) If cultural overwhelming of a population is wrong in Tibet, how can it be right in Canada?

(b) If some Canadians are morally outraged at immigration events in Tibet, and are willing to say "Free Tibet", why are they not saying "Free Canada"? Or, more specifically, why are they not looking at the near-overwhelmed or already-overwhelmed host populations of Toronto, Markham, Vancouver, Abbotsford, Richmond, and many other places in Canada and saying "Free Toronto", "Free Vancouver"? ...

It is true that in Canada's past, there have been times when the population in some parts of Canada has been overwhelmed by immigrants. However, because Canada's immigration levels have risen and fallen, people have adapted. But the difference is that today, Canada remains in an abnormality in its immigration history: 18 years of uninterrupted high immigration levels. Those levels show no sign of abating, the inflows have done minimal adapting, and parts of Canada have been overwhelmed-----a demographic situation much like that in Tibet.

Tibet and Canada have been economically exploited

(2) According to "Ethnic Conflict In China: The Case of Tibet", China's motive for getting a stronger hold on Tibet is brazenly economic and exploitive. China is interested in using Tibet as a buffer between itself and India. It also wants Tibet's forests and mineral resources. In addition, it covets Tibet's open spaces to dump its own wastes and those of other countries. Understandably, Tibetans claim that China has treated Tibet as a place to be plundered.

China began that process in 1950 when it invaded Tibet. It kept military and civilian officials there to administer the country. But later it used a variety of economic incentives to encourage Han Chinese to settle Tibet. The Han who have gone there permanently have transplanted their foreign culture on Tibetan soil. Those Chinese who go there temporarily summarize their attitude towards Tibet in one expression: "Thin on arrival; fat on departure." One Chinese official described China's practices in Tibet as "plain colonialism", but his views have been unrepresentative and largely ignored.

Like the Han Chinese who have gone into Tibet, most immigrants to Canada come here for economic reasons. Substantial evidence which should have restricted that motive was the Economic Council of Canada's major study in 1991 which declared that immigration produces virtually no economic benefits for our host population_{#main-fn1" id="main-txt1">1}. In fact, Herb Grubel, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon Fraser University, calculated that "For all of the immigrants who arrived during the 13 years before 2003, the cost in 2002 alone is estimated to be $18.3 billion." The $18.3 Billion figure represented over 10% of all federal spending in that year. It is assumed that this pattern continues today.

Even clearer evidence of exploitation of Canada is that most of the 600,000+ people who have used our refugee system have done so for economic reasons. Contrary to what Citizenship and Immigration has told us, up to 80% of these 600,000 claimants have been allowed to stay here. Although the politically correct are now marvelling about the growth in visible minorities, many other Canadians will ask a big question. Why should Canadians be celebrating the fact that a significant number of the visible minorities in Canada today have either entered Canada fraudulently through the refugee claimant system or have been sponsored by a refugee claimant who entered Canada fraudulently?

Equally blatantly, large numbers of visible minority immigrants have abused Canada's Family Class programme and the Investor/Entrepreneur programme. Why should any Canadians be celebrating the presence of large numbers who have done that?

Canada's Employment Equity programme, now in effect for 20 years, is a more sinister kind of economic exploitation. One part of the programme has favoured visible minority immigrants and has caused untold economic damage to many Canadian-born. It has denied employment to white males and given that employment to visible minority immigrants (including the ones who have arrived fraudulently). Undoubtedly, a number of the immigrants who have jobs in Canada's private and public sector have them legitimately. But the blunt truth is that the very existence of that programme casts a suspicion on all visible minority immigrants who are now employed in both the public sector and many parts of the private sector. Here is the inevitable question: Did they receive their jobs because of merit or because of discrimination against people born in Canada? What Canadians (or Tibetans) would celebrate the arrival of people who have caused them the denial of a job?

Attention please

(3) Undeniably, the Tibetan government-in-exile is using the Beijing Olympics to press its case for outside help against China's exploitation and abuse. Up to now, it has not received the attention it has wanted. According to this government, the majority of the businesses in many Tibetan cities are owned by Han Chinese and recent Tibetan protests have targeted those businesses in reprisal. According to that group, China has killed 1.2 million Tibetans in a wide variety of methods such as shooting, disembowelment, crucifixion, beheading, starving, drowning, etc. in successive waves of repression.

Obviously, Canada has not experienced this kind of violence. But it is no exaggeration to say that, like Tibetans, many Canadians feel that the immigrant overwhelming of their cities has been a cultural embarrassment and humiliation. To most Canadians, some immigration is acceptable and most will treat visible minority immigrants well. However, only the most obsequious tolerate becoming a minority in their own country. That is a key issue in the entire immigration argument in Canada and in Tibet.

Our House of Commons Standing Committee on Immigration seems completely oblivious to this and other real issues. On March 31, at the first of a series of its cross-Canada hearings in Richmond, B.C., most of the committee members demonstrated that they were going to use the so-called "worker shortage" in Canada's west to maintain and accelerate Canada's absurdly-high immigration levels. Unemployed, underemployed or welfare recipient Canadians in Canada's east or west and the cultural, economic and environmental interests of all Canadians are irrelevant.

If any committee members proclaiming a significant worker shortage had been asked to produce evidence to substantiate their claims, they probably could not have done so. To most committee members and to many of the carefully chosen so-called "stakeholders" who spoke to them, Canada could not get enough immigrants. And the faster they got here, the better.

To any observer of that spectacle, if Canada wants to commit suicide, who could do a better job of accelerating the event than many on this committee?

Most of that group, and others who have cheerled Statistics Canada figures this week, ignore the origin of Canada's immigration quagmire: Immigration Minister Barbara McDougall's crass, yet historic, immigration policy statement in 1990. That assertion was that the Progressive Conservative Party would raise immigration levels at that time in order to compete with the Liberal Party for the immigrant vote. Its own studies, which advised it not to do this, were to be tossed aside.

If Canadians think China's motives for overwhelming Tibet are crude and brazen, who in Canada can be classified as more politically crude and brazen than McDougall, all of the federal governments since 1990 who have maintained a senseless immigration policy, all the politicians from other parties who have supported it, and Canada's immigration industry?

It never had to be this way. Understandably, Canada has a deal with most of the post-1990 immigrants. But it doesn't have one with all the illegals here now and all those others who have entered Canada fraudulently.

And it certainly doesn't have any obligation to continue the post-1990 immigration disaster.

"Free Tibet", they say?

Of course. But equally important, Free Canada.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. See also the Optimum Population Trust's media release "House of Lords’ immigration report “forgets environment”". #main-txt1">[back]

Also of possible interest

Barbara Kay: Multiculturalism was Canada's biggest mistake, 9 April 2008

Barbara Kay: Multiculturalism is an invitation to fragmentation, 8 April 2008

High-immigration lobbyist blames high immigration for housing crisis on April Fools Day.

