Remember: 'Replacement Migration' is a 'Conspiracy Theory'

Nevermind the fact that it's also a UN-sponsored policy paper and that, e.g., 51.6% of schoolkids in Vienna, Austria, speak some language(s) other than German at home

Yesterday, I saw something intriguing in one of the Austrian tabloids:

27% of Schoolkids Don’t Speak German

Via Heute.at, 2 Sept. 2024 [source]

In Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland, the school bells will ring again from 2 September, while in the rest of the country there is still a week’s reprieve for pupils.

With the start of school, one of the top issues currently causing uproar in Austrian schools is back in the spotlight—the lack of German language skills among many children and young people.

The fact that a growing number of pupils in Austria do not speak German in everyday life poses huge challenges for teachers. Many kids can't keep up in class because they have language problems—which then slows down the whole class [isn’t that the ‘strength’ we’re told to embrace about ‘our diversity’?].

Alarming figures have now been published by the Federal Integration Fund, which regularly collates data from several sources (such as Statistics Austria and schools) and publishes it on its website [see below].

Share of Foreigners Almost Doubled [in the last 10 years]

According to the figures, 19.3% of the approximately 1.2 million pupils in this country last school year were foreign nationals (almost 220,000 in absolute figures). Ten years ago, their share stood at only 10.5%.

The situation is particularly extreme in Vienna, where the share of foreign children and young people among pupils is 35.1%. The proportion is lowest in Lower Austria at 12.9%. And: 39.9% of pupils with foreign citizenship live in Vienna.

Overall, German is a foreign language for a good quarter (27%) of pupils in Austria. In Vienna, more than every second schoolchild (51.6%) does not speak German in everyday life (see chart).

Differences between Print vs. Online Versions

So, we now need to talk about the numbers here, because even if you don’t read German, the above-reproduced screenshot from the print edition is—a wee bit different. What is missing is the following information, which the online edition comprises:

Problematic Areas

In a comparison of Vienna’s districts, Favoriten (10th) once again proves to be a hotspot: 73% of pupils here speak a language other than German in everyday life. In second and third place are the 16th district (Ottakring) with 69.8% and the 11th district (Simmering) with 65.9%.

17.2% Cannot Speak German at all

If German is not the mother tongue, this does not mean that the pupils do not speak fluently or are unable to follow lessons. However, the number of those for whom this is not the case is also rising sharply. Most recently, 17.2% of pupils with foreign nationality had an inadequate knowledge of German.

This is borne out by information I received from the Federal Integration Fund: I heard that some more than 70% of people sitting in dedicated courses that teach about Austrian ‘values™’ (sic) are, in fact, can neither read nor write in any language. Let that sink in.

The ‘New Journalism™’: Copy+Paste, Lying by Omission

Speaking of the Federal Integration Fund, the above details about the Viennese districts with the highest share of non-German speakers derives verbatim from their ‘factsheet’.

You know what else said ‘factsheet’ explains?

Young people with a migrant background are more often not in education or employment

Another aspect is the high proportion of young people who are neither in education nor employment. In 2023, this applied to 9% of 15 to 24-year-olds in Austria, with their share among young people with a migrant background (13%) being almost twice as high as among young people without a migrant background (7%). At 14%, this proportion is particularly high among young people from the first generation of immigrants.

Now, thou shall not think ill of mass migration.

In the same ‘factsheet’, there’s also the following paragraph:

27% of Schoolkids Don’t Use German in Everyday Life

Of the total of 1,119,081 pupils in Austria, around 19.3%had a foreign nationality in the 2022/23 school year. The share is particularly high in Vienna, with the highest figures found in the districts of Ottakring (47%), Favoriten (45%) and Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus (42%). 27% of pupils speak a language other than German, with Vienna also recording the highest share at 51.6%.

Did you catch this? Of the highest such Vienna districts, the three named ones all have shares below 50%, but somehow ‘the highest share at 51.6%’.

Now, if you’d scroll back up (or remembered) the header and the table in the screenshot, these 51.6% are also used there.

When I performed some higher-level rocket-science™ (I’ve added all the 9 shares given = 212.6 and divided by 9), I get an average share of 23.6%, not 27%.

Sure, that’s a small enough change, isn’t it? But it’s odd that these numbers, deriving from ‘official agencies’, such as Statistics Austria, don’t add up here.

Is that negligence of did the editors trip all over themselves ‘correcting’ the piece?

While we may never know, the main take-away is: the share of foreigners in Austrian schools virtually double in the past decade.

If you care to figure out why people become a wee bit upset and vote for ‘far-right™’ parties, well, go figure.

Bottom Lines: à propos Mass Migration

If you’re new to the subject matter, I recommend the UN policy paper from over two decades ago that explains, rather directly, the concept of ‘replacement migration’:

Is Population 'Replacement' a 'Conspiracy Theory'? No, it's an UN-Endorsed Program

Careful readers may have noted something else, though, and that is: what’s the price tag for these high rates of functionally or truly illiterate people borne by the taxpayer?

Well, I’m glad you asked. (That is, I’m ‘glad™’.) That factsheet ‘splains’:

In the 2022/23 school year, there were a total of 45,749 extraordinary schoolkids, whereby the proportion of extraordinary schoolkids among all Austrian pupils (1.2%) was significantly lower than among schoolkids with a different nationality (17.2%). The share was highest among Ukrainian students at 82.8%, followed by Romanian (18.5%), Syrian (18%) and Turkish nationals (14.5%). Extraordinary schoolkids are those who are taught in separate German support classes or in German support courses running parallel to lessons for a maximum period of four semesters due to insufficient German language skills.

Oh, look: the vast majority of kids requiring such ‘extraordinary’ funding for up to two years of language classes ‘due to insufficient German language skills’ are—Ukrainian.

Now, I’m all for helping children, no question there, but the main issue is: how much does this cost? At some point, this must be discussed, because the recipients of such largesse are typically those who aren’t citizens (which is, technically, o.k. to a certain extent in welfare states, I suppose).

The problem is this, though: those who are represented in parliament (technically speaking) pay while the recipients here are people who aren’t citizens nor do they pay their fair share of taxes.

It’s a ‘conundrum’ if there ever was one, and I think we can sum it up in the following, slightly polemic way:

Taxation with representation while
Transfer payment recipients neither pay nor are they represented

Small wonder establishmentarian parties, mouthing platitudes about ‘inclusiveness’, ‘diversity’ being ‘our strength’, and ‘fairness’ receive one beating after another come election time.

For the entirely foreseeable consequences—from a purely fiscal point of view—see the extensively annotated publication by Dutch researchers:

Dutch Researchers Reveal the True Cost of Mass Immigration

The main message summarised in one sentence is this:

If immigration continues by the current numbers and composition, welfare states like the Dutch one become unsustainable.

As a political strategy (sic), this is stupid and a cul-de-sac, if there ever was one.

At a societal level in ostensibly republican and/or democratically constituted states, this is pure poison.

The most likely outcome will be: civil strife, if not civil war.