Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "the fracturing of politics around immigration" video.
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Now that we have reasonably reliable records on demographics, we have learned that there is a simple equation that never fails: The nations with a young and growing population will succeed as economic blocks. Those with large ageing populations face economic ruin. China has slowly come to recognise this, but has been able to slow their crisis using their one and only advantage, state control over generations.
The fear mongering around, “illegal immigration,” seems to me to be just one more attempt by Britain’s hard right to, “Americanise,” our politics and turn migration into a hot button issue. Yet the fact is that we actually NEED to grow our population and we should be admitting as many young families as possible.
If I were to be ruthless about it, in the interests of simply growing our nation’s power and economic influence on the globe, I would push for only one level of, “discrimination,” and incentivise the young adult populations of other lands to migrate to us, favouring them over anyone aged 50 or above. I am 56 btw, so I am speaking from a merely logical point of view, without compassion.
The incentives should be sweetened for 20 somethings, especially those with children.
While they seem to have forgotten it now, this has been the very model that America’s enormous economic success was built upon. We should be welcoming refugees and providing work permits to as many young families as possible, so the country can benefit from their economic activity and taxable incomes.
The utter bogusness of the Tories, attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator by inspiring panic, literally results in self harm as far as the country is concerned.
It also prevents us from building a coherent system of the type we will need in the near future, when there actually is a genuine crisis of being overwhelmed, in the wake of a war or natural disaster. But currently, we are literally being offered one of the most precious resources and refusing it. Not just refusing it, but viciously rejecting it. The resource of humanity is incalculable. That’s just hard science.
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@ConradAinger : I was speaking of the industrially advanced nations in which war, famine and pandemics are not common and do not happen at all on their native soil (for the most part). The countries of the whole continent of Africa are not susceptible to the same analysis, largely because their development was arrested and exploited by empires well into the late 20th century. And these days they are still being exploited by empire builders, but in a more deliberately hidden and perverted fashion. China and Russia are the main culprits in that regard, but far from the only ones.
Or, to put it more simply; countries in which war, famine and epidemics are still a regular occurrence, while the vested interests of large oil, mineral and nuclear companies work hand in glove for the governments of their respective nations, (toppling a dictatorship or a democracy here, replacing it with a more cooperative dictatorship or democracy there) still have a direct influence in the outcomes of these wars and disputes, the same measuring stick does not apply.
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