Immigration is no solution to an ageing population

Áine Ní Chonaill, spokesperson for the Irish immigration reduction organisation Immigration Control Platform, debunks one of the more popular myths about immigration:

Immigrants are no fix for an aging society

The Irish Times
10 August 2004

One of the great myths regarding immigration is that the aging profile of Europe will require large-scale immigration if the dependency ratio is not to become a big problem.

An excellent book, Do We Need Mass Immigration?, by Anthony Browne (published by Civitas, £6.00), deals, one by one, with the arguments of mass immigrationists and what he has to say on this point is of particular interest. The idea is known as “replacement immigration” and is more and more put forward as an unquestionable scientific law by pundits and by media.

Browne said this is “one of the most widespread and comforting self-delusions since humanity believed the sun went round the earth”. It is, he said, refuted by elementary demographics: immigrants are no fix for an ageing society because they age too.

The idea has been discredited by every authority that has looked at it – from the UN, to the Council of Europe, the European Commission, the UK Government Immigration Advisory Service the Home Office, and the OECD.

Browne quotes from a Home Office report of 2001. “The impact of immigration in mitigating population aging is widely acknowledged to be small because immigrants also age. For a substantial effect, net inflows of migrants would not only need to occur on an annual basis, but would have to rise continuously. Despite these and other findings, debate about the link between changing demography and a migration ‘fix’ refuses to go away.”

The Council of Europe in a 2000 report argued: “Migration flows cannot in future be used to reverse trends in population ageing and decline in most Council of Europe countries. The flows required would be too large and it would be impossible to integrate them into the economy and society.”

Even the UN report, Replacement Migration: Is It A Solution to Declining and Ageing Population?, often cited as proving the case for replacement migration, actually came to the completely opposite conclusion. The authors concluded that the scale of migration needed to change the demographic profile of a whole country is so large as to be “out of reach”. For example, to combat the effect of aging population in South Korea (a very rapidly aging society) almost the entire population of the earth would have to move there by 2050.

Key is the “dependency ratio”, which the UN defines as the ratio between the number of people of working age compared to the number of pensioners. Currently this is 4.09:1 in the UK and in the absence of immigration, changes in fertility and retirement age, is forecast to decline to 2.5:1 by 2050. So “bring in young people”, say the pundits.

But, the UK government actuary in a report (2001) said: “The single reason why even large constant net migration flows would not prevent support ratios from falling in the long term is that migrants grow old as well! Although a steady large inflow of young migrants would continue to boost the working-age population, before long it would start adding to the retirement-age population, and a four-to-one (say) potential support ratio could not be maintained.”

The UN calculates that to keep the UK ratio at 4.09:1 Britain would need 60 million immigrants by 2050, bringing the population to 136 Million. To continue the strategy another 130 million immigrants would be needed by 2100, doubling to about a quarter of a billion.

The scale of immigration needed to avoid adapting to an aging society is extraordinary, as the table shows; what it doesn’t show is that it is exponential and never reaches a plateau, it just keeps on growing. The US and Japan would need half a billion immigrants each, but even they would face the same problem.

The UK government actuary reached the same conclusion (2001). “Immigration policies should be governed by political and humanitarian objectives, and not by demographic considerations,” he argued.

Browne also said that the dependency ratio as defined by the UN is too narrow. The ratio, taking more factors into account, gives, said the UK actuary, a more benign picture.

It is a mistake, said Browne, to think in terms of “solving” an ageing society. An ageing society is the logically inevitable consequences of increasing life expectancies and stabilising populations. “An ageing society is not something we can escape, but it is something we can adjust to,” he said.

Finally, Browne said there is no need to fear that an ageing society will mean unbearable healthcare costs. In fact, studies on the subject show that the impact of an ageing society on health spending will be relatively small. This is because the effect of increasing life expectancy is not so much to increase healthcare costs as to postpone them.

The Wanless Report for the British Treasury said: “Demographic changes have had less of an impact on health spending than many people tend to think. There is a widening body of evidence which shows that proximity to death has a larger impact on healthcare costs than age.” It is therefore possible that the effect of an aging population will be to postpone rather than to increase health service costs.

Áine Ní Chonaill is PRO of the Immigration Control Platform.

Source

A 1999 Australian parliamentary research paper, entitled "Population Futures for Australia: the Policy Alternatives", also reached a similar finding. It found that in order to maintain the proportion of the population aged 65 and over at present levels, "enormous numbers of immigrants would be required, starting in 1998 at 200 000 per annum, rising to 4 million per annum by 2048 and to 30 million per annum by 2098. By the end of next century with these levels of immigration, our population would have reached almost one billion."

The paper concluded:

"It is demographic nonsense to believe that immigration can help to keep our population young. No reasonable population policy can keep our population young."

Pity our politicians still haven't got the message.

High immigration to continue despite rising unemployment

From The Australian:

AUSTRALIA'S record high migrant intakes look likely to continue, with Immigration Minister Chris Evans indicating the global financial crisis would result in only modest cuts to next year's program.

As the fallout from the economic crisis continues to spread, Senator Evans is understood to be sympathetic to fears by business groups that drastic cuts could ruin Australia's image in the global skills marketplace.

