Replacement Migration in Practice: Official Data show Austria took in 3.34m Immigrants Since 2000
Statistics Austria--perhaps unwittingly--revealed that the past 25 years saw a massive influx of immigrants who stand poised to overwhelm 'the system' before too long
Today, we’ll take yet another look at the insidious nature of political-media discourse surrounding one, if not the, hot-button topics of today: migration.
We’ll be following up on a few postings on this topic that I’ve done recently, including this one:
Of course, the idea of peoples and nations remaining ‘constant’ over time is about as hilariously strange as, say, their ‘ancient’ origins or perceived qualities.
This isn’t supposed to be a debate about this or that ‘national characteristic’, such as thrift, proclivities to this or that activity, or even denigration of an entire group of people (although these things matter).
So, today, sadly, we’ll talk more about the political side of this entire shit-show masquerading as an almost natural occurrence, which is mass migration, specifically from non-Western countries to Western countries (except for Japan and South Korea).
At the heart of this matter is the fact that none of this mass migration we’re seeing and experiencing is a natural thing. People don’t tend to move that much, in particular as, since time immemorial up until the later 19th century, 9 out of 10 people typically lived and died within a relatively short distance to where they were born.
Migration as a social phenomenon, esp. the mass-migration of entire populations from one place to another, is a thoroughly modern issue and does not occur, typically, before the 19th century. The first of these documented occurrences was the so-called ‘first demographic transition’, which is intimately connected to the Industrial Revolution and involved the mass migration of rural populations towards the nascent manufacturing cities.
Until then, throughout history, cities had never really been places of mass production (but rather ‘information’ hubs, with ‘information’ being widely understood to include authority, trade goods, knowledge, etc.). Consequently, cities are typically human settlements that exceed the ‘carrying capacity’ of their local environments—which indicates the organised importation of foodstuffs and certain levels of organisation to get rid of waste are needed. Historically, cities also had lower life expectancy relative to the countryside, which also means that urban growth is intimately connected to in-migration.
So the first take-away is that mass migration is a modern aspect of life, and as such its principal causes cannot be found in lofty declarations of migration being as close to a ‘natural occurrence’, let alone such a ‘universal right’.
And at this point, we’ll shift gears to check out the UN International Organization of Migration (IOM) and its ‘strategic plan’. All emphases are mine, as are the bottom lines.
IOM’s ‘Strategic Plan’ for 2024-28
We have reached a defining moment in the global approach to migration, and it is time for a new IOM strategic direction and renewed energy to deliver on the promise of migration. Migration is and has been for centuries, a cornerstone of development, prosperity, and progress for many [this is simply not true; if you don’t believe me, look at Bade et al., The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2011)]. As the world faces major global transformations—from climate change, demographic transition, and urbanization to digitalization—migration can and should be part of the solution. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the United Nations Secretary-General’s Action Agenda on Internal Displacement provide a road map through which the full potential of migration can be harnessed, and displacement crises resolved, leaving no one behind.
This is little but an unveiled threat—because the UN is both a democratic one country, one vote body (the General Assembly) and a tyrannical-totalitarian world body run by appointees at the behest of the powers-that-be (the Secretary-General’s offices).
In other words: what IOM advances is done at the request not of ‘world opinion’ as expressed in, and by, the General Assembly, but the doings of the Secretary-General.
Of course, all of their many lofty words chime remarkably with the UN’s Agenda 2030 (see here for the introduction), and we’ll take a closer look at the sections ‘Harnessing the Power of Migration’, specifically its Objective 3, entitled ‘Facilitating Pathways for Regular Migration’ (p. 18)
IOM prioritizes whole-of-government, whole-of-society approaches to safely connect people, goods, services, knowledge and innovation.
In a context where the promise to leave no one behind and the Sustainable Development Goals are in danger of not being realized, IOM works to unleash the potential of migration by assisting States to establish, expand and enhance regular migration pathways, while reducing irregular migration.
Do recipient populations actually want ‘regular migration pathways’?
Who’s paying for this Sec-Gen extravaganza, by the way?
