Immigrants’ children do not fill the cradles

Immigration cannot be considered as a solution to the current demographic crisis. This is what emerges from the data published yesterday by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). According to these data, indeed, in 2010, despite an increase of population, related mainly to the presence of immigrants, Italy reported another drop in the number of new-born children. Such a result shows clearly that it is wrong to think that the fast ageing of Italian population was in a first moment stopped and then overturned by the high fertility of immigrants. This trick, used by political and academic rhetoric, may confuse even more a public opinion that is already afraid and disoriented. Talking about a complicate and potentially explosive subject as immigration, the biggest mistake we can make is to consider it as a miraculous event. Such a situation, indeed, does not reflect the reality citizens are in contact with. As well as most of the biggest industrialised countries, Italy has a low birth rate. But it is interesting to notice that this value is the result of a double, extraordinary phenomenon. It is true, indeed, that the number of new-born children is low, but, at the same time, we cannot ignore that the number of those who die is low too. This paradox is changing deeply the roots and the aspect of the whole world’s population. Nowadays, the baby boomers who rejuvenated the Western world after World War Two (with an average of 700/900 thousands new-born children every year) are approaching retirement. These are values that immigration is unable to fill up. According to the UN experts, indeed, “the impact of immigration on the age of the population of the biggest world’s countries is quite limited. Its contribution is modest. Things would change if Europe, for instance, decided to quadruplicate the number of entries at external borders.” (Total Migration Stock Report, 2007). But immigrants also get old and their elixir of life is destined to finish sooner or later, unless the multiplication of their arrivals does not last forever. And there is another aspect that cannot be undervalued. Immigrants families, as well as their hosts, have started to have fewer children.