Wed, 2008-04-02 00:02 by admin

In yet another bizarre twist in the property development lobby's constant pushing for high immigration, one of its strongest advocates over the past decade, Ron Silberberg, Managing Director of the Housing Industry Association (HIA) appears to have come out blaming immigration for the housing crisis which his own organisation's advocacy for higher immigration helped to create. "There has been an uncontrolled expansion of the immigration program," Dr Silberberg told a Senate committee in Canberra, according to an AAP sourced article, "Immigration blamed for housing crisis," in The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday April 1, 07:01PM. Analysts of Australia's rampant population-growth-lobbying movement were today scratching their heads and sending round emails asking if this was an April Fools joke. Mr Ilan Goldman, housing analyst, wrote to housing sociologist, Sheila Newman, late Tuesday night: "Is it an April Fools joke, or is it for real? If it is real, I need you to analyse it " Goldman felt that the article was probably real news, since the same news had appeared at the following addresses: http://news.smh.com.au/immigration-blamed-for-housing-crisis/20080401-22... at Yahoo News: http://au.news.yahoo.com/060622/2/zhm9.html, and at NineMSN; http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=59380 The Sydney Morning Herald went on to report that "Housing Industry Association (HIA) managing director Ron Silberberg blamed the shortage of private rental accommodation on net immigration he estimated at 250,000 people a year." Silberberg had also described Australia's immigration program expansion as "uncontrolled", and as having increased at a massive pace, blaming pressure on private rental housing for these huge, uncontrolled increases. Most surprisingly, Silberberg admitted that the federal government could use the immigration program as a way to diminish the housing crisis problem. He said that immigration was substantially impacting on the housing crisis. "It's a very significant influence on the demand for housing and accommodation." Silberberg was critical of the Immigration Department, which he thought did not have a "proper understanding of labour market forecasting." He complained of a shortage of building trade workers in Australia, claiming that only around 800 immigrants in a rough total of 250,000 per annum, were suitably skilled in housing construction. There was apparently some discussion about 'releasing' more land (a term which means clearing bushland or rezoning agricultural land, entailing heavy carbon emissions). The Planning Institute of Australia advanced the opinion that releasing more land needed to be balanced by a construction sector able to meet the demand. In a more familiar pitch, Planning Institute National President, Neil Savery said, "Addressing undersupply is a critical issue if we are to ensure that we are able to adequately and affordably house our communities as Australia continues to develop." Population growth lobby analysts see this kind of remark as an indication that the property lobby is about to ask for an increase in immigration numbers of building tradesmen. They say that the term 'undersupply' (referring to land) could just as well be replaced with the term 'oversupply' (referring to population). This is a property developer construct which glosses over the real problem, which is that Australia has reached its comfortable limits to growth. "We're not saying that addressing supply is the panacea to the problem and certainly that the equation in relation to supply isn't simply: `Let's release as much land as we can possibly can on the urban fringe of the city'," Mr Savery was reported to have said. "It is unlikely that Dr Silberberg or Mr Savery are on the road to Damascus. Leopards rarely change their spots," concluded housing sociologist, Sheila Newman, after a quick review of these remarks.

Move over Mr Legrain, the floodgates are open

Sun, 2008-03-30 17:55 by tim

Philippe Legrain's puerile veneration of globalization and free market economics is, for its outrageous simplicity, alluring to some in the same way that Ayn Rand's uncompromising fantasies drew a cult following. His call for open borders is so boldly brazen that it disarms many of his incredulous audience in the manner that Milton Friedman or Julian Simon did theirs. But a glance at any best sellers' list will reveal that is typically those who stake out extreme and provocative positions without solid empirical foundation who attract readers and the favour of publishers. While those authors and commentators who are better informed of a broader and deeper knowledge, on the other hand, often lose their market edge because a more balanced account is inherently less exciting.

In fact, in his book review of Immigrants:Your Country Needs Them, Australian critic Mark O'Connor characterized Philippe Legrain as essentially "ill-read", "a rhetorician, not a thinker", who in his euphoric assessment of a world where mobility was unimpeded "ignores inconvenient issues of resources, spaces, greenhouse emissions and environmental degradation."

Like a tireless door-to-door salesman of a quack remedy that subsequent lab analysis would show to be lethal and fraudulent in its claims, the infamous open-borders advocate, economist and journalist Philippe Legrain knocked on French Canada's door recently to speak to the biweekly magazine L'actualitie. The message was practically the same one he has given to the Economist, the Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times, Prospect Magazine, to the BBC and many foreign publications.

The pitch is: “Hey Canada (or America, or Australia etc.). Not enough water? Here's the medicine. Open your borders to limitless millions! Housing costs too high? Open your borders to limitless millions! Almost out of agricultural land? Open your borders to limitless millions! Educational institutions and medical system over-burdened? You guessed it. Open your borders to limitless millions! It's good for them and good for you too.”

The pitch is: "Hey Canada (or America, or Australia etc.). Not enough water? Here's the medicine. Open your borders to limitless millions! Housing costs too high? Open your borders to limitless millions! Almost out of agricultural land? Open your borders to limitless millions! Educational institutions and medical system over-burdened? You guessed it. Open your borders to limitless millions! It's good for them and good for you too."

Actually Legrain did not say that verbatim, but in so many words. For one thing he has no evident concern or awareness of any ecological consequences from his miracle cure. It is enough for him that bringing down national borders would allegedly double the size of the world economy. The effect of this on greenhouse emissions or biodiversity is simply not on his radar screen. But it is on the radar screen of the Royal Academy of Sciences who according to Monbiot has virtually stated that economic growth will have to be halted if we are to escape that critical two degree rise in global temperatures. Clearly Legrain's economic utopia would be an environmental dystopia.

When asked by L'Actualitie why we should abolish all borders and open all countries to freedom of movement, Legrain responded with the same line that he had given the New York Times six months before in October. "It is first of all a moral question. We should end this global apartheid by which we set the door wide open for rich and well-educated foreigners but close them for poor ones thereby forcing them to stay in their poverty. It is also a humanitarian question", in that according to the IMF immigrants send $300 billion in remittances to their home countries, "which go straight to the pockets of local people." But unfortunately he doesn't appreciate that from the pockets of local people it goes straight back into the pockets of corrupt policemen and officials as bribes. Remittances take the edge off the worst of third world poverty and emigration allows incompetent regimes to export their poor, providing a safety valve so that corruption and overpopulation never gets solved. How many potential Nelson Mandelas and Lech Walesas would be lost to emigration under a global free movement protocol?

I must confess that I find it somewhat galling when an economist of any stripe should protest like Legrain that "it is abhorrent that the rich and the educated are allowed to circulate around the world more or less freely, while the poor are not." Mr. Legrain should know that there are lots of things that the rich can do with their money that the poor can't in the marvelous free-market economy that he champions. They all can drive hummers if they want to, for example. Does that mean that, as a matter of equity, every one in Bangladesh should be afforded a hummer? Migration has vast ecological consequence too. If Mr. Legrain wants to vent his closet socialist conscience, why doesn't express abhorrence over the low wages that his unskilled immigrants are making everywhere in the developed world?

"A conservative position that encourages free trade and restricted immigration is not contradictory. Simply put, importing tomatoes is not the same thing as importing people.

Harvard economist George J. Borjas

Legrain would argue that it should be a matter of consistency that governments devoted to the free movement of money and goods should also be committed to the unfettered movement of people. But Harvard economist George J. Borjas would reply that "a conservative position that encourages free trade and restricted immigration is not contradictory. Simply put, importing tomatoes is not the same thing as importing people."

Thomas Sowell also stated that people are not commodities, as commodities are consumed, while people generate more people, and immigrants impose a cost on the country. In his Canadian interview, Legrain argued that immigrants consume goods and services and generate economic activity, making the U.S. an economic powerhouse. What he did not mention, however, was the 2004 report by the Centre for Immigration Studies that showed that illegal immigrants consumed $10.6 billion more in services than they paid in taxes. Nor did he comment on the 1997 metastudy by the National Research Council that concluded that while immigration raises over-all output, the aggregrate additional net benefit to the U.S. native-born is nugatory--wiped out by taxpayer funded transfer payments to immigrants.

As for Britain, a House of Lords committee reported on April 1st of 2008 that ten years of record immigration has produced virtually no benefits to the country. The report argues that the 6 billion pounds that foreign workers supposedly add to the nation's wealth each year must be balanced against their use of services like health and education and the growth of the population. The error of conventional government assessments of migrant benefits to economic growth (15-20%), according to Professor David Coleman of Oxford University, is that it has excluded costs from crime, security, race relations and imported ailments like TB. And, according to visiting Professor Richard Pearson of the University of Sussex Centre for Migration Research, "these migrants are likely to be displacing, and reducing the incentive on employers to recruit and train low-skilled, indigenous workers."

