Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. As I reported this week in the Intercept, four people in Berlin – three EU citizens and one US citizen – are set to be deported over their involvement in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza. None of the four have been convicted of a crime, and yet the authorities are seeking to simply throw them out of the country.
The accusations against them include aggravated breach of the peace and obstruction of a police arrest. Reports from last year suggest that one of the actions they were alleged to have been involved in included breaking into a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.
But the deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviours: chanting slogans such as “Free Gaza” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blockades (a tactic frequently used by climate activists), and calling a police officer a “fascist”. Read closely, the real charge appears to be something more basic: protest itself.
The extra fun part is that all post industrial revolution countries have flat or falling populations. This includes Europe, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, North America and parts of South America, and parts of the South Pacific. All of these regions need to import people if they want to keep using the same productivity and economic systems. The sheep lack of people is going to start causing major issues on all fronts.
This is going to put nations in a position to compete for immigrants with each other. It’s going to be a buyer’s market for young adults. Collectively, they need to make their labor more dear and nations need to treat people better to get and keep them in the future.
There’s plenty of material on the stages of population change in developing nations: https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk
The demographic transition model continues to be reasonable on track around the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition