Immigrants are key to futre of the EU
As population ages and birth rates plummet, immigrants are key to the EU’s future
THE once in a generational ‘ heatwave’ is a great opportunity for people to get off their phones, spend time outside and not feel anxious, depressed or jealous for a couple of weeks.
What a relief. When it’s overcast they can return to silly season social media, where someone from a reality TV show posts a photo of themselves in a neon peach bikini, wearing a mask of make-up and two hot dogs for lips going ‘I bought my lashes for a tenner on some website. You too can have them xxx love you all, enjoy the sunshine. Kiss kiss, nom, nom..” or something equally platitudinous.
Maybe they’re wearing activewear, giving a description of how they went for a walk or a run too. Who cares? Who are these people? Also why is ever yone wearing activewear? If you move the camera behind the face, there’s just a hollow space where a brain should be.
Recently I read an article about a ‘social media inf luencer’ who was too heavily photoshopped for her followers’ liking, and thereby ‘misled’ them. The outrage. I had never heard of Rosie Connolly before, but all the fuss won’t go amiss. After all, any attention is good when it comes to social media.
A complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority Ireland (ASAI) about a “filtered and photoshopped image” of the blogger was upheld.
The fact that people went to the ef for t of making a complaint to the advertising watchdog about this image means they clearly have nothing better to do with themselves. Surely make-up bloggers are all photoshopped and you buy into it, no? Everyone uses filters.
Oddly enough, this commitment to complaining is not in line with the platform young women give ‘inf luencers’. On Instagram, they have an estimated market size of nearly €1.5bn.
It’s such a dichotomy. ‘Relatability’, ‘expertise’ and ‘attractiveness’ are what draws followers to social media inf luencers, who make a mint out of their followers, and yet women are upset when other women get the upper hand by being better looking.
So, young, ‘woke’, fier y, feminist social media users were offended that not enough ugly women were photographed in the stands of the World Cup.
Getty Images posted a galler y of images titled ‘World Cup 2018: The Sexiest Fans...Talk about a knockout round’. An inevitable backlash followed, along with a predictable apolog y: “We regret the error and have removed the piece. There are many interesting stories to tell about the World Cup and we acknowledge this was not one of them,” they explained.
There were many articles about it. I couldn’t help but think – a bunch of good-looking men are running around a pitch, athletic and lean, would you not watch them instead of getting upset about a couple of hot birds? If you focus on who is in the stand, why are you even watching the game? You clearly don’t love it.
Here’s the thing – deal with it. Some women are better looking than you and women need to stop being jealous of them for their own sakes. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that there are less really, really hot blokes in the world and if there were, people would be seeking them out. Middleaged men with sunburn aren’t in as much demand.
I’ve watched every World Cup for over 30 years and I’ve never even noticed who is in the stands to be honest. I was filmed several times at matches, most famously whilst welcoming home the German team after winning Euro 96, before young feminists were born, singing ‘We are the Champions’, balling my eyes out when I was supposed to be sitting part of my finals. It was worth getting in to trouble for. Pure craic. And none of us had a phone. Imagine
OOD-LOOKING people are always in demand, by women more so than men. I also work as a photographer and when I take shots, I seek out good-looking women, because the young women who buy magazines want to see them, not men. Men don’t care. Men don’t follow social media influencers either.
It’s nice women’s beauty is celebrated and it ’s narcissistic for other women to think ever yone needs to live their life according to their insecurities.
Watch the World Cup and accept it’s not about you or, alternatively, go for a walk instead. The only thing you’ll miss at this time of year is someone with bunny rabbit filters and stupid dog noses with their hands as paws, acting like kittens. No wonder children as young as four are depressed and suicidal, according to a sur vey by school principals, funded by St Patrick’s Mental Health Ser vices.
The next few days will be warm beyond our wildest dreams, and there’s nothing better than being outside, eating outdoors, listening to music, playing with the kids or walking amongst nature. It’s what life is about.
Social media indulges in the worst of humanity – selfgratification, malcontent, begrudgery, hate, comparison with others and abject selfishness. It’s quite grotesque. Don’t give it any more power.
IT IS not immigration, but the political exploitation of immigration, that threatens border-free movement within the EU. Closing down legal migration routes has led to the opening up of illegal routes.
In 2010, 130,000 first-time visas were issued to citizens of African countries by EU countries. By 2016, only a mere 30,000 visas were issued.
So denial of a legal immigration route is one contributor to illegal immigration.
African agriculture suffers disproportionately from climate change, but the human contribution to climate change comes disproportionately from the Northern Hemisphere, including from Europe.
Public opinion in some European countries is getting into a panic about immigration from outside Europe, yet these ver y countries are often the ones that have the least immigration.
A survey of public opinion, in 2016, found that the most negative opinions about immigration were to be found in Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Romania (all countries with little non-EU immigration).
The most welcoming attitude to immigration, at that time, was to be found in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands (who all already have substantial numbers of non-EU immigrants).
European countries have a legal obligation to provide a refuge for people who are f leeing in fear of their lives from wars. Europe has provided some shelter for refugees, but Turkey has three million refugees in its borders, Lebanon one million, and Uganda one million. No EU country is shouldering that sort of burden.
Europeans need to look at immigration in a different way.
Because we have decided, over the past 40 or more years, to have fewer children, Europeans will need immigration in future to maintain a proper balance between numbers at work, and numbers in retirement.
In a few years’ time, people of working age will be in short supply.
Globally, the ratio of working age to retired will fall from eight to one
European countries have a legal obligation to provide a refuge for people who are fleeing in fear of their lives
today, to four to one by 2050. By 2050, the global population aged 65 or over will increase from
600 million to 2.1 billion.
This will create a huge funding crisis for governments, who will not be collecting enough tax from the diminished number of people of working and taxpaying age to meet the promises it has made, of pensions and healthcare, to the increasing number who have already retired and are no longer earners and taxpayers.
Opposing the arrival of young immigrants from Africa is shortsighted.
This is because the working age population of most EU countries is set to decline, while its postretirement population is set to increase rapidly. Without immigration of people of working age, Europe’s diminished workingage population will provide relatively poorer healthcare and pensions for its ever-growing retired population.
Africa has an abundant supply of what will soon be one of the world’s scarcest resources – young people.
Europe has a birth rate of 1.63 children per family. Iran and China have similarly low birth and the US rate is only slightly higher.
In contrast, the birth rate in Nigeria is 5.42, in Mali 5.92 and Niger 7.15.
Nigeria’s population has risen from 45 million when it became independent in 1960, to
187 million today. By 2050, Nigeria’s population could reach 410 million. The present Nigerian economy is just not capable of finding employment for all these people.
The EU needs to work on a policy that encourages orderly and well prepared immigration from Africa, accompanied by well considered plans to integrate the immigrants into European society.
As much as possible of the preparation for European liv ing should be done before would-be emigrants leave their home countries.
If Europe opens up legal routes for immigration, illegal routes will become less attractive.
Europe must develop an investment partnership with Africa. As the European Council said last week: “We need to take the extent and the equality of our co-operation with Africa to a new level. This will not only require increased development funding but also steps towards creating a new framework enabling a substantial increase of private investment from both Africans and Europeans. Particular focus should be laid on education, health, infrastructure, innovation, good governance and women’s empowerment.”