Why African migrants will flood the world over the next half-century

CDR Salamander has an interesting series of charts about Africa at his blog.  They're all factual, and I'll leave you to read about them for yourself.  I'd like to highlight this one in particular.  (Click the image for a larger view.)

The reasons for Africa's pyramid-like population distribution and youthful population explosion are many, including (but not limited to):

• Improved medical care, which has greatly reduced child mortality and diminished the impact of traditional "killer" diseases like malaria, dengue and other fevers;
• The AIDS epidemic, which has killed many older Africans and disproportionately increased the ratio of young to old;
• Improved nutrition, particularly through international aid in response to regional disasters like famine, which previously killed thousands (if not millions) of people.

However, those people have nowhere to go in Africa, and nothing to hope for.  The continent is cursed with a chronically low-IQ population.  They're largely unschooled by Western standards;  and even if their educations were better, there are few if any local jobs that would require that sort of learning, and pay a commensurate salary.  There's little industrial development in Africa beyond mines and government infrastructure, and those need cheap labor rather than skilled workers.  There's no social security or welfare network in Africa, because countries on that continent by and large can't afford to provide one;  so, if you have no work, you starve, or turn to crime.  China has spent billions on the economic colonization of Africa, but has done so by importing her own workers to that continent, rather than educating, training and using local staff.  That's not likely to change anytime soon.  (I wrote about the immensity of Africa's problems a few weeks ago in more detail, if you're interested.)

The inevitable result of this lack of opportunity, and intense competition between the multitudes of younger Africans for the few scraps that are available, has meant a veritable invasion of Europe by people desperate to grasp at any opportunity - legal or not - for something better.  A street-sweeper or garbage worker or manual laborer in Europe will earn more in real terms, and have far better economic prospects, than the average school-teacher or government bureaucrat or miner in Africa.  This is what's fueling the influx of so-called "refugees" through Libya and other northern African nations to the southern nations of Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea.  Non-governmental organizations opposed to concepts such as national borders are aiding and abetting this flood.  What's more, it's reached the borders of the USA as well.  We're going to see more and more of it here.

Of course, we can't afford to allow this invasion to overwhelm our economy.  We can't provide for the millions of desperate "refugees" (in reality, economic migrants) from South America who are already overwhelming our border facilities by the millions every single year.  We certainly can't provide for an even greater influx of desperate Africans - yet they're going to keep on coming, because they have no other hope and nothing to go back to in Africa.

I certainly believe in the Christian principle of helping one's neighbor;  and, to the extent that we share a common planet and a common race (i.e. human), we should be willing to help those less fortunate than ourselves.  Sadly, aid to Africa as presently allocated and distributed is a lost cause.  It's almost all embezzled, stolen, and diverted into the pockets of the authorities and the bureaucrats in most African nations.  We need to mount a major effort to make sure that stops, and that aid goes to those who'll use it to genuinely help their people.  Our aid should create economic and other opportunities for them, so that they don't need to flee elsewhere to make some - any! - kind of future for themselves.  At present, this is not happening;  but unless we make it happen, the invasion of First World countries, including our own, by illegal aliens will become an unstoppable flood.

Go look at CDR Salamander's charts again, and think about them.  All that is headed Europe's way today.  It'll be headed our way tomorrow.  What are we going to do about it?  There's no way we can shoot all those who are desperate - not without making ourselves monsters.  We have to find another way . . . but what?

Peter