If these are the results of a Labour government that critics say has lost control of the nation's borders, issued too many work permits and should not have exposed the labour market to Eastern Europe, what would have been the result if they had followed Philippe Legrain's formula for success and thrown open the borders entirely? One pill makes you sick so you take three or four more?

Legrain of course, can no doubt conjure up a study to show wage improvement in the wake of mass immigration, but other studies by more eminent economists like Borjas can counter them. But can't Philippe Legrain be honest here? Does he really believe that big employers lobby governments for more immigration so that they can raise wage levels? Is that why Bill Gates went to Congress to ask to loosen H-1B visa regulations and raise caps, as a philanthropic measure to improve the wages of IT workers in America? Give us a break, Mr. Legrain. It is as Garrett Hardin said, "immigrant labour pauperizes local labour." What is most sickening about Legrain's argument is that he presents it mostly as a cause of social justice for the global poor while it is in fact, really a cause to bring cheap labour to the developed world and improverish its indigenous working class. As socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont observed, five million middle income workers in America have been caught in a vice between out-sourcing and cheap immigrant labour and have dropped into the ranks of poverty during the Bush era. Even more sickening than Legrain's hypocrisy though has been the collusion of leftists and liberals in it. Imagine if Charles Dickens had teamed up with the Manchester school. Contemporary leftists are not internationalists. They are globalists, unwitting collaborators in the pyramid scam of runaway population growth that cloaks the naked profit motive under the attractive guise of cultural diversity and human rights.

Now for the old chestnut. The one Legrain repeats ad nauseum in countless interviews and essays in reference to several countries. The famous "they do work that locals won't do" routine. For example, he recently stated in his blog that "with France's growth slowing, its sclerotic labour market could do with an infusion of foreign blood—of hard-working , enterprising people who are willing to do the jobs that French people can't or won't." There is always an inference that native workers aren't hard-working, or "enterprising", and as far as a "sclerotic" labour market in a slow growing France is concerning, there is an alternative translation for that. The workers of France are benefiting from a "tight" labour market in a "stable" economy. As one should know, but many including Legrain apparently don't, there is no such thing as jobs that Frenchmen, Americans, Canadians or Australians "won't do". Merely jobs they are unwillingly to do at the wages offered. The phrase "they do work that locals won't do" evidences equivalent ignorance to other phrases that have consigned to the lexicographical museum like "I drive better when I'm drunk" or "my wife had it coming."

Legrain's open borders recipe, aside from presenting monstrous adjustment problems for recipient countries, would also pose problems for poor countries, one would think. When asked by L'Actualitie if they would not be crippled by an exodus of doctors and engineers, Legrain was cavalier and dismissive. Émigré doctors would only meet 12% of current needs if they were forced to return now, so therefore it was better just to assist developing countries in training more doctors. And then what? So they in turn could leave for the First World? Is that Legrain's vision? India and Africa as a big medical school for the West?

Philippe Legrain is not very re-assuring about terrorism either. Since "99.99% of immigrants aren't terrorists" then border controls don't make sense as a deterrent to terrorists. OK, Mr. Legrain, since 99.99% of all air-line passengers aren't bombers, on any plane that you are boarding, we won't bother to do any security screening or luggage checks.

It would seem reasonable, would it not, that when toying with the fate of 6.7 billion people and 194 plus countries that before unleashing a sweeping change of Philippe Legrain's prescription we first test the waters by leaving one or two nations defenceless against incoming hordes. Actually the experiment has already been conducted. Does anybody know how things have working out for Tibet the last little while? How have the ethnic Serbians made out in Kosovo? How did the Poles like their open borders in September of 1939? Must admit, those hard-working enterprising Germans did work that the Poles would not do.

Legrain doesn't favour a kind of incremental, phased relaxation of borders, but rather the shock therapy of an immediate global village.

But Legrain doesn't favour a kind of incremental, phased relaxation of borders, but rather the shock therapy of an immediate global village. His only assurance is, not to worry, when the floodgates are opened, not many folks will actually move. "Since the EU opened its borders to certain East European countries, there has been little emigration." But surely Mr. Legrain can't compare the economic disparity between Poland and England with the disparity that exists between England and Bangladesh or Africa. The Mariel flotilla from Cuba presents a more plausible portrait of third world eagerness to seek greener pastures. And if even 5% of the world's population could move to the United States, it would double their population and bring about an ecological holocaust.

I think it prudent then, despite Legrain's assurances, to first test the market as it were by granting an unlimited number of visas to all third word economists who wish live and work alongside Mr. Legrain in the UK. With an economist coming out of every manhole cover to bid for jobs as columnists with the Guardian and the Times and so forth, and as commentators on the BBC, Philippe Legrain could test his hypothesis that immigrants raise the wages of local labour.

If this pilot project was pronounced a success and British sovereignty subsequently dissolved, then I could look forward to moving into Legrain's London flat, with a host of my relatives, who have always fancied living in the great city. Even if it contained only the 76 square metres of space that the average British dwelling does, I am sure Mr. Legrain, as a matter of logical consistency, could have no objection to moving over and making room for us. After all, a man who favours open borders can hardly oppose open houses.

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
28 March 2008

Topic:

Do claims of higher immigrant wages answer objections to record Australian immigration levels?

Sat, 2008-03-22 17:36 by James Sinnamon

Rupert Murdoch's Australian Newspaper in an article Migrant workers scoring top pay" has made use of figures which which purportedly show that immigrants earn more, rather than less than their Australian equivalents, , as if to answer any possible objection to Australia's current record high rate of immigration.

SKILLED temporary migrant workers are earning on average $15,000 more than their Australian counterparts, undermining trade union claims that the system is being abused to undercut local wages.

Figures obtained by The Australian show that holders of 457 visas, which allow temporary skilled migrants to work in Australia for up to four years, are earning more than the average salaries of local workers across all industries in which they are employed.

The figures have reignited the debate over the use of foreign workers, with the Opposition seizing on the data as "dispelling the myth" that temporary skills workers are driving down wages, but unions and the Rudd Government insist that many visa holders are exploited by unscrupulous employers.

Of course, notwithstanding these purportedly average figures, there still remains many documented examples of ruthless exploitation of immigrant workers, and their depressing on the value of the labour of many in Australia's current workforce and this remains a valid reason to oppose high immigration.

However, even if it were not true as the figures in the Australian purport to show, the case against immigration should not begin and end with that question alone, rather it should most of all concern what serves the best interests of the existing inhabitants of this country. Displacing existing workers by immigrant workers, whether those workers are paid more or less is not in their interests.

If we are to believe the free market economists, then the unstated conclusion to be drawn these statistics is that immigrant workers are paid better because they are more productive and skilled than their Australian counterparts.

However, other factors may help increase the amounts that skilled immigrants earn. One would be that they are inherently more mobile and hence more able to move to where better wages are on offer.

At this moment in time the Australian economy is hardly a typical economy by world standards. The ever-escalating level of exports of our finite endowment of mineral resources as well as the subdivision of bushland and agricultural land for residential development means that there is a wealth available for those with the niche skills required for this economic activity that would not be available in other economies. It should not be altogether surprising if much of this finds its way into pockets of skilled migrants, but this economic activity is unsustainable in the longer the longer term, and the wealth generated is at an unacceptable cost to the environment and future generations. Without these distortions in the Australian economy the picture would be very different.

Wherever the ultimate truth may lie in claims and counterclaims about relative wage levels in Australia's highly dysfunctional economy, this article is typical of the shallow self-serving treatment given to the complex and socially divisive issue of immigration by the Murdoch press. Amongst the many other questions not even acknowledged here or in any of its other pro-population-growth propaganda is the well understood effect of population growth adding to housing hyper-inflation, traffic congestion, destruction of bio-diversity, water shortages, demands for services that our governments can no longer meet and the ongoing decline in our quality of life.

Topic:

Can Canada's health care system survive mass immigration?

