All the World’s a Migrant Utopia, by Nicholas Farrell. He starts off with the left and some scammers:
The little town of Riace in Calabria on the toe of Italy has been eulogized by the global left for quite some years now as the perfect solution to what it calls the “refugee crisis” in Europe and everyone else calls the “illegal migrant crisis.”
If only every town in Europe followed the example of Riace — they say — there would be no migrant crisis.
In 2016, Riace’s left-wing mayor, Domenico Lucano, who is the driving force behind the utopia, was even named as one of Fortune’s 50 most important world figures. …
But then, in October of this year, 60-year-old Lucano was arrested after a lengthy inquiry begun in 2017 by the Guardia di Finanza, which accuses him of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. He and 30 other people, including his “partner,” Tesfahun Lemlem, are under formal investigation for the alleged misuse of the taxpayer millions required to keep his multicultural migrant utopia going. He is also accused, among other things, of arranging fake marriages between migrant women and local men. …
The government money behind the propaganda:
Since 2013, 750,000 migrants have arrived by sea in Italy from across the Mediterranean, nearly all from Libya. They masquerade as refugees, but even the United Nations concedes that most are not, and just ten percent are granted refugee status. However, few are deported. …
The Italian government pays €35 ($40) of taxpayer money per day per migrant to those who run welcome centers for migrants [A$ 20,000 per migrant per year]. It is big business — and nationally costs the taxpayer €5 billion each year. …
It is the perfect propaganda image: a beautiful old dying medieval Italian village above the Mediterranean brought back to life by young migrants from Africa. …
The migrants themselves work as potters, dress-makers, glass-blowers, and all those sorts of things hippies used to do in the 1970’s. They also run the old town’s door-to-door trash-collection service, which comprises two carts drawn by donkeys.
But there is another problem. What is the point of Riace?
If the point is to provide asylum-seekers with a comfortable situation in which they can be potters and glass-blowers while their asylum applications are being processed (which can take years), well, OK — up to a point.
But that is not the point, is it?
The point is to convince the world that Italy and Europe should allow all these migrants to stay forever, whether or not they are genuine refugees. …
“Dying Riace is a metaphor for a dying country and a dying continent. We must set up thousands of Riaces in Italy and Europe.” …
The real problem:
In a sense those who support mass immigration are right.
We need migrants, or else our populations will die out, and with them our economic prosperity and our civilization. Or so most economists keep telling us.
But migration will mean the death of our civilization, if not of our economies. …
The global population is growing at a terrifying rate. It shot up from one billion in 1900 to seven billion in 2000, and is projected to reach eleven billion by 2100. …
Yet Africa produces less than three percent of global GDP.
But here is the truth, however cruel and unpalatable. The moral argument against illegal mass immigration cannot be won.
Every illegal migrant has a story to tell about the terrible life he (most are men) had in his country of origin and the journey across the Sahara and the time in Libya waiting for a boat. It does not win the argument to say that these people are “bad” or “lazy” or “incompetent” or “spongers.” …
Nor does it win the argument to say we should help them in their own countries. We know that we can never give enough help, and what help we do give will be pocketed by local tyrants.
The only way to stop mass immigration is to confront the issue as a question not of sympathy but of self-interest. Otherwise, they will nearly all get in. …
The only way to stop it will be with arguments of self-interest—existential self-interest.
It boils down to compassion versus survival. On current trends and projections, Africa will just keep on producing more people:
When is this ever going to be discussed in the media? All we hear from them are endless compassion stories. The media give us positive stories about third-world immigration in abundance, but negative stories only when they cannot be swept under the carpet.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