IOM’s vision will only be realized with significant financial investment and better quality funding. While the Organization continues to receive high volumes of project funding [by whom?], a strong value proposition based on a clear strategic direction, proven impact and efficient use of resources will attract more flexible, multi-year funding. Improved innovative financing capacity will be used to complement traditional resource mobilization approaches. While we will continue to deliver projects, IOM aspires to shift to programmes comprising a mix of short-, medium- and long-term interventions.
So, according to IOM’s Abridged Annual Report (2023), paragraph 81ff. contain information about the funding:
The total combined revenue of the Organization, comprising assessed contributions, voluntary contributions and other income, increased by 18 per cent compared with 2022 and reached USD 3,527.5 million in 2023. The assessed contributions from Member States continued to represent a small proportion of IOM’s funding structure, accounting for less than 2 per cent of consolidated revenue for 2023. The annual financial results for 2023 showed a 17 per cent increase in the total combined expenditure compared with 2022, with the total expenses reaching USD 3,419 million, meeting the Organization’s annual budget target.
So, who’s paying for the other 98% of IOM’s activities? There are but two more paragraphs that are mum on this crucial 98% share of IOM’s funding. ‘Strange’, isn’t it?
The full-length Annual Report (2023) is a wee bit more specific in paragraphs 89ff.:
In its 2023 Impact Report for private sector partners, IOM highlighted how financial and in-kind contributions from the sector had impacted diverse target populations. It also noted that migration represents an opportunity for the private sector to innovate and spur economic development. In 2023, IOM revitalized its approach to private sector partnerships with a view to establishing long-term cooperation built on trust and equity [remember: equity means socialism]. In addition to overhauling its digital fundraising platform, with the introduction of a user-friendly donation page that significantly enhances the donor experience, the Organization raised over USD 30 million in private sector contributions. It also scaled up major partnerships, notably with Amazon, Innovation Norway and Microsoft, and nurtured new ones, bringing the total number of private sector partnerships to 33…
Throughout the year…IOM transferred a total of USD 224.8 million to strategic partners: USD 17.3 million to United Nations agencies; USD 1.8 million to international non-governmental organizations; USD 44.2 million to international civil society organizations; USD 153.7 million to national civil society organizations; and USD 7.8 million to national and local government partners.
The bulk goes to ‘civil society organisations’, which incl. NGOs and, according to Wikipedia, also ‘the family and private organisations’, which is revealed once one clicks on the entry ‘Civil Society’:
Civil society can be understood as the ‘third sector’ of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere. By other authors, civil society is used in the sense of 1) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that advance the interests and will of citizens or 2) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.
Interestingly, while data on ‘donors’ and ‘contributors’ is scarce, there is this listing of ‘top donors’ to the IOM:
All of them are Western governments, which bring in millions of migrants per year. You’d think that Western governments, by virtue of them being ‘democratic™’, would follow the wishes of the governed (who, generally, dislike being overwhelmed with mass migration)—yet the top donors to IOM are: Western governments. Unearmarked contributions also hail from mostly Western countries.
Why, then, are ‘we’ doing this to ourselves?
Once More, What About ‘Replacement Migration’?
Reference is made to the below posting:
I recently had a closer look at Statistics Austria’s Statistische Nachrichten 2 (2024), i.e., the official number cruncher’s publication. Here’s an English-language summary of the article (this they wrote themselves, all subsequent quotations are translated by me, and all emphases are mine):
The Austrian population will increase to 9.65 million people until 2040 (+7%) and to 10.24 million in 2080 (+13%), according to the current population projection by Statistics Austria. It is based on assumptions for fertility, mortality and migration. In 2022, the reference year for the projection, the population amounted to 9.05 million. According to the main scenario, population growth will vary substantially among the nine provinces during the next decades. Vienna, the capital of Austria, is expected to have the most marked population growth until 2080 (+25.3%), followed by Vorarlberg (+17.5%), Lower Austria (+15.8%), Upper Austria (+13.7%), Salzburg (+11.0%), Burgenland (+9.1%), Tyrol (+8.0%), and Styria (+1.9%). Carinthia is the only province with an expected population loss till 2080 (–7.0%).
