It’s time to ZIP up the borders!

Andrew Guild presents the argument for a Zero-net Immigration Policy to protect Australia’s future and save our nation’s way of life.

Australia has reached a crisis point in its history whereby the very being of its existence is under threat, imperiling the future of both the Australian people and the Australian environment.

The Australian way of life is being destroyed, not only culturally and demographically, but also environmentally.

Some scientists, such as Tim Flannery, have estimated that Australia’s population, if it is to be environmentally sustainable, should consist of no more than approximately 6 to 12 million people.

The Optimum Population Trust has estimated that — at our current standard of living — the optimum sustainable population for Australia is 10 million, although it estimates that it could be 21 million if we accept a lower standard of living. Australia’s population is already well over 23 million.

At the very least, Australia’s immigration programme should be designed so that it does not increase our population levels.

A Zero-net Immigration Policy (ZIP) is the simplest way of achieving this goal. It is easily implemented, easily overseen, and would receive widespread support from the Australian nation.

Whilst the negative impacts of high immigration upon our environment, society and economy are often discussed, we must not forget that the real bottom line of these discussions is how immigration will affect our way of life, our health, our standard of living — for ourselves and for the generations to come.

After all, who wants to live in a society where most of the people live in high-rise high-capacity dog box apartments, where the roads, footpaths, parks and beaches are so full to capacity that its like living in a tin of sardines, social tensions are high, physical security is reduced, pollution levels are excessive, and the quality of life is low? Whilst some places overseas already live like that, this is not a future most Australians would want.

Impacts on our way of life

Current immigration policies are dramatically diminishing our quality of life in very real ways. Here is a brief look at the problems facing our nation, and why we need to get a Zero-net Immigration Policy instituted in Australia.

Overcrowding is happening in the major cities as well as in some regional areas: traffic jams and other traffic congestion, overcrowded public transport, along with more and more multi-storey apartment blocks.

Being packed into trains, squashed together like tins of sardines, is not an indicator of a quality way of life. Nor is being stuck in major traffic queues for long periods of time, waiting for cars to inch forward as they compete for space and movement with thousands of other cars on the same road. This is a real concern in terms of our quality of life, especially when it is extrapolated into all the other areas of our lives where overcrowding is now occurring — and it is likely to get worse in the future!

The quality of housing is worsening. The Australian dream of having a home on a standard quarter-acre block is beginning to disappear, as the immigration-driven population explosion has made it a standard practice to subdivide existing house blocks in order to build second houses in what were once family backyards.

Even worse, many developers (enabled by state law) are now squeezing several units onto the one block of land, drastically reducing the space for children to play in, for swimming pools for the summer, or for families to hold barbeques or parties; these activities may often still be done, but only to a lesser extent.

The slashing of the widespread enjoyment of living standards, that once existed, is just one cost of immigration that many Australians are paying.

Pollution is increasing, caused by the millions of more car exhausts that transport those extra millions of people every day, as well as from all those extra tens of thousands of trucks that are needed to service the huge population increases by the need to transport the ever-rising billions of tonnes of food and consumer goods.

Added to all this is the huge volume of increased pollution from the fumes and chemicals spewed out by all those factories and infrastructure installations that are needed to service the additional millions of consumers brought in via mass immigration.

All this pollution is not only causing health problems but also is negatively affecting the quality of life of many people, especially in the cities.

Health problems are caused by the importation of immigrants with severe and communicable diseases, especially from the Third World. These include TB (tuberculosis), hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS.

This not only costs the community economically for the treatment of the diseases, but also has high personal costs to the Australians who become infected, causing physical impairment (even death) and emotional distress to both the individuals and their families.

Further health problems are increasing, including from the effects of pollution caused by the population pressures resulting from the outrageously high immigration intake.

High-population cities like Los Angeles have dangerous levels of smog, with thousands of people being hospitalized and additional thousands dying early as a result of air pollution. Those with lung conditions, such as asthma, are particularly at risk from the pollution arising from the effects of high immigration levels. The Los Angeles Times reports that “Annually, California’s dirty air is estimated to cause 19,000 premature deaths, 9,400 hospitalizations and 300,000 respiratory illnesses”. We don’t want this for Australia.

Mental health problems are also caused or exacerbated by high immigration, by forcing people into living in high-population environments, living cheek-to-cheek with millions of others; squeezed together in trains and buses, with cars jammed en masse on the roads (or in gridlock), and with even our homes squeezed tighter together, let alone the problems of more and more people living in high-density high-rise apartment blocks.

Mass immigration, particularly from Third World countries, has the added effect of creating social discord, social disunity (cultural disruption), feelings of not belonging (ethnic displacement), feelings of being dispossessed from your own country (ethnic marginalization), and the anguish of facing the immigration-driven decimation of your people (genocide anxiety).

