How demographic change can destroy a country.
Argentina is a distant mirror that reflects what may be North America’s future. My country is a small-scale laboratory of the effects of migration: A suitable migration policy can transform a nation for the good; a wrong one spoils it.
Argentina became independent from Spain in 1816 just after Napoleos occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. After a period of struggle between caudillos, the country was unified with a constitution inspired, in part, by that of the United States. A generation of brilliant thinkers led by Juan Bautista Alberdi and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento saw European immigration as the key to modernity, and this was enshrined in Article 25: “The Federal Government will encourage European immigration; and may not restrict, limit nor tax in any way the entrance into Argentine territory of those foreigners, who have the purpose of working the land, improving industries, and introducing and teaching sciences and arts.”
To this end, President Nicolás Avellaneda (1837 – 1885) pressed for the Colonization and Immigration Law of 1876, which established immigrant recruiting agencies in the main cities of Europe. ...
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