Children and young people under 20 years are projected to account for a smaller proportion of the total population, namely 18.7% in 2080 as compared to 19.3% in 2022. The majority of the provinces will follow this trend, except Vienna, where the proportion of those under 20 is expected to stay roughly constant. As the “baby-boom generation” (those born between 1955 and 1970) reaches retirement age in the 2020s, the size of the elderly population (ages 65 and over) is projected to increase in all nine provinces. Thus, for Austria as a whole, the proportion of the elderly population will grow from 19.5% in 2022 to 29.1% by 2080. By then, Burgenland (34.3%) as well as Carinthia (33.4%) are expected to remain the “oldest” regions while the western part of Austria together with Vienna will still rank as the “youngest” regions. Vienna will hold a share of 26.0% elderly people by 2080. The average age of Austria’s population will significantly increase over the next decades from 43.2 (2022) to 47.4 years (2080).
So much for this. What Statistics Austria won’t tell (but I shall) is the following:
For the better part of its modern history, Austria (in its post-1918/45 borders) was a ‘country of emigration’, according to Sylvia Hahn’s chapter in the above-linked Encyclopedia of Migration (pp. 83ff). Still—here are the key take-aways:
The majority of foreign immigrants who came to and remained in Austria after the 1960s were deliberately recruited migrant workers of both genders [sic], especially from Turkey ([now Türkiye] Recruitment Treaty, 1964) and [former] Yugoslavia (1966)…as in Germany, there was no interest in the integration or permanent settlement of these immigrant workers…in the beginning, the immigrant quotas agreed upon were barely met; only after 1969 did the number of guest workers start to rise rapidly, reaching a first peak of 226,800 in 1973. This was followed by an end to recruitment in 1974 and 10 years later the number of foreign workers had dropped by about 40% to 138,700.
Yes, the resident population was smaller back then (Austria’s resident population grew from slightly over 7m to almost 7.5m from 1961 to 1971), which is to say that the share of immigrants was different.
The main take-away here is that mass immigration, contrary to what the IOM and everybody else is currently telling you, is a very recent phenomenon. This comes to the fore immediately in Statistics Austria’s above-referenced article:
In the first decade of the 21st century, an average of around 110,000 people immigrated to Austria each year [that alone means 1.1m immigrants]. International immigration rose sharply from 2011 onwards [i.e., the 2010s saw a drastic increase over the 1.1m immigrants from the 2000s]. The EU enlargements and the associated expiry of the transitional provisions on the labour market for newly acceded EU states [this is the BS and obfuscation: those from the former Eastern Bloc who wanted to leave, well, they left before most of these countries acceded to the EU in 2004/07], as well as refugee movements as a result of political crises, led to immigration almost doubling to 214,000 people by 2015. This was around 100,000 more than the average for the years 2002 to 2010, but the following year, 2016, also saw above-average immigration of 174,000 people. In the following years, international immigration fell to an average of 150,000 until 2019. After a further decline to 136,000 people in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration from Ukraine reached a new record of 262,000 people in 2022.
Let’s do some math here: in the 2000s, 1.1m immigrants came to Austria; in the 2010s, more than 1.5m came to Austria; in the dreadful year of Covid™, another 136,434 immigrants managed to migrate to Austria, ‘despite’ (sic) all the lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, etc. in 2020; the numbers from 2020-23 add up to another 740,000 immigrants.
In total, if you’re keeping score, 3.34m people migrated to Austria since the turn of the millennium.
For the numbers from 2010 onwards, please refer to Table 2, reproduced below:
Out of 9.05m residents, a mere 5.71m are ‘natives’, which corresponds to some 63% of the total. If you now consider the fact that these changes occurred within the past quarter-century, I think the terms historic and unprecedented aren’t thrown around casually.
Here’s Wikipedia on this (source; for once, I’ve keep the links to the references):
As of 2011, Statistik Austria official estimates have shown that 81% of residents, or 6.75 million[16] had no migration background and more than 19% or 1.6 million inhabitants[16] had at least one parent of immigrant background.[clarification needed] There are more than 415,000 descendants of foreign-born immigrants[16] residing in Austria, the great majority of whom have been naturalized.
According to Eurostat, there were 1.27 million foreign-born residents in Austria in 2010, corresponding to 15.2% of the total population. Of these, 764,000 (9.1%) were born outside the EU and 512,000 (6.1%) were born in another EU member state.[17]
350,000 ethnic Turks[18] (including a minority of Turkish Kurds) currently live in Austria. At about 3% of the total population, they make up the biggest single ethnic minority in Austria.
