Not only does our fearless leader want the Australian population to increase, he was also heard on TV a couple of days ago, also advocating that our standard of living also has to improve. It is about time the economists of the world got their heads around a different paradigm instead of the present one that says "Growth is good". Getting smart is better.

David

Unfortunately there is still a great deal of xenophobia tied up with this issue. If the government really wants to increase Australia's population to 30 million, all they have to do is invite in some bright young Chinese, Indians and Indonesians -- none of those countries would miss a few million citizens, and the people remaining behind would be better off as a result. But it's political suicide to suggest that non-white non-English speaking immigrants might make just as good and productive Australians as native-born babies; so we get the baby bonus and other daft schemes to bolster up a birth rate that would otherwise fall to a comfortable, economically viable level. Any debate on the issue is a good thing; but be prepared to run smack into entrenched prejudice.

That's a pretty good comment Jon J.

Why was population left off the agenda? It's because they read some of the tripe put out by the motley crew of nutters from the Undemocratic Unsustainable Unpopulate Australia lobby. Or maybe they realised that some of the IPCC white lab coat boffins royally screwed up the ice melting and sea rising data and that all bets were off.

One reason they didn't raise the spectre of depopulating the world is that they hope future generations of thinkers will tackle these issues without resorting to the forced sterilisation programs we saw in India and South America in the 1950s and 60s.

Or maybe they read some of the recent articles in OLO that simply shredded the anti-populationist thesis.

“Unfortunately there is still a great deal of xenophobia tied up with this issue.”

John J, you have hit the nail on the head: The cry of xenophobia has been the stock-in-trade of the long-successful campaign against efforts to discuss population in an informed and meaningful way.

And you raise it again. Against all the evidence from concerned and informed debate that has been choked-off for many decades.

We'll have a chance to vote for the '23 million party' and the next election. They believe, as many of us do, that 23m is as far as we should go.

Interesting to hear that Dick Smith, at the launch of a new book on the subject of Australia's population, reckoned that the cost of immigration is too great: that each doubling of a population halves the worth of a country's people.

Here's a multi-millionaire businessman telling us that the only people who gain from high immigration are the rich and governments (by way of taxation).

Cheryl,

Here is a link to Sustainable Population Australia's list of policies that they would like the federal government to adopt and the recommended policies of Britain's Optimum Population Trust (OPT).

http://www.population.org.au/index.php/population/the-issues/36-the-solutions/56-recommendations-for-action

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.policies.html

Please point to where either organisation advocates forced sterilisation, either at home or in other countries. All that I can find is that OPT wants voluntary sterilisation to be made available to people who want it, but that they need to be informed that it often can't be reversed.

For other people who believe that the truth matters, here is a comprehensive guide to how humanity is running up against a number of environmental limits, Lester Brown's book "Plan B", which is available as a free download. It references the original government documents and other sources and is listed as recommended reading with his Scientific American article last May.

http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb4/pb4_table_of_contents

Cheryl's technological solutions need to come along pretty quick. World grain production per person peaked in 1984. Marc Purcell of the Australian Council for International Development said in a letter to the editor in today's Sydney Morning Herald: "Maize is 50% more expensive than its average price between 2003 and 2006, while rice prices are 100% higher. A 10% increase in the price of rice in Indonesia can put this basic food out of reach of 2 million people." Note that even if fertility rates dropped to replacement level tomorrow and stayed there, all around the world, there would still be massive population growth due to demographic momentum. In India, it would cause a doubling of the population.

no doubt in the 1960's the social engineers had Australia's ideal population at under 12 million. Today our living standard has never been higher, more food available than ever before and nearly all families have at least one car. No doubt just like the global cooling prophets of the 60's the population growth scaremongers are out today. We still have plenty of food, water, land and jobs. Any country that can afford to send hundreds of people to a tax payer junket to CopenHagen certainly has plenty to share with many more who are not so blessed. It seems like those who worship nature has fooled many into thinking we are 'full'.

If we have plenty of water, why is there so much conflict over it? Why do we have permanent water restrictions in almost all of our cities, with startling increases in water bills and electricity bills beginning to appear because desalinated water is 4-6 times as expensive as dam water and the desalination plants are extremely energy hungry?

