Immigrants have helped build prosperous nations. Don't shortchange their right to housing out of petty resentment for arriving inconveniently or by unorthodox routes.
Many countries in Far East are in a tizzy. The cause: their citizens are reluctant to have children. Public health incentives are being deployed everywhere. One major initiative: seduce immigrants with a promise of a better life.
With national prosperity linked to growth, the need for more citizens embraces even the largest in the region — China. For many years that country actively imposed penalties for excessive family growth. Oopsie.
Other countries worldwide might well seek to avoid a similar kinds of growth error. Or failing that, look for alternatives. Since there aren’t that many to replace childbirth, it seems sensible to make immigration a necessity — region to region, country to country — whatever it takes.
For a radically different perspective, move to the Far West. Yes indeed, declining birth rates are a concern here, too. But immigration as a solution? Far from it. In the United States, a common political viewpoint is that immigrants, migrants, illegals, incomers, call them what you will, are the spawn of the devil, not prospective new citizens to be welcomed with open arms to help grow the nation. It’s a strange perspective to find on a continent where, over a few hundred years, the native population has been virtually eradicated and entirely replaced by . . . incomers.
Time to move on with an American academic and a little further east for a non-standard political perspective on a similar crisis emerging in Europe. The American — the alarmed one — is currently the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to housing. Balakrishnan Rajagopal is also associate professor of law and development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He recently filed a report that takes the Netherlands to task. It is aimed specifically at that country’s political classes that have been pursuing policies of hatred towards immigrants.
Read more in Dutch News: “Stop inciting foreigner hatred”: UN housing rapporteur