Fri, 2008-03-21 12:22 by tim

If the Canada of 1965 could have been preserved in aspic its medicare system might have been viable. But how is it now to contend with the massive numbers who make major claims on hospital services? Tim Murray, Director of Immigration Watch Canada describes the strains that runaway immigration levels have placed on Canada's health system.

A cynic might characterize Canada's medicare system as the universal, free, democratic and egalitarian access to a two-year waiting list. You jump the queue only if you have the bucks and the referral to jump over the 49th unless a life-threatening emergency sends you to the OR.

America's health care system on the other hand is discriminatory and expensive, but it offers immediate access to the best medical treatment in the world.

In both cases timely care for everyone is an elusive goal.

In any event Michael Moore's take on Canada is superficial, euphoric and unrealistic. New technology, abuse and the insatiable demands of an ever expanding clientele of elderly relatives sponsored by Third World immigrants is breaking the bank. It has been calculated that each sponsored immigrant in that age group will cost the Australian medical system $250,000. Since roughly 75% of Canadian immigrants and refugees, drawn from largely "non-traditional" sources, in fact consist of their unskilled dependent children, a terrifying portrait of the toll that Canadian immigration policy is taking on medicare could no doubt be drawn.

A recent article featured in the London Free Press (Thursday, March 13, 2008 "Hospitals forecast deficits") recognized population growth as one principal reason why the Canadian health system was on the brink of deficit financing, with half of Ontario's hospitals facing service cuts to meet the legal requirement for a balanced budget. Seventy percent of Canada's population growth is driven by immigration.

It was economist Milton Friedman who commented a decade ago that "It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." As Robert Rector explained, to be properly understood, Friedman's observation should be viewed as applicable to the entire redistributive system of benefits, subsidies and services that lower income groups disproportionately enjoy at the expense of higher income groups.

Unfortunately this superstructure of benefits and services rests not only on an economic foundation but a cultural one as well. A people that is very much alike is more inclined to trust one another, and this trust translates into a willingness to vote for redistributive policies. But we are no longer a mostly ethnically homogeneous society with a shared respect for institutions and a shared sense of civic obligation. When a significant portion of the population is from another hemisphere, another culture or even another generation with different values, the welfare state is perceived as an unlocked candy store with services to be exploited to the maximum.

Redistributive policies like medicare are inversely correlated to cultural diversity. Rather than confront this reality, Canadian leftists demand yet more financial IV injections into the morbid body of the health care system. They refuse to acknowledge that even the Swedish Social Democrats, their role models, were forced to discover the "Laffer curve". That is, push the tax rate up beyond a certain level and tax revenues fall in response. Tax payers will not keep working and producing if they can't keep enough of their income. There are limits to what can be funded.

The Canadian model is not sustainable. It works only if there is enough public money to fund it and not enough patients with doctors to help them abuse it.

Those days are gone forever

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THE CULTURE OF XENOPHILIA AND ITS ORIGINS How Love of the Stranger is Killing Us