We already consume 80% of the food we grow (by value)

http://www.agmates.com/blog/2008/01/01/report-into-ag-production-export-discrepancies/

When it comes to volume of grain, we export about half of what we grow in an average year and much less in drought year. Now imagine that Kevin Rudd and the other politicians have doubled the population. Forget about climate change, just think of those long, severe droughts that have occurred since European settlement. Nor can we assume that we can make up any shortfall by buying on the world market. After all, there wasn't enough to go around in 2008. The people at the bottom are likely to get pretty hungry.

Urban land prices are skyrocketing along with utility bills. The cost of an average house in 1973 was 3.5 years of the median wage, with the cost of the land counting for about 30%, now it is 7.5 years of median wage, 8-9 years in some cities, with the land representing 75% of the cost. Average block sizes were much bigger in 1973 as well, so that ordinary people could have a garden and even grow much of their own food. Families are overworked, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and family life is sacrificed due to coping with those housing costs. Some improvement.

It is true that cars, clothing, and consumer trinkets are cheaper, but this benefit is more than wiped out by the higher housing costs.

Runner might take a look at the government's Measuring Australia's Progress reports on the Web. Every environmental indicator has been deteriorating, apart from urban air quality, where there have been some easy technological fixes. In international environmental comparisons, we are near the rock bottom of the developed world. See

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment.aspx#rptcard_large

http://epi.yale.edu/

One of the most beautiful vectors of 'anti-pop analysis' is that people are fornicating more because real estate agents want to build more houses.

We have more food than we know what to do with. 30 years ago we were dumping wheat in the Indian ocean. Look, the Unsustainable UnAustralian Unpeople lobby mean well and I'm sure they'd hate being labelled puppets of the National Front.

They are advocates of good old Fortress Australia. I can't wait. Here comes Bob Menzies! What are we going to do about all those Poms, Greeks, Italians, Latvians, Vietnamese and Lebanese who crept in and are having kids as we speak?

None of their projections add up, none of their theories are valid. But I admire their zealotry. I look forward to reading their non-forced sterilisation programs in the next election. Maybe Sandra Kanck could run.

Good article,Melvin but I'm not sure what level of disaster will be necessary to convince the Population Boosters that they are on the wrong track,or should I say in the wrong hole and digging deeper.

Not to mention the rabbits who believe thay have some sacred right to breed as they wish regardless of the effect on other Homo Saps or our fellow creatures and plants who have the unenviable task of trying to exist on Spaceship Earth with a bunch of monkeys gone feral.

Cheryl - instead of ranting in the comments section I think it is time for you to actually write a piece for publication by OLO! Please lay it all out for us. Everyone has a right to your opinion! Love from your admirer...

Not having studied biology, Runner and others seem to mistake "current prosperity" for "more is good".

Maximum growth rate ("prosperity") for bacterial growth is achieved just short of confluence (on plates) or lysis (in liquid culture).

The immediate next step is watching all your bacteria, or any other cell type die, no matter how much extra nutrient you add to temporarily delay.

Hopefully we are nowhere near "maximum" and have the brains to stay away from excessive growth.

Rusty.

Rusty seems to think studying biology is the answer to all the worlds problems even if many are made up. Any honest study will lead you to see the world's problems are caused by sin (greed, lust hate etc) rather than over population. There are quite a number who have studied biology that agree with this fact. The 'current prosperity' is not necessarily good as you say but it does demonstrate that with a little more even distribution we have plenty more to share as a nation.

Studying does help however, and Runner should try it.

There are reductio ad absurdum limits to human growth such as standing room only, as well as less ridiculous such as every inch either crowded like some indian cities or given to farming.

Our own will probably be when the by-products of our preferred lifestyle start impacting substantially on our lifespan. Pretending there is no limit is not helpful, runner. In an exponentially increasing population there is very little time to stabilise with or without great human misery, and we already have a lot of that, don't we, whether we remain exponential or not?

Rusty

Australia is already a net importer of food. We can't even feed the people we have here now without imports.

"The cry of xenophobia has been the stock-in-trade of the long-successful campaign against efforts to discuss population in an informed and meaningful way."

Yes it has but putting all talk of xenophobia aside, that still doesn't add up to a conclusion that there should be any policy to limit population growth, even if we concede that that's desirable. Why not? Because you're assuming that government has superior knowledge and competence to decide this.

The anti-pops are still floundering in the same fallacies as Malthus and Ehrlich. But let's cut to the chase: what are we supposed to do? Yes, agreed, we shouldn't be paying people to have babies, or subsidising parenthood either. Why should people who don't have children and don't want to have children, or don't want to pay for them, be forced to pay for others who do? But that is an argument against coerced payments rather than against population itself.

Yes there are limits to growth but that is not any justification whatsoever for government to start forcing the issue, which is all that government has to offer.

Australia has more water per capita than the United States. Why do we have water restrictions? Because the supply of water is a government monopoly, and socialism is incapable of economic calculation. When government was responsible for providing food, in the Soviet Union and China, they had food shortages. Although there is a natural scarcity of water, that's not what's causing the shortage. It's that government is intrinsically incapable of balancing human wants with environmental sustainability because, just think about it for a sec.... *how* are they going to do it? By counting up compulsory votes every three years?

It is irrational and superstitious to reason "because problem, therefore government is the solution", which seems to be the reasoning underlying the idea that we should have a population policy.

All those whose critical capacities are not disabled, either by primitive, mostly patriarchal, doctrines of human primacy or sheer ignorance and poverty, must be aware that our species population is way out of balance with our environmental resources. Technology has allowed us to shield ourselves from this consciousness but even that flawed god is failing. It’s rendering of Death as some evil to be eradicated and the perpetuation of life at all costs runs counter to the realities of living on a planet with finite resources. As does the perpetual growth paradigm of Capitalism.
Personally, I have been aware of this state all my adult life and, like Ulysses, tied myself to the mast of reproductive continence and resisted the hormonal siren call. I prefer the pre-Roman, Celtic-Druidic respect for nature and think it a salient point that the Romans triumphed over that pantheism by cutting down their sacred groves.
I heartily disagree with Jon J that we might redress our so-called ‘aging population’ concerns by importing excess populations from those groups less continent and suggest the only positive thing to come of such a move would be that we will might truly understand how the Australian Aborigines felt when they were overwhelmed by us. This is not xenophobic, or misanthropist, just basic common sense. If you want to start pointing moral fingers, look no further than the xenophobia of the Chinese – they still call us ‘white devils’ - and consider the scale of the environmental disasters occurring daily in China.
To be honest, I think we may have passed the population tipping point and the only thing that will save us and all the other species our depredations have endangered is some environmental cataclysm, such a pandemic plague, tectonic upheaval, or my favourite, another Ice Age. I am all too aware of the moral and ethical pitfalls of formal population controls, but promotion of more conscious breeding and concerted efforts to preserve our quality of life here and protect this fragile country from more damage are highly desirable endeavours.

Jardine K. Jardine, "It is irrational and superstitious to reason "because problem, therefore government is the solution", which seems to be the reasoning underlying the idea that we should have a population policy."

If you believe that you should be opposing the government's "Big Australia" policy to flood the country with migrants to reach a target of 35 million in 2050 from the present 22 million. Based on present record migrant numbers, 50 million is the more likely 2020 result.

Mr Rudd crashed through all of his reverse gears to cover his behind when he realised the strength of public opposition to his "Big Australia", which is not surprising because neither he nor Howard before him were ever given a mandate for large scale population increase through immigration.

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-appears-cool-on-a-big-australia-20100128-n1nr.html

Sadly, public opposition to his outlook for Australia and to the policy of continually setting new records in immigration has not altered Rudd's course by a single degree and it is still all speed ahead and hang the consequences. Moreover, Rudd and the elites who advise him have gone back to the tried and true approach of damping sown any debate on immigration policy.

While on that subject, although the great weight of public opinion is firmly against large migrant numbers there remains strong support for Australian couples to be able to have the children they want, but cannot afford through high housing prices and taxes. There are similar community/voter attitudes in other western democracies, but quite obviously some governments are not listening.

The spin of big business that immigration is always 'good' has been challenged by a House of Lords (UK) report, The Economic Impact of Immigration, which among other criticisms stated that competition from immigrants has had a negative impact on the low paid and training for young UK workers, and has contributed to high house prices.