Adding to mental trauma directly caused by immigration, are the propagandistic machinations of multiculturalism (the pro-immigration ideology), with teachers telling students that their people are no good (pushing tales of white colonisation, slavery, etc.; whilst ignoring similar activities of other races), thus ideologically disconnecting them from their own people and creating a white guilt syndrome – no wonder youth suicide rates are so high.

Crime rates are rising, particularly in relation to specific sources areas of immigration. For example, the crime rates of immigrant populations from the Horn of Africa countries are enormously higher than the crime rate of the populations that have come here from England or Sweden.

Even though governments are aware that some ethnic crime rates are higher amongst migrant groups from particular countries, they continue such immigration intakes for political reasons; despite the immediate physical and mental health damage caused by immigration-driven crime rates.

Being mugged, bashed or raped are some of the worse health hazards of living with multiculturalism-designed immigration policies.

Water shortages have led to years of water restrictions and even to the situation where Australians are being fed water derived from sewerage. Although water shortages are being exacerbated by drought conditions (always an ever-present possibility in Australia’s harsh climate) and by inaction on the part of governments (also an ever-present possibility, funnily enough), a major underlying cause of our water shortages is over-population, brought about by an overly-high immigration intake.

Water shortages have necessitated the building of desalination plants to provide extra water for all the extra people, an enormously expensive process. All of these expenses relating to immigration will have to be paid for and this will impact further upon people’s standard of living.

Food security becomes threatened as the farming output fails to sustainably meet the demands of population expansion. Australia has now become a net importer of fruits and vegetables in order to meet the needs of our population; also, our wildlife provision of fish has been declining. With regards to farming, it should be noted that our arable land is only 6.15% of our land mass.

If we were to double our population, as has been suggested by politicians and money-hungry businessmen, and then experience a time of great drought or other food crisis, Australia would face real problems in feeding its people.

Economic impacts

The 2008 investigation into immigration by the UK House of Lords’ economic committee reported that “Our overall conclusion is that the economic benefits of net immigration to the resident population are small and close to zero in the long run”.

The economic impacts of immigration are not just about production and employment rates, but also need to take into account the economic effects of pollution, disease, crime, and social disunity upon the population. For Australia the situation would be even worse, once the environmental costs were factored in.

Unemployment is increased by governments using skilled immigration instead of training our own people. Also, many workers in low-skill, low-income jobs find themselves being displaced by immigrant workers, whilst large numbers of immigrant workers in the labour market can inhibit wage increases for low-income workers. Conversely, immigration of non-skilled workers from some ethnic groups with notoriously bad unemployment rates has added to the welfare burden placed upon taxpayers. So, Australians are losing out from both ends of the employment spectrum.

House prices are rising, as are the costs of renting, forced up by a higher level of demand, caused by a rapidly expanding population, mainly brought about by an immigration programme that is just too big.

The rise of housing costs is pricing young people out of the market, with the situation getting worse and worse as time goes on.

The continuing demise of housing affordability will also increase the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”, leading to greater social problems.

Traffic congestion in Australia’s cities, according to a government estimates, cost $9.4 billion, with the potential for that to rise to $20 billion by 2020.

With continuing high immigration, traffic congestion will inevitably increase.

Social disunity not only has social costs for the population, but economic costs as well. All “race relations” and “human right” bodies have to be paid for, as does the work by governments (and their public servants) to create laws to stifle free speech and push “tolerance” forcibly upon unwilling recipients.

The so-called “human rights” programmes mandated in schools also have to be paid for, as do the university courses on such subjects.

There is also the health care costs and loss of working days resulting from fights and damage caused by inter-ethnic and inter-racial violence.

Added to this are the economic costs of disproportionate ethnic crime, in terms of damage to people and property, as well as to police staffing requirements.

Multiculturalism costs huge amounts of money. It has been estimated that the immigration-driven policy of multiculturalism costs Australia $7.5 billion or 5% of GDP per year. The advocates of multiculturalism have made sure that governments have, for decades, funded special programmes for ethnic groups. These programmes all have to be paid for, and are often in addition to ordinary social funding.

Having a high immigration intake of those who cannot speak English costs millions, with piles of government publications produced in other languages, special funding of non-English-speaking organizations, funding libraries to buy extra collections of foreign language books, as well as the costs incurred in the workplace caused by the inability of workers to read English or understand directions (let alone being the victim of workplace accidents due to lack of English).

The Office of Multicultural Affairs estimated in 1989 that workplace communication problems caused by workers with poor English language skills was costing Australia $3.2 billion each year.

It would be more logical to require people from non-English speaking backgrounds to learn a good level of English before migrating here; however, this has not been done, and so these language problems form part and parcel of the cost of immigration.