Sun, 2008-03-16 18:17 by tim

The argument that self-destructive hospitality to third world immigrants issues from a self-loathing for Western civilization is commonplace. In his Closing of the American Mind Alan Bloom described how European nihilism became rooted in American colleges giving birth to cultural relativism and a contempt for western values that is now manifest in multiculturalism and mass immigration from “non-traditional” quarters. Canon has been re-cast to reflect Western guilt--- everywhere courses are designed to induce shame rather than pride in our forefathers so that we may become self-flagellating penitents willing to regard high immigration from aggrieved cultures as redress for our past crimes. But surely there is another half to the equation. That Anglo-European suicide emerges not out of hatred turned inward but love turned outward---a perverse love for strangers that exceeds or replaces the love that is due to one’s own. Novelist Jean Raspail’s description of pro-immigrationists bears closer scrutiny, with equal emphasis placed on the last segment of his quotation. They are, he said, “righteous in their loathing of anything and everything that smacks of present day Western society, and boundless in their love of what might destroy it.” That kind of love can be found by a selective interpretation of scriptures, and in a political movement born in the nineteenth century that shook the twentieth and still permeates thought today. The open-borders mentality rife in Britain, North America and Australia is largely the unhappy confluence of two philosophical traditions, Judeo-Christianity and socialism. The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) is one of the most famous and influential of the New Testament. In showing that a Samaritan could recognize a stricken Jew not as a member of a hostile culture but rather as a human being needing assistance, Christ established that a “neighbour” is anyone who needs our help. And both Matthew 22:39 and Leviticus 19:18 instruct us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And who is the “neighbour” we are to love? According to Christian ethicist Dana Wilbanks, it is often the stranger. “In fact, right at the centre of Christian faithfulness is the challenge and the opportunity to love the stranger as ourselves, to love the stranger as God loves the stranger, to love the stranger as one with whom Jesus explicitly identifies.” Kathleen Tomlin, the Director for the (Catholic) Office for Social Justice asked, “How do you love your neighbour, and also describe them as illegal?” She argued that the common good can’t be defined by national borders and that a sense of solidarity is required to understand the predicament of immigrants. Curiously, she didn’t speak of any solidarity with resident American workers whose jobs are displaced by immigrants. According to Harvard economist Dr. George Borgias American-born workers lose $152 billion annually from the job displacement and wage depression caused by immigration. Couldn’t they, one might ask, use some of the boundless Christian love earmarked for aliens who knowingly break the law upon entry but whose plight makes better news copy than the plight of the hard-working low-income American whose job he they threaten? Tomlin’s attitude was better captured by someone on an Internet forum out of London, Ontario who contested my Hardian arguments for population stabilization and zero-net immigration for Canada. “Closing borders is morally the same as refusing help to a dying person. It is quite literally putting the concerns of oneself and one’s ‘nation’ above the concerns of others based on the human concept of country. Remember here, that terms like country, nation, race and the like are just words that we have made up. People are people and we are all part of the human race…Choosing to ignore a cry for help makes me a barbarian and a heartless worm. Morality should be, and needs to be, based on Love…I do not have the right not to love everyone equally, ever.” (Londoncommons.net Feb.5/07) Historically American Jews have taken an even more strident stand for large immigration intakes, particularly from outside traditional Northern European sources, for both reasons both strategic and theological. Strategically it was thought that safety lay in diversity, that is, a culturally homogeneous society dominated by Anglo-Saxons would pose more of a threat than one fragmented by immigration from a variety of countries. In fact a multicultural state that sanctioned ethnocentrism by constituent subcultures would allow them to flourish as a separatist force and employ a “divide and conquer” strategy on the rest by entering into clever coalitions with other minorities. More favourable to immigration to America than any other religious or ethnic group, Jews have taken a leadership role in changing the Northern European tilt of US immigration. The American Jewish Committee boasts that “from its founding the AJC has been a strong voice in support of immigration, participating actively in many of the major immigration debates of our time, opposing reductions in the flows of immigrants…” For the Jewish lobby then, mass immigration is a wrecking ball that they can swing to shatter the ethnic homogeneity of Anglo-European America, and from the rubble of cultural balkanization emerge a power-broker. What is interesting is that while the Jewish prescription for Anglo-European America is more cultural pluralism and disintegration, its prescription for Israel continues to be for a racist, apartheid state theocratic state guided by Judaism with a Jewish-only immigration policy! The theological underpinnings for their agenda of burying Nordic Christian America under a demographic avalanche are found of course in the Old Testament. As Jews were once “strangers in the land of Egypt’, strangers are to be valued and welcomed. “You shall love the foreigner as you love yourself, for you were once aliens in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34) Hospitality to strangers, without any distinction made between legal and illegal strangers, is a consistent Biblical theme. “When a foreigner resides with you he shall be to you as the citizen among you.” (Leviticus 19:33-34) “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” (Hebrews 13:2) Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendola Hts., Minnesota incarnates these injunctions by complaining that classifying immigrant workers as “guests” would send out the message that they weren’t “family”. Such is love for the outsider in this logical continuum that a stranger not only becomes a neighbour , then a guest, but a member of immediate family. In this moral universe everyone residing in the country or hoping to, by hook or by crook, is deserving of equal consideration. Just get your foot in the door and you get a full Club membership. Does this formidable scriptural litany constitute the last word on the Judeo-Christian position toward immigration policy? Or can it be informed by an alternative interpretation? Since our obligations to our “neighbour”, who is said to be equated with “the stranger”, seems to be the linchpin of Christian rationale for out-of-control immigration, let’s examine the meaning of “neighbour”, as in “love thy neighbour as thy self” (Leviticus 19:18) The term surely doesn’t suggest universality since not everyone is my neighbour and not everyone is near me. Given that Judaism is a tribal religion,“neigbhour” must refer to fellow Jews. It is a an injunction to practice national solidarity as evidenced by an examination of the entire verse. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one ‘Your People’, but love your neighbour as yourself. I can take the lead.” “Your People” does not obviously mean all of humanity. “Neighbour” cannot be linked to “stranger”. Returning to the parable of the Good Samaritan, cursory research would dispute the interpretation that many Christians give to scriptural commands to love strangers. The notion that someone in Darfur is as much my “neighbour” as someone in Winnipeg, Manitoba or the man down the street who lost his family in a house fire is not illustrated by Luke 10. For a Samaritan who was intensely disliked by Israelites was not, in our sense, a foreigner. John 4:7-22 clearly defines Samaritans as a religious group, albeit corrupt, ritually impure and sexually permissive. None the less they believed in One God, One Prophet (Moses), The Torah, and in the Day of Judgment. They were not a regional or ethnic group. They were not black. They did not speak Chinese or Swahili. In fact they spoke a dialect of western Aramaic largely peculiar to Palestine, much like the Jews. The common ancestry of both Jews and Samaritans have been established by modern genetic studies. Therefore to use the Good Samaritan as an example of a foreigner, of the “stranger” whom we must love unreservedly and take him in, is a poor example. He was not a foreigner, and he was not really a stranger. He was the neighbour who we don’t like but whom Christ said to care about as much as ourselves. (Matthew 22:39) But should we care about him as much as we do our own family? In a burning building full of children, do we bypass our own children to rescue other children first? 1st Timothy 5:8 trumps Luke and Matthew. “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In other words, you take care of your family first. You love your own first. Then your neighbour. Then your community. Then your nation. Then humanity. And in deference to Paul Watson, apportion some of your love to the animal kingdom, whose habitat is being destroyed by the mass immigration policies favoured by anthropocentric Jews and Christians. There is a hierarchy of affection. Only God applies Love evenly, for only God can. Man has never, and can never, in Burke’s words, “love mankind all in one piece”. Love of family, love of country, love of those like ourselves is what comes natural, it is what we are, and social psychology and socio-biology is continuing to re-enforce Burkean insight and the wisdom of 1Timothy 5:8. In the last century and a half another bold challenge was mounted to re-order our natural affinities. Christian universalism and the rootless cosmopolitanism that was world Jewry found a rival in Marxism. In 1848 Karl Marx told the workers of the world to unite. Incredibly that call is still heard today, albeit among sometimes obscure factions. The Socialist Party of Tampa Bay declared in its 2007 platform, “working people have no country, but rather an international bond based on class.” A canvass of similar groups across Anglo-America would not necessarily reveal such blatant indifference to national interests, but nevertheless take up open immigration and refugee positions and support blanket amnesty for illegal aliens. Socialist writer Tom Lewis explains “Socialists are internationalists. Whereas nationalists believe that the world is divided primarily into different nationalities, socialists consider class to be the primary divide. For socialists, class struggle---not national identity—is the motor of history. And capitalism creates an international working class that must fight back against an international capitalist class.” What is critical to the understanding of the Marxist attitude to nationalism is that it takes an entirely pragmatic approach. Marx drew a distinction between good and bad nationalism. “The nationalism of the workers belonging to an oppressor nation binds them to their rulers and only does harm to themselves, while the nationalism of an oppressed nation can lead them to fight back against these rulers.” Thus Marx favoured Irish nationalism, but not English. He opposed the national movements of the Southern Slavs, but supported the Indian rebellion against the British. Lenin warned that “workers who place political unity with their ‘own’ bourgeoisie above the complete unity of the proletariat of all the nations, are acting against their own interests.” To do so, to fall victim to nationalist affections, was to evidence “false consciousness”, an inability to recognize those interests, interpreted of course by party cadres. Australian political scientist Frank Salter had this to say about the socialist attitude to nationalism. “The Left, as it has evolved over the course of the previous century, looks down on the ordinary people with their inarticulate parochialisms as if they were members of another species…since they care nothing for the preservation of national communities. Ethnies are considered irrelevant to the welfare of people in general. It would be understandable to Martians to be so detached from particular loyalties. But it is disturbing to humans doing so, especially humans who identify with the Left.” Such is the European Left’s identification with the Other at the expense of the resident national that, in the name of anti-racism, it was possible for left-wing novelist Umberto Eco to declare his hope that Europe would be swamped by Africans and third world emigrants just so to “demoralize” racists. And such is the identification of the AFL-CIO with 13 million illegal immigrants as potential recruits that it supports amnesty and essentially a corporate welfare program that reduces wages for the lowest of American workers. A scheme which advocates call “liberalism” but American workers call an invasion. The Canadian Labour Congress (Edgar Bergen) and its social-democratic parliamentary arm, the NDP (Charlie McCarthy), sing the same tune. Crocodile tears are shed for “undocumented” workers who allegedly make great contributions to the economy, according to their hire-a-left-wing-think-tank. But Statistics Canada’s conclusions are the same as those of Dr. Borgias are for American workers. The British Trade Union Congress tried to put one over on the public with a September 2007 report cooked up by the left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research that maintained that amnesty for illegal immigrants would net the Treasury 1 billion pounds annually. More careful analysis revealed that amnesty would cost British taxpayers up to 1.8 billion pounds a year. This Marxist legacy of international solidarity to the disavowal of national loyalties persists to the present sometimes in unalloyed form but more often as one strand in a synthesis of muddled xenophilia with Christian and environmental thought. The latter mutation is expressed in the Canadian argument that since global warming is a global problem requiring global cooperation, to obtain this cooperation we must not send out unfriendly messages of “fear” by closing our borders, but drop them instead. Presumably a radically downward adjustment in consumption habits and greener technology will compensate for all the extra millions who would swarm in. Instead of “workers of the world unite” the Greens offer us a new rallying cry: “More and more people, consuming less and less.” But just as Christian thought is not monolithic, neither is social democratic thought. Arguably the most famous and independent socialist intellectual of the English speaking world, George Orwell, once remarked that “in all countries, the poor are more national than the rich.” Bukharin was wrong. For the working class, national identity was just as important as class identity. And now finally, after their constituents have been battered by one of the greatest migratory waves in history, that saw the United States for example import the equivalent of three New Jerseys in the 1990s alone (25 million people), maverick social-democratic and socialist leaders in the tradition of Victor Berger, or Jack London or Canada’s J. S. Woodsworth are staking out a claim for national, as opposed to international, solidarity. The Democratic Socialist Senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has begun to make some noise about the disaster that is the illegal immigration invasion in the United States. His voting record in reducing chain migration, fighting amnesty and unnecessary visas rates B-, B- and A+ respectively from Americans for Better Immigration. Former Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt now admits that immigration under his administration was excessive and damaging to Germany. In a book published in 1982 he confessed that “with idealistic intentions, born out of our experiences with the Third Reich, we brought in far too many foreigners.” Dutch Socialist leader Jan Marijnissen is strongly opposed to the practice of importing East European workers to undermine the position of Dutch workers. East Europeans are hired as “independent contractors” to circumvent labour law. Marijnissen wrote “It is unacceptable that employers pay foreign workers 3 euros per hour and have them live in chicken coops as if they were in competition in the 19th century of Dickens. The unfair competition and displacement of Dutch workers and small business is intolerable. Therefore we shouldn’t open the borders further, but set limits instead.” Former Labor Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, also argued for the acknowledgement of limits. Along with fellow Labor MP Barry Cohen he has joined Australia’s leading environmentalists Dr. Tim Flannery and Dr. Ian Lowe in exposing the myth of Australia as being a big empty land begging to filled up with people. “Our rivers, our soils, our vegetation, won’t allow that to happen without enormous cost to us and those who follow us.” He calls for severe immigration cut-backs and a population policy. As impending economic and environmental upheavals threaten to multiply the some 30 million global migrants currently in transit, immigration and the ecological, economic and cultural stress it will place on the countries of destination re-iterate the questions raised earlier. To whom are we morally obligated? Whom can we be reasonably expected to love? To be brutally candid and blunt, those who are similar to ourselves. Biologist Richard Dawkins has maintained that humans were predisposed to make clear demarcations between “in-group” and “out-group” from the beginning, and social psychologists concur that this discriminating perception is inherent. The need to associate with others like ourselves is an immutable feature of human nature and so ethnic identity refuses to die. It is interesting that despite so much multicultural propaganda, a British poll found that 31% of the population still confessed to being racially prejudiced, while another study showed that most Britons harboured feelings of suspicion toward outsiders. Frank Salter in his On Genetic Interests has made a strong case for a genetic basis for this kind of ethnic, national and racial favouritism. Irenaus Eibi-Eibesfeldt and Pierre van den Berghe have shown that the more ethnically diverse populations are, the more resistant they are to redistributive policies. A Harvard Institute study in 2000 confirmed this conclusion when it found that U. S. states that were more ethnically fragmented than average spent less on social services. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam explained why. “The more people are brought into contact with those of another race or ethnicity, the more they stick to their own, and the less they trust others. Across local areas in the United States, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Britain, greater ethnic diversity is associated with lower social trust and, at least in some areas, lower investment in public goods.” It must be concluded that if this indeed is our nature, then two thousand years of Christianity and seventy years of communism with its attempt to create “the new man” should have taught us that it is futile to construct policy that runs counter to it. We are what we are. We are not made to love all of humanity, at least not in equal measure. We are made to love family and those we recognize as an extension of family. Those who share common history, values, genes or locality. For most of us, the choice to defend our own citizens rather than the outsiders who would undercut them is determined by our natural predispositions. It is a wonder to us that our leaders, politicians and human rights advocates are apparently not made of the same stuff. For them, immigration policy is purely a foreign aid project. Their love is trained outward, on distant shores, while the love from the nations that nurtured them goes unrequited and betrayed. Tim Murray Quadra Island, BC Sept. 21/07

