The unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants to Europe, mainly from the Islamic world and Africa, has created international headlines throughout 2015. Sweden is currently receiving about 1,000 asylum seekers per day, sometimes more than that. If that inflow continues, this would mean more than 3.6 million asylum seekers to Sweden in just one decade. In reality, family reunions will make this number much larger. Small European nations cannot handle such immigration numbers for very long.
Thilo Sarrazin is a prominent German writer and former member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank. His 2010 bookDeutschland schafft sich ab ('Germany abolishes itself') became a great bestseller. Projections indicate that Germany could receive one million asylum seekers in 2015, many of them Muslims. Mr Sarrazin fears that the situation is dangerous and has gotten out of control. "Every nation, state and government has to be able to control its borders. The state and independence begins and ends with control of the borders," he argues. Sarrazin points out that each asylum seeker or refugee tends to bring an additional four to six immigrants: parents, children or wives. In reality, one million immigrants could therefore turn out to be five million, when all is said and done. That is merely the result of one year of mass immigration. If current trends continue, Germany could end up with 20 million inhabitants from Africa and the Middle East a couple of decades from now. Thilo Sarrazin points out that experience shows that immigrants from Africa and the Middle East on average do not integrate well. They often have high crime rates and a high dependency on welfare.
Africa will claim three of the world's ten most populous countries in 2050, according to projections made by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. The largest of those, Nigeria, will be about the size of the USA. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia could also enter the top ten list, ahead of Russia and Japan. Many African countries are experiencing a baby boom, all while having many social problems. Niger, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Chad have the highest fertility rates in the world.
A report from 2013 predicted that sub-Saharan Africa would record the largest population growth at least until the year 2050. The world's poorest region will more than double in population, from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion. The current population of the entire European Union is just over 500 million people. It is estimated that Africa's population will grow by more than twice that much, in less than two generations. Where are these people supposed to live? Will they have water, food and work at home?
During a couple of days in late September 2015, some 500 migrants were rescued in seven operations launched in the Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard said. The migrants mainly came from West African countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone and had left Libya three days earlier. They were rescued about 80 kilometers off the Libyan coast. There is no war in Ghana. These people are economic opportunists, not 'refugees' in any meaningful sense of the word.
Africa's population is expected to grow by a billion people or more in the coming 30 years. This means that what we have seen so far is only the beginning. ...
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