It has to be acknowledged that Trump might win the US Presidential election.
Or that he might win the civil war if he does not do so.
If that is the case, he has a number of truly frightening policies. One of them is on migrants. As the Guardian notes today:
Raids and mass deportations lie at the heart of the former president's second-term vision – a web of policies so vast that critics say their collective implementation would challenge the very ideal of the United States as a nation of immigrants.
His aim is to deport maybe 11 million migrants into the US who are undocumented. The plan, which will supposedly start in January if he gets in, will involve placement in mass deportation camps first of all. Children of these migrants, who would have a legal right to stay in the US, will, of course, go with them.
Ignore for a moment the complete inhumanity of this.
Ignore the obvious and shocking symbolism of putting people in camps en masse before moving them.
Ignore, too, the mass disruption to lives, communities, and those who remain, but on whom pressure will be brought to bear, often by intimidation and threat.
Ignore too the wreckage of the US economy that this will leave behind.
Instead, think about the risk that 2025 will begin the era of mass world migration.
From the US.
From Lebanon.
From Gaza.
And, of course, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
And this is before climate migration begins.
How do we cope with this?
What does this mean for us?
How will we react?
Where will these people go?
What are the answers?
I do not know. But I do know it is time to start asking the questions because they will have to be answered. Fascists are forcing us to address this issue. How we react will define the state that we are.
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Dinner last night with two Commission economists. They noted that population dynamics/demographics in the EU mean that without migration the EU is stuffed – ageing population etc. They also noted that the sensitivity of the population with respect to immigrants – masks the feeling of powerlessness – people feel they have no control over politics/politicos & the “too many immigrants” is a reaction (albeit with the meeja playing its usual role of deforming the debate – rather than informing it). This leaves space for populists.
Within the EU institutions, a view is forming that the election of Trump will force the EU into reforms that it has put off for far too long – industrially, financially, politically and, finally, militarily.
Without an increased birth rate the EU is stuffed.
Increased migration, or migration at it’s current rate, will destroy it just as surely as demographics. Are you blind to the fact that there is no EU without Europeans, European culture and values?
Why is migration the only solution and not increasing birth rate, which is obviously the actual solution?
Oh wow. This is stupidity of the highest order.
First, how are you (a man) going to tell women to have more chidlren?
Second, have you not noticed there is no European culture – there are vast numbers of cultures?
Don’t bother answering: you’re blocked. Racists are not welcome here.
Alistair
Whilst I agree that there is much economic capacity could be provided if we had not gone into austerity and invested in the people we had from 2010 (making educating the workforce and school leavers almost impossible – every secondary school in my area closed down their vocational training facilities and mothballed them because of no funding) and left the EU (dis-enabling workers to migrate and fill skills shortages in our economy), the simple fact of the matter is that you response does not work – unless you believe in child labour that is – British born infants maybe – working on shop floors? You are talking about shortening the child raising period are you not?
You response therefore is a bit silly, never mind offensive. But, it has to be said that our policies on immigration have also been wantonly silly as well, and also BREXIT, so I am not surprised that we are no longer able to differentiate right from wrong anymore on these matters.
This is a very silly country that you and I live in. Accept it and start again from scratch.
As for increasing migration into the UK and industrialised Europe, this is basically seen as importing labour to meet GDP growth demands.
GDP growth cannot endure for more than the short term.
It is very much post-imperial thinking, seeing immigrants merely as an economic input.
This is a false premise.
The global economy will inevitably fracture under environmental and geopolitical pressures whether neocons like it or not.
The real short term issue is to increase the productivity of existing workforces such that tax receipts can cover the additional social and healthcare costs of a 25yr bulge in older age group, and otherwise develop adaptation strategies.
The knock on effect of productivity increases is stable or reduced labour demand in the productive economy.
This will then increase the % economically inactive of working age from 23% upwards.
However, the current provisions for active work for the less able; those with mental health issues; and folks with mobility impairments are already pisspoor, and unlikely to improve with current government policies and continued underinvestment.
This then means the entire structure of employment needs to adapt, but with restoring full employment as its goal. This was Keynes’ main yardstick and is integral to MMT.
Yet manipulating unemployment is the key tool for neoliberalism.
That a UBI is now seen as desirable by 60%+ in a recent survey, suggests that this development is very much on the cards in the next decade or so.
Immigrants into the developed world tend to take on the over consumptive lifestyles and energy consumption per capita of their new host nations.
This is already well known to be entirely unsustainable.
Ever increasing populations in over consuming industrialised nations is an extremely foolish prospect.
They need to cope with slowly declining populations, as Japan is already doing,
(and South Korea and Singapore are about to…)
Might get away with it for a generation, but that is all, as GDP growth cannot continue in its current form, and total energy consumption simply has to fall substantially to get anywhere near net zero.
This week’s ‘State of Climate’ report that 3.1ºC is the best estimate for reaching net zero by 2100 with current rates of progress is an utterly catastrophic prospect.
Only idiots and economists will continue to plan for conventional GDP growth and the associated continued population growth to create new workers and new consumers in the developed world when are already at 1.71 resource overshoot.
