2009-03-14

Problems with immigrants?

Immigrants as percentage of national population:

USA: 12.81%
Australia:19.93%

UK: 8.98%
France: 10.18%
Germany: 12.31%
Italy: 4.29%
Spain: 10.79%
Portugal: 7.20%
Denmark: 7.16%
Netherlands: 10.05%
Belgium: 6.90%

Muslim immigrants taking over Europe? Hardly.

Source: UN.

2 comments:

apodeictic said...

While I agree with you that Muslim immigrants aren't exactly "taking over" Europe I don't think you can use these figures to make the point you do for several reasons.

First, the figures don't reveal anything about the immigrants' country of origin or religion. For all you know just taking these these figures as a basis 0% or 100% of a European country's immigrant population could be Muslim or atheist or Buddhist or whatever. Secondly, unlike most European countries, countries such as Australia and the USA are used to having a high proportion of immigrants from different backgrounds. They are younger nations whose populations have been largely drawn from immigration. The older European nations aren't as used to that kind of immigration. So for them having a 10% immigrant population may be a much "bigger deal" than for a country such as Australia or the USA. Thirdly, I suspect concerns about Muslims "taking over" Europe aren't really about the number of Muslims in Europe per se but about the influence (or perceived influence) of Islam in European society and public life. And that's not exactly the same thing as the proportion of Muslim immigrants in a given population.

BLBeamer said...

Another issue that your post dodges is that it is not so much "Muslim immigrants" taking over that concerns so many, it is that those immigrants, once immigrated, are breeding at a much higher rate than the native European populations. In addition, many of these immigrants and their children display unwillingness - and have little incentive - to assimilate.