The report recommended limits to immigration - the government "should have an explicit target range" for immigration and set rules to keep within that limit. Not such an unreasonable request one would think and one that Rudd is ignoring in Australia

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7322825.stm

Excellent post, Cornflower,

A number of other reports have reached the same conclusions. The 1997 American Academy of Sciences report is consistent with the House of Lords report, as is Australia's own Productivity Commission report. As Prof. Robert Rowthorn (Economics, Cambridge) put it in the UK Sunday Telegraph (July 2, 2006):

"... the [UK] Government's claim about the economic benefits of immigration is false. As an academic economist, I have examined many serious studies that have analysed the economic effects of immigration. There is no evidence from any of them that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative."

Cheryl, I have linked to the policies of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) and of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). If these organisations were motivated solely or primarily by xenophobia, why is there nothing about race, ethnicity, or national glory in their policies or elsewhere on their websites? Zero net immigration (an SPA policy) is about 70,000 a year now. Why does SPA want to make the intake nondiscriminatory, rather than all British or all white European? If you want to see what a real far Right website looks like, visit the American Renaissance or the British National Party sites.

I am also puzzled that you think Malthusian collapse is a myth, seeing that you doubtless watched one in living colour on your television set in 1994 (Rwanda). Other countries would be in the same position without large amounts of food aid. See

http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2010/pb4ch01_ss5

Mr Bolton's topic is both a serious and important one. Sadly his contribution is neither meaningful or useful. Like far too many important articles, they start from an emotional assumption and degenerate.

His dismissal of all possible options other than completely nihilist extremes reflects both his lack of vision and imagination.
If there is anything that differentiates man from the apes it's imagination and ingenuity.

The idea that the only options are either a mud hut technology or the excessively opulence of current western life style is overly simplistic to the point of absurdity.
Likewise stopping immigration would neither solve the problem or make a yobbos thong difference . Simply an excuse for xenophobic 'find someone else to blame', cop out.
NB we as a species, can't continue our profligate ways or multiply indefinitely.

The key to the problem is our individual or life footprint, a combination of all our impacts.
The maligned mud hut dweller's existence is based on inefficient exploitive technological
attitudes as we in the west only less so. e.g. they take from the environment what they need but never put back. e.g they chop trees for fuel but don't grow them, they take animals but don't breed them.
On the other hand we in the west simply take take on a grander scale we chop down whole forests and waste more much more etc.

We could reduce the size and waste of our cities (impact) simply by having smaller houses and consuming less.
We have created the system that rewards us with trivialities for consuming more.

It is possible to alter the whole way we as a species behave, and impact the environment by simply altering our value system.
No I'm not talking about flute playing universal nirvana . I'm simply saying there are viable alternatives . If we *want to*. My goal is that we do that before nihilism becomes a self fulfilling prophecy

Superb well written article. Thanks very much Melvin Bolton.

The key point in the short term is that only the rich and the elected officials they support, benefit from high immigration. The rest of us get lower wages, more expensive housing, food, water and power, a deteriorating environment, more congestion, etc.

The key point in the long term is that we have to be sustainable some day. Every day we continue on the current path makes it harder to be sustainable, so we are shifting the problem to our children. That is just simply the wrong thing to do.

Solutions for Australia: Stop baby bonuses and go to net zero immigration.

Best action for Australia regarding the rest of the world: Set a good example, show them we care about them and don't pilfer their best people.

*We could reduce the size and waste of our cities (impact) simply by having smaller houses and consuming less*

The problem here Examinator, is that you most likely think that
others should agree with your perspective on life. It frankly
ain't that simple.

So how many kids should we have max?
How big a house?
How big a tv screen?
How much fuel should we burn a week?

These are all subjective questions, with no right or wrong answers.

For instance, I bought an LED TV last week, so its good on power,
but its still a 40" screen. So is that too much consumption?
Well I never bred your tribe of kids, so my environmental inpact
is far smaller then yours, always will be.

So your point is a bit like how long is a piece of string

Spot on Ericc.

Exactly Leigh and could not agree more with you. You are spot-on and incredibly intelligent with your foresight [a main point regarding population growth] ie rectify Australia's balance of trade before allowing more immigrants into Australia. Unfortunately a line does require being drawn. Common sense prevails.

The Aged: Query: Where will all the nursing homes be constructed? What accommodation will be given to Australians in my age group when we reach our 70s or 80s [if alive]?