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OVERPOPULATION AUSTRALIA 2008 - Surprising admissions in McDonald & Withers latest beat-up for mass worker immigration

Sun, 2008-03-16 11:12 by Sheila Newman

OVERPOPULATION AUSTRALIA 2008 - Surprising admissions in McDonald & Withers' latest beat-up for mass worker immigration “Workforce needs more migrants!” screamed the headlines on the front page of “The Age” (Sarah Smiles, “Workforce 'needs more migrants,' “The Age,” February 6, 2008). Hardly news, when the Age is always going on about this purported ‘need’ – and ABC radio, and just about every news organ now for years. But the real news about Peter McDonald's and Glenn Withers', “Population and Australia’s Future Labour Force,” went entirely unreported. Amazingly, these two veteran population boosters, McDonald the coffin-demographer, (famous for implying the demise of populations not growing explosively), and Withers, the growth-mad economist, state: “…the Australian experience has been that significant environmental degradation and some resource shortages have arisen from the failure to plan adequately for population growth." And, they add that "the absence of government policies to coordinate population growth with energy and the environment [among other considerations] would be a sufficient reason for restricting immigration increases.” The full paragraph and recommendations are below, plus some concluding comments: “… the Australian experience has been that significant environmental degradation and some resource shortages have arisen from the failure to plan adequately for population growth. This stems largely from a failure on the part of governments to acknowledge the reality of population growth, accommodate that and plan ahead in a coordinated way. A ‘headin-the-sand’ approach that pretends that future population growth will be curtailed presents far greater dangers of future environmental degradation than does future growth with adequate planning. Hence, an explicit population/migration policy should be adopted that acknowledges the global environmental issue and gives weight to the argument that greenhouse gas emissions in Australia must be limited. It must also address the infrastructure issues related to congestion in cities, sewerage and waste disposal, and the provision of water and energy. In this respect, good environmental and infrastructure policies are a necessary component of a positive immigration strategy. “RECOMMENDATION: The Federal Government should adopt a forward-looking population policy that incorporates both domestic population growth and migration, acknowledges their impact on Australia’s economic, social and environmental goals, and design population and complementary strategies accordingly. The population policies should include fertility, migration, population distribution and social integration and settlement. Complementary policies should include education and training, infrastructure and housing, and energy and the environment. These need to be effectively coordinated with State and Territory Governments, and their absence would be a sufficient reason for restricting immigration increases.” Don’t hold your breath that this means that the population growth and development lobby or its cheer-leading economists and demographers intend to stop riding jocky on the bulldozers. What we are almost certainly seeing here is a strategy by the development-finance-materials lobbyists, who benefit financially from all that population growth, to get the government to do their damage control. Just as the same crowd blame the government for housing shortages, high land and housing prices, and overall inflation when they successfully lobbied for precisely this situation. Australians are enraged by the undemocratic transformation of every aspect of their landscape, government and society. Does the reader need reminding that a criteria of facism is the close association of governments with big business? Reference:www.assa.edu.au/Publications/OP/op12008.pdf

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Immigration as the quick fix

