I wholly agree with @stanleybmanly—and @josie too, except for his American assessment (We are hardly bagging out). Let me just add one other facet to this:
In only the past four years the world’s population has increased by more than 200 million people (fully two-thirds of the U.S. population), mostly in poorer, less stable economies.
This kind of stress causes further instability and causes the leaders of these countries to adapt more stringent dictatorial powers in reaction to the inevitable resistance of popular uprisings usually supported by outside influence. Thus we have the mass emigrations you see in Europe at the moment.
We can expect the rate of the earth’s population growth to increase, as that is how humans procreate—geometrically, not arithmetically—and therefore the next four years will see more than a 200 million person increase. So, the emigration to wealthier democracies will not only continue, but increase as well. It is only a matter of years before we can expect the same deluge of the poor and disenfranchised, making our present worries over immigration from the south a drop in the bucket in comparison. We are not immune to the present circumstance in which Europe finds itself.
The instability that this mass immigration can cause in the healthier economies (and therefore their democratic systems of government) will inevitably affect the economies of their less attractive trade partners such as Russia and China. I can only surmise that if a retired American nurse on tiny, remote St. Lucia realizes this, so do the world’s leaders.
At the risk of sounding sickeningly Pollyannish, I would like to believe that eventually the nations that now find themselves at risk of invasion by these innocents, will formulate a way to fix the countries these people come from and make them places one can again earn a living and raise their children. I entertain the idea that Putin has decided that not only can he finally establish Russian presence in the Middle East, but also stabilize the country and stop a lot of the emigration, hopefully kicking off a concerted effort by the Big Four (U.S., Russia, China, Europe) to fix other source countries of this mass immigration.
Take Libya, for example. Here is a country rich in oil, that if its government was stabilized and shared it’s natural wealth with it’s citizens in the same way that Norway does, Italy and other countries would have much less an immigration problem as Libyan refugees would want to stay home, raise their children and thrive in their own culture and nation. It would take the cooperation and military of the Big Four to do this. Fix and leave. Then move on to the next unstable country. Find a way. I don’t believe the wealthier countries have much of a choice in taking action like this.
What do you guys think?