Yes, the complete failure to recognise the role of the developed world in creating migration.
If we hadnt gone into Iraq and Afghanistan and didnt act as facilitators for the worlds dictators then there would not be as many refugees.
Simples
Not quite that simple. Our involvement is a factor.
But we have lots of refugees from Africa fleeing local dictators.
We have Iranians who see no future for them under the present regime. Even from Mayanma and Bangladesh.
The US has contributed to the exodus from central America and Venezuela but local factors are more important. and of course
Iraq I can agree.
Syria’s civil war has been widened by Saudi Arabia and Russia as well as some Western action.
In Afghanistan a local Communist govt provoked an uprising which drew in the Soviets. The US then supplied arms but the Pakistani govt took control of their distribution. Rich Saudis like Bin Laden supplied money and volunteers. Wahhabi teaching, well funded by oil, has had an effect on a number of countries.
And of course Ukraine
It will need an unprecedented level of international cooperation.
It will need a determined effort to mitigate climate change.
It will need a re-sign of international credit and banking. The developing world has to pay huge sums in interest instead of the wealth being invested locally.
It will need a huge investment in infrastructure.
Environmental protection of e.g. the Amazon rain forest, the oceans, etc cannot just be a nice extra. It is a necessity.
It will need a just end to conflict in Ukraine, Lebanon and Palestine, in Syria. Nations will have to abdie by international law.
It will need women’s status is enhanced across the world. All children will need to be educated. And so on.
Are these possible?
They are all possible. What we need is the recognition of the scale of the problem, a determination to address it together and a lot of hard work.
It can be done. It has to be done.
My view is that it will not be done.
All we are going to get is displacement, which will be cruel. And then maybe an unwritten, undeclared divvying up of the displaced done piecemeal.
Why?
Because of increasing Fascism due to NEVER decreasing Neo-liberalism. The Fascism will make an argument like Portres’ untenable to politicians because their voters will know about it.
And there will not be enough money for decent welcome and naturalizing process either – the incomers will be just dumped here and there and left to get on with it.
you might be right but it is not inevitable. We have to hope for the sake of children and later generations.
Jonathan Portes from Kings College London, had this really excellent summing up in the Guardian, of the paths the UK might/could take in the future in immigration policy (much the same could be said of the USA and other western countries). It is an excellent article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/sep/02/the-big-idea-why-were-getting-the-immigration-debate-all-wrong
I rarely agree with Jonathan Portes, (and vice versa, as he opposes MMT without showing the slightest understanding of it) but I do on this.
Indeed, Portes seems in this instance to be talking a lot of sense.
Paul Collier’s book Exodus examines some of the dynamics of migration and also makes useful comments on the issue of integration. He seems to suggest that too high a rate of immigration (of a particular ethnic/cultural group) can lead to ghetto living and lack of integration – if there’s already a large resident subgroup of the host country’s population, that’s differentiated and retains origin country culture, language etc, into which new arrivals are absorbed, rather than assimilating into the indigenous host culture. Undoubtedly, actual proactive programmes (language, culture etc) for arrivals can help to mitigate this. (And not to suggest that everyone should become totally ‘homogenised’ either! Over a century, a few generations or more, maybe? After all, who are ‘the English’, especially, in these islands?!)
I wonder if immigrants have guns, it could get messy.
Only American ones escaping if Trump gets in…………………….
Forced migrations are already all around us, and are a constant.
In the last decade or so we’ve had Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Eritrea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq.
In 2015 alone more than a million refugees, most of them Syrian, arrived in Germany.
And 4.9m or so had moved out of Ukraine by 2023, (but not economically or militarily active males, forbidden to leave), to various host nations.
There have been climate change forced migrations for at least the last ten years from the Sahel, and we’re shortly to add Mediterranean climate areas like Greece, Southern Spain and Southern Italy to that climate belt.
In those Asian river basins subject to increased flooding, we are already seeing major migrations.
However, much of this movement is passing unnoticed because people are moving seasonally, locally and regionally, rather than internationally, and then trying to resettle their former flooded home areas whenever possible.
One of Ravenstein’s laws of migration is that people will first try to move the shortest distance possible, and certainly within cultural boundaries. This is verifiably the case.
If Trump promotes another mass migration, then he has to make that happen.
Where are these people going to go ?
Neighbouring countries like Mexico have every right to refuse to take vast numbers of undocumented migrants.
Who is going to do all the jobs they undertake in the very large American black economy ?
The logistics of moving millions of people is easy as any other election lie, but the Tories spent £500m+ without managing to send anyone to Rwanda.
The practicalities are much more difficult.
People have migrated for millennia due to climate change and other unpredictable events. And there’s often a knock on effect with populations being displaced by incomers and themselves moving and displacing others or assimilating.
This time it will be on a much greater scale. Unfortunately not a single UK or European politician has addressed this and considered how to cope with the movement of millions, perhaps tens or hundreds of millions and although like most refugees the nearest (relatively) safe haven will be the first destination there will be many coming here, perhaps even from parts of Europe that are too hot.
But the whole issue of climate change mitigation has been kicked into the long grass so no point in thinking about mass movements of people.