Tue, 2008-03-11 17:58 by tim

Is Canada's perpetual shortage of skilled labour real, perceived or conjured up for the purposes of creating a glut? In the case of engineers, the latter would certainly seem to be the case. We have been graduating thousands more engineers than needed when considered in the context of the deliberate import of engineers from the rest of the world, mainly developing world. Many are driving taxis, including Canadians, and many Canadian engineers who aren't have left for the United States because the glut has driven down wages here. My nephew graduated from four years of training in marine engineering three years ago. He has spent half the time since working as a non-union construction labourer and the other half in the Coast Guard for about $25 per hour, or as much money as an inexperienced painter. Only now has he secured a tenuous position in the company he was aiming to work for. I was in my local drugstore today telling one pharmacy assistant about Bill Gates' latest scam. The H-1B visa program has allowed him and other technology companies to hire IT workers from India, China and similar locales on a two-three year contract in such numbers as to drive down the wage levels of Americans in the industry. People who are trained to earn $100,000 a year are earning $60,000 a year and many who hit 40 find themselves without a job. One of them, Gene Nelson, who graduated with a Phd in 1979 in computer engineering, is now having to file for personal bankruptcy. But this isn't enough for Gates and his colleagues in the industry. Currently there is a cap on H-1B visas and he wants it raised to the sky. Why? Because there is a "shortage" of skilled labour in the field. If this were the case, which it isn't, that would be easily remedied. Gates and others could create a "longage" of salaries to attract more IT graduates. He himself has admitted that IT salaries have not kept pace with inflation. But instead he has run to Congress demanding changes to H-1B. When he didn't get it, what did he do? He went to Vancouver to announce the creation of a Microsoft plant in Richmond where IT workers from India and China and elsewhere could be hired by the bushel under Canada's "Temporary Workers Visa". Good old Canada, no caps there. Gates can and will hire a surplus of these bargain basement brains----none from Canada no doubt-----for one devious reason. Under the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) these "temporary workers" will simply be able to take a car trip through American Customs and be in Microsoft headquarters in two hours. So much for the H-1B "cap". It was at this point the Pharmacist interjected. Colleen had been working long hours, six days a week, year after year, unassisted in her store. She explained that she had tried many times to find another pharmacist to help her, but no one would reply to her advertisements because pharmacists in Vancouver and across the province were working similar hours to hers. That was because, she said, there was a shortfall of 600 pharmacists nationally and 300 in BC. "How did this come to pass?" I asked. "It began with the tuition freeze imposed by the Provincial BC social-democratic government on colleges and universities in the 1990s." (Presumably emulated by other governments as well). The freeze was a sop thrown to its working class constituency that on the face of it was positive because it made post-secondary education more affordable to lower-income students. However, by depriving the educational institutions of revenue, it forced them to cut back the construction of labs or the acquisition of equipment for training, the number of instructors hired, the number of courses offered and the number of placements available. "The result was fewer students graduated in pharmacology." Colleen pointed out that Ontario and a few other provinces were now trying to close the gap by training more students. It is not simply a matter of making tuition affordable but investing more money in the whole training system. In the meantime though, she said, immigrant pharmacists are a welcome relief. Her attitude was shared by area residents last year when a petition made its rounds to demand that the federal government allow a South African doctor to stay in the country. Doctors are in extremely short supply in the hinterland. Some people simply can't find a General Practitioner. And South African doctors have the reputation of being the very best, even if their bedside manner is brusque. But here is the irony. After the effective public lobby, the doctor won his stay in Canada, and then pulled up stakes and moved to a more urbanized setting. As long as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of movement, how then can immigration ever solve shortages of this kind, when medicare fee structures prevent monetary incentives from being offered to hold personnel.? We are caught in a vicious cycle. Immigrant-driven population growth drives economic growth (eg.demand for housing, construction materials, roads, automobiles etc). And economic growth in turn creates labour shortages, which beg for immigration to fill them because its a quicker, cheaper fix than long-term educational investment. The public, meanwhile, not only demand the quick fix for the very real shortfalls they see, but buy into the mythology that immigration must always be the answer for these chronic problems. And of course, no thought is ever given to the idea of putting our economic and social needs within a framework of ecological sustainability. Along with, "How many pharamicists and doctors do we need to import?" should be questions like, "Should we poach them from developing countries?", and more importantly, "How many immigrants, how many people, can the environment of this country sustain?" Canada is a sugar-addict. Needing energy (skilled labour), we reach for a candy bar (immigration) and wolf it down. Within minutes, we not only feel relief but hyperactivity. But soon the insulin kicks in, and we crash, either into a recession or another severe shortage of labour (sugar). Ingest another candy bar and the cycle continues. Anything to keep the immigration rush going. From 16 million people in 1950 to 33 million people today in 2008. Unless we break this addiction to growth, our health will break. We must stabilize ourselves and shed some demographic weight. We have our work cut out for us. Tim Murray See also Immigration myths demolished by economics journalist

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Immigration myths demolished by economics journalist

Mon, 2008-03-10 01:12 by James Sinnamon

The main justification given for Australia's current record high levels of immigration, that is that solves the Skill shortage has been disputed in a recent article An inconvenient truth about rising immigration by Sydney Morning Herald economics Editor Ross Gittins.

... Clearly, the Government believes high levels of skilled migration will help fill vacancies and thus reduce upward pressure on wages.

That's true as far as it goes. But it overlooks an inconvenient truth: immigration adds more to the demand for labour than to its supply. That's because migrant families add to demand, but only the individuals who work add to supply.

Migrant families need food, clothing, shelter and all the other necessities. They also add to the need for social and economic infrastructure: roads, schools, health care and all the rest.

... So though skilled migration helps reduce upward pressure on wages at a time of widespread labour shortages, immigration's overall effect is to exacerbate our problem that demand is growing faster than supply.

Whilst Gittins has shown up yet another logical flaw in the case for immigration, his own position, or at least the position as represented within this relatively short article, has its own potential logical inconsistencies.

Whether immigration should be used to depress wages, even if Gittins disputes that this is occurring, should be open to question. The picture that pro-immigration economists like to paint is of everyone's wages shooting to the stars unless immigration is ramped up dramatically. In fact, the normal effect in countries such as the US, Canada and the UK is for wages to be depressed although incomplete measures of inflation and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a flawed measure of prosperity, conceal much of this effect. On top of that, the averaging of incomes disguises what is happening at the bottom end of the income spectrum as the income distribution gap widens. In Australia, the resources boom further masks this effect as skilled, semi-skilled and even a few unskilled workers are in a position to obtain higher wages, but these are not spread uniformly across the community and, furthermore, incur considerable ecological cost, and a cost to future generations.

If Gittins is right and the extra demand created by meeting the need in new immigrants overcomes their counter-inflationary effect, it is, nevertheless, clearly unsustainable, that is unless the migrants are bringing with them wealth from the countries they are coming from. Even then, this can't be sustainable in the longer term once that wealth is consumed. All this demonstrates that the economic case against immigration can be problematic, although not anywhere near as problematic as the economic case for immigration.

However, the case against immigration on the grounds of its effects on housing affordability and, more critically, on our environment are far more clear and indisputable. On housing, Gittins writes:

The wonder of it is that, despite the deterioration in affordability, house prices are continuing to rise strongly almost everywhere except Sydney's western suburbs.

Why is this happening? Probably because immigrants are adding to the demand for housing, particularly in the capital cities, where they tend to end up.

They need somewhere to live and, whether they buy or rent, they're helping to tighten demand relative to supply. It's likely that the greater emphasis on skilled immigrants means more of them are capable of outbidding younger locals.

In other words, winding back the immigration program would be an easy way to reduce the upward pressure on house prices.

The role immigration plays in ratcheting up housing costs has been understood by property speculators for years. That is why they openly lobby the Federal Government for higher immigration.

On the environment, Gittins shows that immigration must necessarily add to Australia's Greenhouse gas emissions as most immigrants were coming form countries with lower ecological footprints and lower.

The other great cost only implied in this article, is the sheer destruction of our ecological life support system. The clearing of farmland and bushland for housing and the excessive demands upon our natural resources including fresh water, made necessary by continued population growth threaten to turn this country into a barren desert within decades at most.

Gittins concludes:

... leaving aside the foreigner-fearing prejudices of the great unwashed, the case against immigration is stronger than the rest of us realise - and stronger than it suits any Government to draw attention to.

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Conspiracy of silence and exclusion