Very few farmers and graziers remain as landholders leased or owned, who support Australians via our exports [primary/critical] being wheat, crops, Fine Merino Wool, cotton, beef, lamb etc. Given that most of their land has and will continue to be taken over by developers and the Government forcing them to sell, at a pittance, to keep up with the demands of housing a greater population. Witnessing this again currently. Most country towns are now moving along to become small cities and land many years ago churned up into little blocks. This is great and not a complaint; however, expect no balance of trade: zilch primary exports to feed and support this country. There had better be some GREAT innovators and exporters amongst this next generation. The 60 Billion dollar Coal deal with China may assist a little in supporting Australia; however Australia really should have supported its farmers and graziers with exports back in the 90's and not sold out. Stock wool pile crap, Free Trade Agreements, The inaction of the AWC, list goes on. Our exports were adversely affected 20 years ago; without primary exports this country was stuffed long ago; growth in population topped it off.

The Medical, Crime: when and how are all these issues going to be addressed while populaton growth soars?

When will you people realise?
It is not politicians or rich people or businesses pushing this growth bs it is CAPITALISM. Capitalism is predicated on there being growth everlasting. If not for the destruction of 2 world wars and the resulting growth of rebuilding and technology advances capitalism would have failed long ago. Todays crisis/es of confidence are signs of capitalism getting out of control. Too much power and money in too few hands with nothing to do with it but lend on any old fool scheme going. Booms and collapses are capitalisms forte. The majority have gotten poorer and cant afford anything but indebted servitude and mindless consumerism.

Our world is finite and as the Incas, Easter island and the deserts across what was once the fertile birthplace of civilisation show we are not above nature and if we push the limits we will suffer and die out the same as any overpopulated species. Relying on science to save us is about as logical as praying to god (or the flying spaghetti monster) to save us.

"Capitalism knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

Gee Michael, it would an honour to write an article for OLO but really, many of the comments for the anti-populationists do the job for me.

Check out comments such as 'lines being drawn in the sand' re people who have kids. Check out the rabid anti-capitalism of Mikk, which is a common sentiment amongst the anti-pops, ie, all economic growth is bad.

The problem is Mike is that neither you or the Unsustainable Pops of Oz have any clear policy on how to reduce Australia's pop except by force.

Again OLO demonstrates how sticky this topic is. It is not possible to have rational debate without the pro-unfettered growthists throwing in all sorts of paranoic claims regarding anti-human practices. The irony is that in the future if we continue to promote growth some nutter despot will probably start suggesting absurd methods to curtail population growth.

Economic growth is an oft touted phrase that people trot out because they hear it all the time from the pollies, the media and the corporates.

Corporatism has ensured that we digest this economic growth mantra without really thinking about long term consequences. The Ageing population furphy is the first in a long line of excuses that we will see trotted out by both the Lib/Nat and Labor. The Greens seem a bit wishy washy so far on sustainability which is a shame.

Our latest government is trotting out the Ageing population myth as an excuse for growth, while ignoring the fact that all one is doing is creating the same problem when that generation hits retirement. Do we keep going on at an unrelenting rate to offset a continuing ageing population? That is one thing that we know, death and taxes, age gets to us all.

We need to ride the wave of the current retirement of the baby boomers, afterall most of them paid into a government scheme even before superannuation, and were told they would be looked after by government.

What happened to all that money? There needs to be a safer government managed retirement fund that is protected in legislation to ensure that money does not find its way into general revenue. Private super is no guarantee - it only serves the corporate interest not a retirement interest. Many have lost their retirement savings through fraudulent, risk taking and shonky super companies. Where is the logic?

Really Cheryl, you can't substitute inaccurate assertion for facts just to satisfy your world view and your antagonism towards anyone who doesn't share it.

For example, your claim "The problem is Mike is that neither you or the Unsustainable Pops of Oz have any clear policy on how to reduce Australia's pop except by force" is just nonsense.

Why? Because even with the baby bonus, Australia's natural increase is below replacement rate. And because our predicted population growth is based entirely in maintaining the high immigration levels of recent years. Reducing our level of immigration is a matter of government policy, no force required. Ditto reducing our population, or keeping it stable.

The argument is not whether we can, but whether we should. I think we have got the message that you are in the 'shouldn't' camp.

Candide
So the policy will not be enforced?

