The Economics of Immigration — and Why Governments Love It
Get the tools to understand what’s happening.
Published in
16 min readOct 11, 2023
Current Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was elected on a strong stance against immigration.
One year later, her promises to mobilize the army to stop the boats from coming have not only fallen through, but turned into the opposite result: Italy is open to immigration!
Such is the fate of most Western countries in 2023.
- The US is currently letting in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the southern border, which created a crisis in New York and Chicago, among other places.
- In France, there will be as many immigrants as native French by 2070.
- Sweden has welcomed 1 300 000 immigrants since 2012, or roughly 15% of its native population.
- In Germany, the number of non-native Germans is estimated at 20.3 million people, or 25% of the population.
- In Belgium, native Belgians made up 82% of the country in 2001, and only 65% of the country in 2023.
Even a country like Poland (who likes to pretend they’re not welcoming anyone) is actually welcoming dozens of thousands of immigrants (albeit legally).