Fri, 2008-02-29 14:45 by tim

The Shunning of Immigration Critics by the BBC, ABC and CBC. See also CBC Townhall meeting to be stacked with immigration advocates The Shunning of Immigration Critics by the BBC, ABC and CBC By Tim Murray, director of Immigration Watch Canada Thursday, 28 February 2008 Originally published by Canada Free Press (canadafreepress.com) Is there something endemic in state broadcasting in the Anglophone world which makes the population question taboo and the pro-immigration stance the default position? Is there an intrinsic bias, and if so, where is it coming from? The journalists, the presenters, the researchers, the producers or the higher-ups? Is state media more captive of political correctness than the private media? In attempting to answer some of these questions it is thought useful to first review two fascinating accounts, one about the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC), another about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) and finally a short summary of the disgraceful record of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In "The Treason of the BBC" the late Jack Parsons argued that "The BBC has been systematically excluding virtually all material on the question of basic population policy." This while "our present government has adopted a policy (without discussion or mandate) of deliberately increasing our numbers by about one million every five years," making Britain the fastest growing country in Europe with a population density almost twice that of China. Yet the BBC allowed Beverly Hughes, Minister of Immigration, to "blandly repeat, unchallenged, the government's mindless policy of continued mass immigration to meet the alleged needs of the economy." Much in the same way that Home Secretary Charles Clark was granted a free pass to say that there were 'no obvious limits' to net migration and rapid growth. Parsons asks, "How can BBC claims about the carrying capacity of the prison system and its "overpopulation" be made so openly, so effortlessly, so devoid of fear and moral opprobrium, while not the slightest hint can ever be allowed to slip out vis a vis the vastly more important case of the carrying capacity and numbers of the nation as a whole?" He is not accusing those who run the BBC of criminal activity but "colluding in a very Great Betrayal, fostering the myth that human numbers have so little consequence that there is no need to take them seriously." "The charge I am leveling at all executive levels of the BBC as a corporate body concerns what I am convinced is coercive, institutionalized bias which for years has prevented virtually all BBC news of, and discussion about, a literally vital object, the long-term balance between human numbers, resources and the quality of life.this was not always so, but has been the case for at least 15 years. The signs of population myopia were apparent to Parsons in 1967 when he asked the BBC why it was so concerned about the Tory Canyon oil-tanker spill disaster but so unconcerned about the doubling of the world's population in 30 years. Since the early seventies "a steady and insidious process among governing circles, opinion-formers, the greater bulk of the media, including the BBC, has built a powerful and near universal censorship, by consent that the absolutely fundamental ecology question, the need for a sustainable balance between numbers and resources---is almost totally ignored. The sad corollary of this is that mass migration---since it has a major and obvious impact on the overall population situation---cannot be rationally discussed either." Parsons, in a letter to a BBC Complaints Unit, asks, "Dare one hope that, one of these days, someone in the higher echelons of the BBC will screw his/her courage to the sticking point and actually issue and follow through on a set of instructions that free the BBC---and hence the nation-from this appalling and near-totally disabling taboo." He is given to wonder "Why does this large, wealthy, powerful, highly prestigious institution cringe so abjectly at the very idea of free speech in the realm of discourse?" And why the taboo? "Has there been an explicit but secret directive to all producers to steer clear of the subject? Has this policy been built up by means of nods, winks and frowns on high; or does it stem from tacit acceptance by all concerned at the prevailing orthodoxy in the wider society?" Four things are needed to reform the BBC according to Parsons' prescription. Firstly, there needs to be major change in 'media Zeitgeist' that will permit a Population Glasnost. Secondly, the BBC needs to "stop cowering beneath its cloak of political correctness" and by honest analysis foster the emergence of a mature, ecologically informed electorate. Thirdly, the BBC needs to hire population experts. "Some BBC presenters who have an overweening confidence in their qualifications start laying down the law on those population topics which are allowed a mention, and in the process frequently display their ignorance. They pick up and mindlessly repeat half-baked notions about alleged labour shortages and pension problems, and swallow hook, line and sinker any free-floating opinions about how much better things will continue to become as numbers inexorably swell." Fourthly, it would be nice if the BBC followed its own Producer Guidelines. "Due impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC. All BBC programmes and services should be open-minded, fair and show a respect for truth. No significant strand of thought should go unreflected or unrepresented at the BBC." Until then, however, its Motto will remain that of the Three allegedly Wise Monkeys: See no population problem! Hear no population problem! Speak no population problem! Mark O'Connor, poet and one-time National Vice President of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (AESP, renamed Sustainable Population Australia - SPA), has made a similar assessment of the ABC. In his upcoming book, "Overloading Australia", O'Connor concedes that the ABC is critical to Australian democracy and is able to speak to the people---"and often does". "But the ABC has in some parts of its news and current affairs sections failed to provide objectivity or fairness to portray debates or news coverage relating to population, immigration or economics." It is living the Comfortable Lie-that growth is good and sustainable, and the mass immigration that fuels it must continue. "The fact must be faced. There is something deeply wrong in some parts of it." O'Connor asserts that "issues and news items that require at least occasional coverage have been ignored. These issues certainly have reached the initial attention of those researchers who filter stories up the chain. Thus we are forced to speak of a given ABC program 'suppressing' stories even if many or most of those in a given unit were unaware this was going on. But there certainly is bias." Even if outside observers will never be able to locate its precise source. He offers some examples of this bias. The ABC collaborated with the bipartisan support of high immigration by suppressing most of the debate and repeatedly gave airtime to propagandists who claimed that our 'shamefully low immigration quotas' were 'proof of racism'. The inconvenient fact that Australia had the highest per capita intake of immigrants in the world when these brazen assertions were made was never raised by the corporation to challenge them. And "among its many acts of censorship, ABC TV News suppressed the fact that the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Democrats had long been calling for zero net migration. Yet as soon as the One Nation party announce a zero net migration policy, the ABC cited it as "racism". O'Connor speculates as to why the ABC behaves in this manner. "The ABC's failure through nearly three decades to deal with population issues-the most important matter facing Australia today--- may have less to do with individuals than with a pervasive institutional culture." Nevertheless, "if there are such persons blocking the debate, then it is assuredly time they were persuaded to move on to other areas where their biases will do less harm." He concludes, "The ABC has a problem with its news service and current affairs programs. It may not be able to rectify past unfairness, but it needs urgently to offer guarantees that the censorship will cease, and that at least in future those who disagree with high immigration or with 'birth-bribes' will receive equal time on its programs." New 'balance and accountability' guidelines announced by management in October of 2006 "will not address ABC News' pro-growth, pro-natalist, pro-conventional economic views." Can what has so far been said of the BBC and the ABC be said of the CBC as well? In one word, yes, and more. While some regional centres have attempted to bring more balance to immigration issues, CBC Radio, the National centre in Toronto and the Vancouver centre have emphatically not. The corporation has refused to engage the public on the two questions that they keep asking: Why is the government importing more people per capita than any other country than the world and what effect is this infux, which gives us the highest growth rate of any G8 nation, having on our economic, cultural and environmental health? Timidity and cowardice are not the exclusive province of CBC journalists, but only private media outlets have on occasion exposed abuses of the immigration system and questioned the country's high immigration intake. The CBC, on the other hand, has done what it can to promote mass immigration on the basis of its misinterpretation of its 1991 legislated mandate to promote "multiculturalism". Somehow there is an equation in corporate logic of the stated "CBC Vision" to reflect "the cultural diversity of our people" with support for mass immigration. But apparently the promotion of a diversity of cultures is quite different than the promotion of a diversity of opinions. Those very many Canadians who voice negative concerns about immigration are simply denied airtime by the people they subsidize. It is indeed an impertinent supplicant who holds out one hand to ask for public funding while clenching the other in a fist to drive into the mouth of the taxpayer who dares to challenge the corporate line on immigration. And yet, the CBC allows generous airtime and interviews with pro-immigration groups, so that they may in turn, as a quid pro quo, advertise for the non-commercial CBC. So to partiality and deceit one can therefore add corruption to the list of CBC immigration vices. So what then is the remedy? Suffice it to say that the CBC's commitment to mass immigration and multiculturalism comes at the cost of balanced, honest journalism. Immigration Watch Canada demands that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage should order the CBC executive to answer for this conflict of interest and to terminate the corporation's corrupt arrangements with the immigration industry, its blatant pro-immigration advocacy and the employment of people who engage in it. Such measures would seek not to curb journalistic freedom, but journalistic abuse. And return public broadcasting to the public. Then once again, the National Broadcaster would offer a forum where indeed "no significant strand of thought should go unreflected or unrepresented" and the exclusion of topics or the shunning of voices would be thought foreign to its corporate culture and democratic mission. It's time to end the conspiracy of silence against critiques of immigration and population growth.

immigration

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#UnpublishedLetter" id="UnpublishedLetter">Appendix: unpublished letter to Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper

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Sustainable Population Australia media release, 17 May 2008

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Canada is not for sale

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Sierra Club Ignores the Smoke of Rampant Growth

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Optimum Population Trust

News Release- April 1 2008

Peers’ immigration report “forgets environment”

"Free Tibet"? Of course. But equally important, free Canada.

Immigration is a major issue in Tibet and Canada

Tibet and Canada have been economically exploited

Attention please

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