Since October 7, 331,000 Israelis returned to Israel, a nation with a total population of 9.3 million.
Ukraine’s population was 43.7 million in 2020. Since the war started in February last year, some 2.8 million left for Russia and 6 million for the West, to Europe, the US and Canada, representing some 20% of its population.
Meanwhile, millions have been fleeing various Islamic countries – Syria and Yemen, in particular, where Sunnis and Shias kill one another with abandon – with hardly anyone comfortably settled in the West going back to any of these countries to fight and nobody demonstrating anywhere against the massacres between the two Islamic sects or condemning their financial backers.
What, then, do people voting with their feet imply, be it with their migrations or demonstrations?
I shall not get into comparing feelings of patriotism or religious fervor, although these emotions reflect some deeply felt – or not felt – hopes for the future. I shall just consider the implications of dry numbers.
Ukraine’s fertility was 1.22 in 2020 – substantially below replacement. Nine out of ten Ukrainian refugees are women and children. An estimated 25% percent of Ukrainian children have left the country, while most Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are banned from leaving.
Will these war refugees go back once hostilities stop, or will the husbands and fathers join them in Europe?
Since October 7, Europe has been severely tightening its migration from Muslim countries and shipping back radicalized Muslims to their countries of origin. But European countries have very low fertility rates, too, far below the replacement rate of 2.1, with Spain at 1.1, Italy 1.2, Poland 1.3 and Greece, Finland and Austria at 1.4.
With the average of all European countries at 1.53, it would not be surprising if Europe would even be eager to let the young Ukrainian diaspora settle within its borders, even if Ukraine and Russia manage to negotiate a cease-fire with Russia sooner rather than later.
By the way, Russia’s fertility rate stands at the EU average, 1.5, far below replacement, too, and nobody quite knows how many of its youth have died in the war and how many have left.
What about the US? Its fertility in 2020 was about 1.64 – likewise less than the replacement rate of 2.1, though nobody quite knows how many millions came in through the southern border with Mexico and what their impact on overall demographics might be.
There were many predictions back in the 1970s that demography and entitlements would be a lethal combination financially, culturally and politically. People made these observations before their countries’ fertility plunged and before some cities declared “sanctuary cities” status, guaranteeing lodging, health and education to anyone who arrived there.
Those pessimists had not given up on the American ideal of the “melting pot.” Their analyses were based on the view that when certain policies impact a large number of people quickly, creating customs and sustaining traditions incompatible with what made the US click, and more broadly incompatible with Western principles and institutions, the pot would “unmelt.”
The recent pro-Palestinian mobs, most participants covering their faces – as criminals have always done, although demonstrators against Hamas do not – show that the United States’ “melting pot” myth as well as Europe’s “multi-culturalism” were academic abstractions.
Neither works when, within a short period of time, massive number of immigrants join the country – and the voting pot but not the “melting pot” – sticking to habits and traditions that do not overlap with the West’s fundamental institutions.
Confucius was right: “Human nature is alike – habits of thought make us different.” Indeed, habits are rock, whereas laws are sand, as the declines in law enforcement over the last few decades in both the US and Western Europe, rationalized by a great deal of heavily subsidized academic jargon, so amply demonstrate.
This article draws on Brenner’s History: The Human Gamble (1983), Betting on Ideas (1985) and “How to Relink 7 Billion People” (American Affairs).