New infrastructure needs to be paid for to cope with high levels of immigration. Population increase necessitates all kinds of capital funding, for hospitals, schools, roads, train or tram lines, wider bridges, larger police stations, fire stations, waste management systems, power utilities, and so on.

What is often forgotten is that if an area has, for example, a 10% population increase, it is not so easy to build the corresponding infrastructure. For example, increasing a hospital’s services by 10% is not so easy; adding 10% more building area will not add 10% more space to all of the rooms and departments across a hospital. Let alone problems of adding 10% to professional staffing levels. To cope with a 10% population increase requires far higher infrastructure costs than just 10%.

Of course, in the meantime, all current services are stretched, often to breaking point; which is one of the reasons why so many people do not receive timely health care, some even dying whilst on hospital waiting lists.

Policies of mass immigration have real consequences for real people; it is not just about “numbers” and lifeless economics.

Environmental impacts

The environment of our country, already a fragile thing, is under mounting pressure from an ever-expanding population:

Destruction of endangered ecological areas to make way for more housing developments has already occurred. With immigration pressures upon land areas, yet more virgin bushland (and the wildlife therein) will fall victim to developers.

Extinction of species is occurring, due to human habitat destruction. With an expanding population, such destruction of wildlife habitats is likely to worsen. The continuing urban sprawl across our bush landscape will destroy the habitats of many native animals, leading to their decline, as will over-fishing to meet food targets for a bigger population. Even more bushland will need to be cleared to feed the growing population.

The spread of human populations is damaging Australia’s fragile environment. More than 60 native plant species are extinct already and approximately another are 1,180 under threat. A bigger population will exacerbate the problem.

Topsoil depletion is being caused by demand made upon farmers to supply an increasing population (as well as catering to overseas trade); this occurs when the soil is eroded or depleted of its original organic material. As an example, approximately half of the topsoil of the USA’s Great Plains is estimated to have disappeared in just over the last 120 years.

Topsoil has billions of beneficial microbes in each handful and it takes hundreds or even thousands of years to naturally build up the nutrient-rich organic topsoil that we need for food production, so a high topsoil depletion rate is alarming. John Reganold, an American soils scientist has said “Globally, it’s clear we are eroding soils at a rate much faster than they can form”.

Soil acidification is another problem, which can also lead to soil erosion. Topsoil loss and other excessive abuse of land can cause desertification, which then encroaches upon nearby land.

Dr. Barney Foran from the CSIRO’s Resource Futures Program has noted that “We’ve got this immense area of perhaps some of the worst soils in the world … only about three percent of the land area of Australia has soil types of any acceptable quality”.

The National Population Council has reported that “there is a serious mismatch between distributions of available water supply and the population, water supply is subject to high levels of seasonal and year to year variability, the land is severely degraded, the soils thin and vulnerable to depletion”. These problems are not helped by having high levels of immigration.

Soil salinity problems are exacerbated by increasing our population levels, due to the increase in farming needed to meet demands for food.

Australia already has massive areas of some of the worst soils in the world. Yet, despite this, we are exporting our best soil nutrients as part of our massive crop exports.

Land clearances and irrigation for farming can cause soil salinity. Salinity has affected 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land, with another 10 million hectares being regarded as “at risk”.

This salinity affects our river systems. Jenny Goldie, the National Director of Sustainable Population Australia, has said that “Many of the tributaries and rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin [Australia’s bread basket] will have exceeded World Health Organization guidelines on maximum levels of salinity for both drinking and irrigation within 50 years”. Facing such sustainability problems, it is ridiculous to be just blindly increasing our immigration intake.

Loss of good farming land is being caused by the spreading out of ever-growing suburbs from the major cities, building or paving over some of the most fertile lands in the country.

Whilst Australia has many areas of high rainfall and some areas of good topsoil, the places where those two elements combine to make good farming land are a small minority of our continent’s land mass, so the ruination of our soils — further driven by high immigration levels — is made much worse.

With increasing soil salinity, loss of good topsoil, and ruining of farming areas, it is just not sustainable for Australia to have a high population.

Social impacts

The Australian way of life is being destroyed, not only culturally and environmentally, but also demographically. Immigration is causing the social fabric of the Australian nation to be slowly torn apart.

The political ideology of Multiculturalism, funded by governments, and propagated by teachers and journalists who are opposed to homogeneity, is breaking down feelings of community and destroying social cohesion within our nation (it should be noted that Multiculturalism in Australia came about as a consequence of the large-scale immigration programme which began after the Second World War).

Some areas within Australian cities are now regarded as ethnic enclaves, fueled by high immigration and assisted by multiculturalism. Critics of large-scale immigration have pointed out that importing people from countries with a low cultural affinity to the Australian way of life is a recipe for social disaster.

