An immigration rate of about half a per cent a year as we presently have in Britain, sounds innocuous. I certainly thought so. Thus people who object to it are sometimes branded as ‘racists’ or worse by ‘liberals’. But liberals generally don’t understand that half a per cent a year is the equivalent of 3 British mothers out of 4 raising an extra child. So it is dramatic. Even as a very experienced user and teacher of maths myself, I was very surprised indeed when I worked this out last year (2019). Indeed I was so shocked I refused to believe it for weeks until I had re-done the calculation in several independent ways. But it seems there can be no doubt about it.
How could a small percentage lead to apocalyptic growth? Mainly because immigrants arrive every year whilst births and deaths are lifetime events, and Life-expectancy in Europe today is about 80 years. So you have to multiply yearly immigration rates by 80 to appreciate the real scale of it. Then again, only the female half of the existing population breeds, while immigrants come in in both sexes. So that’s another multiplying factor of 2. Now we can begin to see why the current figure of roughly 300,000 immigrants/year is equivalent to 160 times that amount in a lifetime, or 48 Million. It is indeed equivalent to 3 British mothers out of 4 having an extra child. [Alternatively note that the immigration rate is about half the annual birth rate; that should make one think — indeed that’s what started me calculating.]
I don’t think any of us can have a fruitful. discussion of immigration (or population control in general, which was my initial interest) unless we understand the scale of it. There is no avoiding the conclusion that at anything like its present level immigration will swamp Britain. That’s not racism, that is simple algebra. Alas very few of our governing or media elite are numerate enough to comprehend the scale of the problem while residents in certain areas know only too well they are being swamped, or have been already.
I discuss Population and Immigration as impersonally as I can in my recent book History of the Brits (from a scientists point of view), Amazon 2020. It is described elsewhere on this site under ‘My Books’ Category Here is the summary at the end of Chapter 16, which deals only with the numbers:
“Any discussion of population and immigration which doesn’t take numbers into account is worthless. Who sensible would argue that all or any immigration is either wholly good or wholly bad – surely it is a question of how much; and that takes some calculating:
We have found that:
- Indigenous Brits have largely descended from a few hundred hunter-gatherers who were stranded here when Doggerland was inundated around 6500 BC. There is thus no way Brits can argue that they are especially talented people who got here because of, for instance, their seafaring enterprise. The silly buggers were simply cut off. Lucky devils!
- Subsequent invasions must have been more of ideas than people. Ideas can obviously fly.
- The indigenous British population is approximately 400 generations old.
- So as to make up for occasional setbacks such as plagues and droughts all animal populations must be able to grow exponentially. Such is the nature of exponential growth however that minute rates of growth or decline can lead eventually to apocalyptic changes in population. We all need an intuitive grasp of this vital process. [See Box]
- Many debates about immigration policy are confused, and have led to shouting matches, because educated but innumerate people have confounded immigration rates with population numbers and so have dramatically underestimated the long term effects of immigration. To compare a rate with a number one must first multiply the rate by twice the life expectancy of the existing population – 160 years in Britain. Thus the current rate of roughly 300,000 immigrants a year corresponds to a total number of 48 million migrants! This dramatic multiplier, which was by no means obvious, needs most careful thought – and acknowledgement.
NB The vital Intergenerational Population Multiplier is:
X= (b+B)/2 where b is the average number of children per mother (close to 2.0) while B=2IT/P where I is the net annual immigration rate (about 300,000 at present), T the average life expectancy (about 80 years), and P the existing population (about 67 Million in 2020). If you work it out B comes to about 0.75 extra babies per mother — as claimed above.
(The 2 in B arises because only the female half of the indigenous population breeds so the fair ratio of immigration to breeding has to be I/(P/2) = 2I/P while the T converts a rate into a number.)
Furthermore:
Britons are comparatively wealthy; immigrants are comparatively poor – which is mostly why they come. Thus, immigration must necessarily drain the per capita accumulated wealth of a host country. People don’t talk about this. Thus the present immigration rate is halving the UK’s annual accumulation of wealth – which is a very slow process.[Note 3]. Thus each immigrant costs the UK roughly a million pounds, but for some reason people never talk about that This is already showing up in the present housing crisis – the canary in the mine.
The great news is that we can, if we want to, reduce our present population to a sustainable level (less than 20 million?) in only two generations without any need for draconian restrictions such as a One Child policy, provided we now halt immigration almost entirely. Because of the aforesaid 160, small numbers of immigrants arriving per year are , in this context, equivalent to large numbers of extra babies. Every citizen should understand that. It is not obvious, but it is absolutely spinal!
But the point of this post is simply to help anyone interested in these subjects to understand the Maths, and if possible to check it. To that end I have written a short algebraic essay which you can click on at:
https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/immigmaths-copy.pdf
Tags: baducation, environment, Immigration, numeracy, population
Leave a Reply