It's obvious that the world is over-populated. There are too many people, aren't there? Too much of everyone else, and just enough of me! Human beings are a plague species. Not only that, every one of them is breathing out carbon dioxide. This is bad for the environment. As pollution is morally evil, and as no-one has a right to harm the environment, so people don't have a right to exist. Their numbers should be forcibly controlled. Who can honestly put his hand on his heart and declare that, if we woke up tomorrow and one or two billion people had died, that would be such a bad thing? The state's use of police to enforce policy does not involve force and therefore no ethical question arises when we use force for engineering society, only the merely technical question of which would be the most efficient way to do it. It is capitalism, deliberately producing things to satisfy human wants, that is to blame. The state represents society, and therefore stands far above mere petty individual selfish interests, like wanting to be alive, to feed one's children, and to seek a better life. The world has enough for everyone's need - like my need for broadband - but not enough for everyone's greed - like the people who want to come to Australia and enjoy a higher standard of rice. When we have eliminated the evils of capitalism, and have public ownership of the means of production - then we won't have a problem with excess population that's for sure

ericc and Candide have it right.

If anyone wants to know how to reduce birthrates in other countries just have a look at what Iran did, purely by education. They lowered the birthrate below 1.4 per woman(I think) Proves it can be done with out force or draconian laws. Google Iran+birthrate or fertility should find it.

Biggest problem is how to get religions to be onside.

Yabby,
Thanks for the opportunity to expand my reasoning.
I'm saying two things.

Firstly, the rejection of the only fertile ground , (what and how we do it) leaves us with only nihilist conclusions. Chicken little effect and push back. Which the primary ( tactical )issue I have with discussions on AGW, in fact any topic that can have emotional issues appended to it..

We need to think laterally and investigate all alternatives.
The nihilist approach generated 'push-back' resistance to the reality i.e. pointless bi polar antagonism.

he second point was for people to start that lateral thinking process.
I'm suggesting that the analytical process you put forward is the problem it assumes "realistic" underlying limitations (sic). Consequently reducing solutions to “patching” a problem that is beset with systemic flaws/failures, corruptions and really needs a new, better, controllable operating system.
In short the old order doesn't meet the new requisite criteria/goals/circumstances.
The conditioning/training of the old system interferes with the logic of the new.
e.g. windows to Linux, arguably provides up to 60% of the problem..

We currently have much of the technology to achieve a lessor Cumulative footprint but the above conditioning issues preclude their most effective implementation.

If we don't take this different approach we will simply continue in the endless punctuated cycle of catastrophic disasters that gets us no further than the metaphorical fur challenged ape.

This is no dream-scape merely a methodology that reversed current direction of thinking. Nirvana? Not in the least.

Do I have all the answers to the ultimate goal the cumulative foot print ? no!
No one individual can. There in lies one of the two terminal flaws of Philosophic political treaties like communism, socialism, capitalism et al. The second TF is that they stereotype, dogmatise the impossible, humanity.

Jardine K Jardine,

You have said that we have more water per capita than in the US - probably true, but misleading. A few centimeters of annual rainfall over a vast desert adds up to an enormous volume of water. There is a lot of water in the tropical North, but there are problems with making use of it because of poor soil and ferocious evaporation rates in the dry season. These maps by Chris Watson of the CSIRO show the areas of Australia with good rainfall and good soil.

http://www.australianpoet.com/boundless.html

A lot of your indignation is because you refuse to recognise collective property. Read some of the accounts of the first settlers in the US and Australia. They endured hardship, danger and backbreaking labour. Many had no choice about coming because they were fleeing religious or political persecution, or were slaves or convicts.

If Australia is an attractive place to live with decent infrastructure and decent education, health care and living standards, it is because our predecessors made it that way and because we are keeping it that way. They did it for themselves and their friends, and for their own childen, not so that any random person from around the world could latch onto a ready-made high standard of living or so that the business elite could get even richer on real estate speculation and exploiting cheap labour.

Some immigration is often in the interests of the host population, but why do you think that otherwise you have any more right to simply horn in on someone else's country, putting more pressure on the environment and diluting the quality of life, than you do to help yourself to someone else's car or mobile phone? Why should people who have not overpopulated, or mismanaged, or supported corrupt and incompetent leaders pay for those who have? You would be outraged if you knew that your estate would be distributed to random strangers rather than your own children, but that is exactly what you want to do with the value of our citizenship.