In 2018, the percentage of foreign born people was around 19% of the total population which is also the second highest foreign born proportion of all EU countries after Luxembourg.
This is the 2010s—I’ve shown you the data in the above-reproduced table. Here is where we stand right now, as per the German version of Wikipedia’s entry on demography:
In Austria, the number of asylum applications has risen continuously in recent years from 11,012 applications in 2010 to 28,064 in 2014. Experts from the Ministry of the Interior forecast an increase to at least 80,000 in 2015 instead of the originally stated 40,000. Measured against the population, this is far more than in Germany. In the first quarter of 2015, the increase in asylum applications was already 149.7 % instead of the expected 43 %…
In 2018, Austria recognised the highest number of asylum seekers per capita in the EU. There were 2,345 recognised asylum seekers per million inhabitants, around 20% more than in second-placed Sweden [no worries, Austrian cities are rapidly turning into Malmö and Göteborg]. The recognition rate at first instance in Austria was 44% (EU average 37%), while the recognition rate in final appeal decisions in Austria was 54% (EU average 38%).
What About the Future?
Back to the above-linked Statistics Austria piece:
In the current forecast generation, it is assumed that international immigration will amount to 147,350 people per year in the long term (Table 2). Higher immigration is expected for the first forecast years due to the war in Ukraine. After around 262,000 people immigrated in 2022, 189,000 people are expected in 2023 and 164,000 in 2024. Increased immigration is also assumed in the medium term, in the years between 2025 and 2035, as higher immigration from Ukraine is also expected in this period than before the outbreak of the war due to the growing Ukrainian community in Austria; however, it is assumed that international immigration will fall until 2035 and then stabilise at a long-term level of 147,350 people per year.
Look at the above table once more: there’s some more 1.5m immigrants projected until 2035.
If combined with very low fertility rates, the native population, which currently constitutes around 60% of the total resident population, will likely be in the minority by that time. Yes, naturalisation and 2nd- and 3rd generation descendants will make up a part of these declines, but here’s the rub:
The only post-war cohort of women who gave birth to more than two children on average was the 1946/47 cohort with 2.05 births. Younger cohorts from the early 1970s, who have not yet completed their reproductive phase, are currently at around 1.65 children per woman...
The average fertility age (DFA) has risen steadily since the end of the 1970s and reached 30.0 years for the first time in Austria in 2011. Since then, it has increased nationwide by just over a year to 31.1 years by 2022. The regional range is currently 0.9 years, with a maximum in Vienna (31.7 years) and a minimum in Carinthia (30.7 years). In the second half of the 1970s, the average fertility age across Austria was 26.2 years, five years lower than at present...
Here’s the true issue with ‘mass migration’, though:
The current relatively low fertility level is closely linked to the increase in the fertility age [same as in, say, Norway, or elsewhere in the West]. Increased participation in education and higher employment among women, the associated career plans, but also the difficulties in reconciling work and family life are leading couples to postpone their desire to have children until a later age. As described above, this manifests itself in the long-term increase in the average fertility age. The forecast assumes that the DFA will rise to 33.5 years across Austria in the long term.
What about the modRNA injections you ask? Well, that’s mentioned, albeit implicitly, too (although I suppose it’s a combination of increased insecurity due to mandates and a whole slew of other issues, such as the socio-political aspects mention in the preceding paragraph):
A significant decline in fertility rates was observed across Austria in 2023. Based on the data for the first half of 2023, a total fertility rate of 1.36 was assumed for 2023.
This is all they state, and I wonder about the numbers, for which we’ll have to wait a bit longer, I suppose.
Bottom Lines: Mass Migration > Political Decisions
What, then, may we deduce from these seemingly disparate pieces of information? Here are three main conclusions as well as one final thought.
One word of warning—I think it’s fair to generalise across ‘the West’ here and in the following, so here goes:
First, mass migration wasn’t a thing until the (late) 1960s, and it began with the realisation on part of the business and political elites that the then-current economic model (basically ‘Kenynesianism’) was unsustainable both in terms of energy and material inputs (‘limits to growth’) as well as regards their socio-political consequences (see Michael Kalecki’s seminal 1943 article ‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’; access restricted, if you can’t access it, email me). Consequently, as the Austrian example clearly shows, the ‘solutions’ embraced by business and political leaders were thus twofold:
Guest worker recruitment treaties were negotiated (1964, 1966) to import cheap labour to keep the essentially Keynesian model of production going.