The West Australian senator said a small cut to the skilled migrant quota was still "more likely than not", but business groups have been lobbying him to hold his nerve in the face of a deteriorating economy.

"What business has been very clear about is that you shouldn't overreact," Senator Evans said.

"It is a global market, so your reputation and your brand is quite important.

"So certainly a lot of the advice is: don't ruin the brand by knee-jerk reactions, because we're going to be wanting to recruit in these areas, if not this year, then the year after."

Australia's immigration program is at an all-time high following an increase of 31,000 permanent migrants, announced in May.

The increase brought the total number of skilled migrants to 133,500, plus 56,500 family reunion places and 13,500 humanitarian visas.

Overall, Australia is taking more than 200,000 new immigrants a year. The largest jump in permanent settlers occurred under the Howard government.

In 1995-96, the year Mr Howard won government, about 99,000 people settled permanently in Australia. By 2007-08, that number had increased to 150,000.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Peter Anderson cautioned against bowing to growing calls by the union movement to cut the skilled migration program, including the 457 temporary skilled migration program.

"A downturn of 1-2 per cent is not a proper basis for recalibrating a skilled migration program," Mr Anderson told The Australian.

"It needs to be looked at in the context of emerging gaps in labour market demand. Our caution to the Government is not to jump at shadows or look solely at the macro data."

Mr Anderson said the consequences of a cut would be to place a drag on the productive capacity of the economy at a time when it was most needed.

He said sudden oscillations in the migrant program could damage Australia's reputation as a migrant-friendly country.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said the lead time with assimilating migrants into the economy was years, not months, meaning impulsive cuts to the quota might not be felt until well after the present crisis had passed.

She said the longer-term outlook for the Australian economy - with an ageing population and a generation of Baby Boomers set to retire - was that migrants would be required en masse.

"We'd be disappointed if there was anything other than a shallow cut," Ms Ridout said. "A deep cut would be about politics, not about policy."

Senator Evans indicated he was alive to the political challenges of assimilating large numbers of migrants at a time of rising unemployment.

"There's no doubt in my view that there's a strong link between the economic cycle and people's attitude towards immigration," he said.

"That's something politicians have to be sensitive to."

Original article

"... drastic cuts could ruin Australia's image in the global skills marketplace."

The "global skills marketplace" is a myth - it doesn't exist. Australia is not competing in some sort of global scramble for skilled immigrants. Only Australia and a handful of other Anglosphere countries accept permanent economic immigrants. The rest of the world realised some time ago that immigration was neither necessary nor desirable. It certainly does not make the receiving country any wealthier. If immigration really was the key to economic prosperity, as the open-borders brigade claim it is, then countries such as Switzerland, Norway, Finland and Japan would all be basket cases.

Moreover, the argument that Australia needs to attract immigrants is absurd. The blunt truth is that immigrants from the Third World will flood into any industrialised country which is foolish enough to open its doors. In a world where billions of people would like to migrate into the industrialised West, Australia does not need to worry about its "image in the global skills marketplace."


"It is a global market, so your reputation and your brand is quite important."

Notice how Senator Evans refers to Australia as if it were a company, a mere money-making enterprise, not a nation in the traditional sense.

When Senator Evans talks about marketing Australia's "brand", he is essentially talking about marketing Australian citizenship to foreigners. Whether or not Australians are happy with membership of their national community being treated like a commodity is never taken into consideration.

Not that the opinions or interests of the majority of Australians ever mattered. Senator Evans admits this by limiting the immigration stakeholders, the groups the government consults when formulating immigration policies, to self-interested business groups. The minister doesn't even pretend to care about the interests of the wider Australian community.


"She said the longer-term outlook for the Australian economy - with an ageing population and a generation of Baby Boomers set to retire - was that migrants would be required en masse."

Needless to say, this is absolute rot. It is exactly the kind of specious nonsense we have come to expect from the pro-immigration crowd.

As a 1999 parliamentary research paper stated: "It is demographic nonsense to believe that immigration can help to keep our population young. No reasonable population policy can keep our population young."

More:

... immigration cannot 'solve our ageing problem'. Substantial ageing of the Australian population over the coming decades is absolutely inevitable. To illustrate the lack of power that immigration has in relation to our age structure, we investigate the levels of immigration that would be required to maintain the proportion of the population aged 65 and over at its present level of 12.2 per cent. In doing this, we maintain the fertility and mortality assumptions of the standard but allow annual net migration to change.

To achieve our aim, enormous numbers of immigrants would be required, starting in 1998 at 200 000 per annum, rising to 4 million per annum by 2048 and to 30 million per annum by 2098. By the end of next century with these levels of immigration, our population would have reached almost one billion. ... it is important that the message is heard that our population cannot be kept young through immigration. The problem is that immigrants, like the rest of the population, get older and as they do, to keep the population young, we would need an increasingly higher number of immigrants.

Senator Evans says he is cognisant of the problems associated with absorbing large numbers of immigrants during a period of growing unemployment. Great. So why doesn't he do something about it?

Why doesn't the Rudd Labor Government follow the lead of other countries and reduce immigration?