An opinion on demographics, media distortion and integration

Tony.

My thoughts on your views:

Firstly, the question of birth rate and your quoting “ Last year in England and wales 25% of all births were to immigrant mothers. “

I’m not disputing the figure, it was the basis for much, in my opinion, exaggerated media attention and the book “ Eurabia ” by Bat Ye’or and the now debunked, oft publicised video “Muslim demographics “,  which claimed Muslim birthrates as something like eight times that of indigenous populations in Europe, are contributing to the misconceptions.

The actual figure, however, and its implications are not quite what the popular press would have us believe. At present, according to the ONS, the birth rates of immigrant mothers are equivalent to a family size of 2.5 children compared with 1.85 to native born women (which includes UK-born members of ethnic minority groups), and apparently 40% of those immigrant mothers were from EU Eastern European countries; mainly Poland. The birthrate in Poland is lower than that of the UK, by the way.

Many demographer agree that fertility trends of many groups of foreign-born women tend to converge with the average of indigenous populations of the host country, due mainly to higher standards of living, education, and other social and economic factors. This certainly seems to be the case from the sources I remember reading a couple of years ago when this topic appeared on this site. It is difficult to research but you have to bypass the Google results from the tabloid press and the BNP! If you are interested, this is an article which, although not authoritative, gives useful links for more information. Link here. You may also be interested in this article about the birth rate in Israel,from The Jewish Daily. The birth rate for utra-Orthodox Jews is higher than that of Muslims living in Israel.

Secondly, I don’t believe the UK or Europe are heading for the sort of bloody confrontation you imagine, although I do think the media and the so called far right by promulgating this type of hysteria may be helping to bring this about. I don’t agree with your term “invasion”; the last government let them in! The influx of immigrants during this period were not middle class professionals, but largely unskilled workers from rural areas.

No one is denying that unchecked immigration puts enormous strain on the infrastructure of our urban areas, but integration seems to me to be not so much a question of religious differences but the fact that these immigrants, Muslims or not, are from non industrialised, rural areas, largely unskilled and economically disadvantaged. Muslim immigration to the UK and probably other parts of Europe started some time in the Nineteenth century but the immigrants in the 1950-1970 era were mainly skilled or professional, well-educated and not defined by their religion, nor were they tarred with the brush of Islamic extremism.

I agree that illegal immigrants and those who commit crimes here should be deported, but this unfortunately seems to be thwarted at the moment by Human Rights Legislation. Now as you admit there are problems with forced repatriation, not least is that is featured highly in the BNP agenda, and though immigration was one of the concerns of the electorate according to the media, BNP support at the last election was almost non-existent!

Now as to the solution, apart from the obvious, to restrict immigration, other than from EU countries, which remains a problem, we should perhaps look to this solution, outlined in this article here. I have no idea if this is a realistic assessment of the situation in Marseilles, but it is interesting to note that the Muslim community is not recent, indeed long established, and although there are problems, it seems so far to be working

A little rushed, but my opinions as promised. The articles to which I  have provided links are just opinion, not factual references, and should be read as such.