Immigration of various Third World groups, enabled by multiculturalism-driven immigration programmes, has added an extra social problem to the lives of Australians.

The Muslim presence within Australia is growing apace, fueled by immigration from Africa and Asia, especially from the Middle East. It has been said that as the proportion of Muslims in a society grows, the higher the Islamic influence over that society will be, which makes logical sense — but it is not what the majority of Australians want.

The result of having even “small” Muslim populations has caused a certain curtailment of civil liberties in European countries, thus destroying freedoms that people took for granted, and adding to an ethnic-based “political correctness” which is changing their way of life forever.

The same can be expected in Australia as “political correctness” and the desire “not to offend” Muslims becomes a way of changing the lives and habits of ordinary people, whether it be through imposed laws or via bureaucratic rules in the workplace (often due to rules or guidelines from the so-called “human rights” industry); let alone the election of Muslims to parliament and the encroachment of Sharia Law into public practice.

The Asianisation of Australia, begun in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s, is steadily increasing, with arrivals from Asia comprising over 42% to 50 % of the immigration intake (2000-2009). Rather than just being a distant spectre that haunted our forefathers, the “Yellow Peril” has now become a reality.

In the broader context of demographic colonisation, Third World immigration is approximately 56% to 63% (2000-2009) of the immigration intake.

The demographic colonisation of Australia by the Third World is ramping up, comprising not just the major element of Asianisation, but also including an influx of populations from Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, and the Middle East.

Such immigration, if continued, will cause the end of the Australian People and change forever the Australian culture and our way of life.

Some multiculturalists may regard criticism of Islamification and Asianisation as “racist”, even though the desire to maintain one’s own ethnic identity is not “racist”, but simply the desire to exist. These multiculturalist machinations were forced upon the Australian people without their consent — going against their right to maintain their own ethnic and cultural identity. Such multiculturalists also ignore the negative impacts of these policies upon the Aboriginal population.

There are even multiculturalists who fear that giving support to limiting immigration will somehow be supporting “racism”. How bloody-minded would someone have to be, to want to create an over-population crisis just to indulge their own personal views on race?

It is time that environmentally-concerned multiculturalists join the chorus of Australians demanding an end to high immigration. Adherence to a shaky position that “somehow future technology will fix these problems” is ridiculous, as is the view that Australia can support an infinitely growing economy and population.

The argument that a growing population is needed to sustain our economy is an amazingly illogical notion. There is a limit to how many people Australia and the world can sustain.

If our economy is based upon population growth, then it could only end in tears; such a growth-based economic ideology requires infinite sustenance, but our land mass, our ecosystems and our natural resources are all finite, they are limited by realities. Basing economic and population policies upon an idea of infinite growth, whilst living in a finite world, is very much like having an unsustainable pyramid scheme — it will work for a while and then everything will become ruined.

An economy based upon a stable population is an achievable goal; world-wide, this is necessary if we intend not to decimate the ecology of our planet or ruin the future of mankind.

All of these factors need to be considered as we make a decision for the future of our nation. Even if people agree that just a few, if not all, of the afore-mentioned problems are a concern, then that is enough to start campaigning for a Zero-net Immigration Policy.

We need to set a population target for Australia and act upon it now. As any government committee set up to determine Australia’s optimum population is likely to take years of dithering to come up with a figure, all we need to do is accept the Optimum Population Trust’s estimate of 21 million and work towards that.

Immigration numbers are not an accident; the immigration programme is controlled at the federal level; both Liberal and Labor governments have deliberately chosen to have high immigration intakes into Australia, based upon ideological reasons rather than upon the desires of the Australian people.

Policies of high immigration are not designed for the benefit of ordinary Australians, but rather for the benefit of the elite currently in power — whether for the ideological interests of multiculturalists or the economic gains of big business.

Current immigration policies present a clear and present danger to the people of Australia and must be stopped. The problems are real and the dangers are real. Now all we need is for a government that will get real on the immigration crisis facing this land.

To achieve this, we must support those who would promote such a concept. People should push for political action by joining a lobby group like Sustainable Population Australia or by joining a political party like the Australian Protectionist Party.

People could write letters to their members of parliament; but they should not expect a politician to suddenly change his or her stance after years of being devoted to high immigration and/or multiculturalism.

Writing letters to newspapers can help spread the word, as can letterboxing your neighbourhood with leaflets promoting a Zero-net Immigration Policy – get as many people involved as possible!

On a more day-to-day scale, you could promote the idea of the ZIP concept by wearing a ZIP badge or even just pinning a small zip to your jacket or shirt (similar to wearing a pink ribbon to support the fight against breast cancer). Wearing a zip on your lapel or chest would arouse curiosity amongst others and enable a talking point to promote the ZIP idea. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

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