As syndicated columnist Mark Steyn has been noting (with some degree of excessive alarmism), the study of demographics can provide some insight into the future.
The birth rates of natural-born citizens in the United States and Western Europe have fallen below the replacement level of 2.1. (The reasons are debatable, but they most likely include increased access to education, higher standards of living, loss of religious belief, and more attention to womens' rights.) The populations of those countries would be declining if it were not for immigration. In other words, countries like France and Spain are becoming less ethnically French and Spanish because most immigrants to those countries are Arabs and Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. This is leading to some hysteria among conservatives, who claim that soon Europe will be called Eurabia and London will be Londonistan.
Still, a similar change is occuring in the United States. But most immigrants -- and many babies being born -- are of Hispanic origin. This is especially obvious in the increasing number of Hispanic Americans in the Catholic Church, as this New York Times Magazine piece illustrates.
The implications of these factors are enormous, but perhaps overstated. Currently most immigrants to Europe and the United States are religious and poor, and those are two characteristics of people who tend to have more children than average. Once these people settle into their societies and -- hopefully -- become more educated and climb up the social ladder, then they will likely have fewer children. So perhaps Steyn and others like him are overreacting. Or not. Still, it will be interesting to see how American and European culture changes in the coming years.
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Mark has an unhealthy tendency to only quote those demographic stats that fit his argument. There is a potential problem in most devloped societies with low birth rates, but Mark never makes any suggestions beyond a general comment abou how we should procreate more.
Your point about the US and Spanish speaking immigrants is very pertinent. If you strip out the recent immigrants (particularly Mexican immigrants, for some reason), the US birth rate approaches the low level of some European countries. Mark never seems to consider that as well as French getting less French, the ‘Americans’ may be getting less American. That never appears in his world view.
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Demographic change always seems to cause alarm for those staid establishmentarians who would have us believe that cultures and nations are immutable. The French have not always been French, per se. The Protestant Yankees swore vehemently that the Catholic Irish would ruin America. At various times, the US has placed limitations on immigration from this country or that, depending on whence the latest wave comes.
To fear immigration is to believe that difference is destructive, that historico-ethnic diversity threatens, rather than enhances, one’s nation and culture. Rather than fear those who have been attracted to our country, we should embrace them, find out why they came, and work to ensure that the reasons our country attracts immigrants remain intact. Let us not forget the words emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
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I’d say that a change to an increasingly Hispanic culture in the United States and an increasingly Arab and/or Muslim one in Europe is more frightening to conservatives than a change from Protestant Yankees to Irish Catholics.
Irish Catholics, of course, are still “white” and “Christian.” Hispanics are “Christian” but not “white.” Arabs and/or Muslims are neither “white” nor “Christian.” So these situations have the potential to bring out much more hate than the Protestant-Catholic, Irish-Italian conflicts of old.
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In so saying, my friend, you’d be wrong. Study some history, then get back to us.
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