At the same time, Vienna entered into negotiations with the USSR about the supply of natural gas to ensure enough affordable energy was available, too; first deliveries of ‘Russian gas’ commenced in 1968:
Second, mass migration and energy policy are not only Siamese Twins, but they are manifestations of a certain political-economic structure that emphasises top-down control and facilitates gigantic oligopolies run by the select few elites along cartel-like structures. That means that the decision to scale up mass immigration and energy imports was, above all, a political decision whose ‘by-product’ was to change family structures and societal power-relations, too: if you don’t want to import way too many migrant workers, there’s always the option to make a sizeable share of the population that hitherto remained, by and large, outside ‘the economy’ an integral part thereof: enter (second-wave) ‘feminism’ and the so-called ‘sexual revolution’.
For those who rule, beneficial side-products include massive downward pressure on wages due to the drastic influx of women into the labour market—and the massive increase of a woman’s age of giving birth from the mid-20s (in the 1970s) to the early 30s (now). In short: business and political elites, over fifty years ago, created the problems whose consequences we’re dealing with now, to which the very same business and political elites are ‘offering’ their ‘solutions’, which are, upon closer inspection, a veritable Trojan Horse.
Finally, there cannot be any doubts about the dire consequences of an ageing population, mass immigration, and the decline of freedom in the West. In fiscal terms alone, mass immigration is a major drag (and, no, by far should it be that everything has a price tag associated, but the costs borne by the resident population deriving from mass immigration must be considered). Dutch researchers showed that there are few, if any, net fiscal benefits to indiscriminate mass immigration:
As the numbers from Austria also show, importing more and more people who are given super-generous support from ‘the public’ will, over time, create both societal tensions (‘why do these immigrants get all the money I need to work for?’) and increasing fiscal worries: if a growing share of residents is receiving money, as opposed to paying into the system, these welfare states will go bankrupt before too long. It’s neither my hope nor an opinion rather than a mathematical certainty. On top of it, any possible ‘reaction’ will likely do away with many of the ‘rights’—really: privileges—that Westerners have been taught in school were ‘universal’, such as (so-called) ‘human rights’ (sic), asylum, or the ‘legal right’ to whatever transfer payment.
Is there a silver lining? Well, here’s the researchers from Statistics Austria:
If migration were generally excluded, however, the number and proportion of the population born abroad would fall to zero in the long term.
Having spent almost half my life (and most of my adult life) as an immigrant in two or three countries, I’m in no position to argue for the reduction of migration to zero.
I will, however, say that qualified and means-tested immigration should continue—and taking in some 150,000 migrants per year, some of which are illiterate and many of whom will never contribute to the funding of the receiving societies—isn’t ‘far right-wing’ or any other form of ‘extremism™’. It’s common sense.
The cognitive dissonance among the current crop of political leaders and their fellow travellers in legacy media, however, is immense: the numbers above can’t be obfuscated forever, many people notice drastic changes within their recent memory (since 2000), and, year in, year out, the business and political leaders speak of the crisis in the labour market.
Now, please answer the following question: if a small country of Austria (about 84,000 km2, pop. about 9m) has already taken in in excess of 3m immigrants since 2000—why would there be a ‘lack of labour’?
Something rather big doesn’t add up, and we don’t correct course before too long, we’ll likely see cascading failures of social insurance, retirement benefits, and socialised healthcare systems all over the West.
If history is any guide, when leaders in the past were facing such domestic crises, there’s one ultimate resort that has always staved off loss of power: war, with its attendant phenomena of curfews, rationing, and tyranny.
There won’t be any victors this time, though.
Okay, I just read your introduction (not the entire post), but how exactly is migration a purely modern phenomenon? DNA evidence shows that many populations have been replaced by other populations. Most famously, the Yamnaya people (from whom we are both descended) spread across large swaths of Eurasia and replaced the previous populations. And what about all the migrations around the time of West Roman collapse? And look what happened to the New World!
What sounds more plausible is that you have periods of intense migration (I didn't say it had to be peaceful), followed by longer periods of relative population stability, followed by another round of migration, and so on.