GLR News and Information > Geography, Economy & GLR Politics

Immigration

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Athrael:
I know its been over 120 days since the last post on this thread, thank you.

However I am new to this forum and would like to comment to many of these threads.



1. I am under the impression that the there is the belief that gays and lesbians will not find ways to insure a steady increase of native born sons and daughters.

I think if we could talk to each and every gay and lesbian in the USA we would find some interest in producing (not just adopting) offspring.  We may have different drives when it comes to who we show our attention to, but we are still powerfully motivated to have our own offspring. Gay men and lesbians have been making pacts or deals on producing offspring for quite sometime. It is frowned upon by our society and our laws make it a daunting task of insuring rights to parents biological and otherwise.  So the demand is kept low.  We can safely assume that in a society geared to equality real equality within its population that there would be a baby boom. And fertility clinics would become even more popular and too parent right would extend further. Take away all of the stumbling blocks and I think there will be a population explosion within the gay community. 

2. Immigration will not be that big beyond the first few years of the date of Declaration of Independence Of the Gay Nation. There will be the Pilgrims, the First wave who will establish a New Nation, followed by the constant trickle of those born later on who come to realize that they are not quite home. Why? Because the majority of the world will not suddenly stop being bigoted. In fact we could expect a great sigh of relief when we remove ourselves from the rest of the world (As long as its not in their back yard) and they will strive to make certain that all of our numbers find their way "home".  Once a Gay Nation is established I assure you bigotry and hate will grow, not lessen. However it will be in the form of pushing our brothers and sisters to the nation.  Immigration will be set, and as the outside societies become less tolerant and young gays are told to go to that Fag Nation (as we can be assured will be one of the more colorful titles it will receive) the pressure to immigrate will be there.

Further you can expect a few straight tolerant individuals - no not just the fag hags, I'm talking about people who like us are disgusted by the illusion of equality and desire as much as we do to live in a society where equality is in practice, not just paid lip service too.

3. There will be an immediate attraction to Gay Mecca in that its all gay.  San Francisco attracts many young gays because it is known to tolerate if not embrace homosexuals. The influx of homosexuals is a constant in no need for a beautiful city, great jobs, etc. Those are there, but they are the least important motivation for homosexuals who go to The City by the Bay. People seek their likes, their niche. Once there is a real niche they will come, swim, crawl, take any steps to get there.

4. We can assume that it will be well known that Gay Mecca will provide the same rights and freedoms as the Western World however extending to include that equality in marriage, parentage and all of the other stuff without all of the gay bashing, and potential for harm and death that is still offered in the 21st century of the Western World. That in and of itself will insure attraction to its shores.

However. It may be somewhat necessary to control the influx and also to provide missionary work to the outside world with the goal of harvesting our brothers and sisters out of the world.  We should never forget that a good majority of the gay world lives in poverty since a good majority lives in poverty. Many of those places practice religions and have laws that prohibit open gayness. As such collecting our kindred from those nations will require more than just opening the gates to the rest of the world, it will require that we be fishers of men in a sense.

And carefully I add that we should not exclude the straights, bisexuals and those who are tolerant. Carefully we tread into a utopia, we should always work toward not carrying on the bigotries we strive to abolish by turning the tables on the straight world. There are many who are straight that love us and accept us unconditionally and who may very well find living in a Queer Nation preferable to the straight ones.

I would assume that any Gay Nation would try to be first world in its luxury and its structure. Perhaps First world with a commune nature relying more on the local ecology and seeking to have the least impact upon the natural world. Electricity, plumbing, education, health care, cell phones, computers and the rest of the trappings will be there.

Why is the USA such a popular destination spot? Is it the GNP or is it more the ideals of freedom, equality and opportunity that act like a guiding light?

Install those basic freedoms and equalities in the constitution of the Gay Nation and you will have immigrants. People seeking for those things most precious to humans but seemingly at a premium around the world.

Mogul:
It shall be mentioned that the net migration rate means only the difference of the immigration/emigration rate and does not represent the general mobility of a population. This pictogram from the German Migration report shows impressively, how different the in- and outfluxes can be for particular countries:



As we can see, people are much more mobile than it is generally thought. For the Gay State it will be important to make the life of its inhabitants more attractive than elsewhere so the immigration keeps on and the emigration remains low.

Beyound the usual workforce migration, there is a very interesting analogy (as far as immigration is concerned) between the gay people and the ethnic Germans from former socialist block, who were "returning" to Germany. It must be explained that every German descendant from those (formerly) persecuting countries has the constitutionally guaranteed right to emigrate to Germany and obtain the full citizenship. This sounds very similarly to what we are planning to establish for gays. The German diaspora in the former Soviet Union made some 2-3% of the entire population, this is also comparable with gay community, with the exception that homosexuals are born constantly for the end of time.



The decline of immigration is caused by the exhausted human potential, improved situation in the countries of origin, and more restrictive legislation on the German side. If we assume that our human potential will never be exhausted, the immigration numbers could be actually very high. Stable economy will be, however, a necessary condition.

Mogul:
The numbers for the internal migration rates within countries are, of course, much larger than the numbers for the cross-border migration. Main reasons prohibiting the cross-border migration are the missing/insufficient language skills, legal difficulties for foreigners and the non-recognition of education certificates.

Shall the Gay State offer social and economic standards comparable to at least moderately developed countries, this place will actually experience no difficulties to maintain its population. Everywhere in the world gays show the tendency to congregate in few larger cities, mostly because of the gay infrastructure and greater personal freedom.

If the Gay State is to secure the cross-border immigration rates as high as the internal migration rates elswhere, it shall find solutions to help migrants to overcome the above difficulties connected to the language and new legal system. First of all, migrants must quickly learn the country language, because otherwise they will be not able to find an appropriate job corresponding with their professional skills. The ways to solve this problem are either a very simple, easy-to-learn country language (Esperanto, IDO, Basic English) or a very massive deploy of language courses for all and for free. Second, migrants must have chances to get their professional skills recognized or evaluated, and in case of necessity be helped to gain the necessary level.

Generally, I would advocate rather liberal legislation on professional requirements, leaving it to the employers to decide whether someone is qualified enough to do the job. Few professions must, of course, require standart evaluation: e.g. medical and higher education personel etc. It must be possible for a migrant to make a test on his knowledges/skills/gifts and get the necessary support for professional developement.

The reason why I was calculating with the average age of immigrants to be 30 is the following: usually it takes time untill a homosexual youth first discovers his/her sexuality, than developes a gay identity, and it might take several more years untill the he/she learns to see this identity as his/her national identity. Though there are many young gays confronted with necessity to make the choice at a very juvenile age, most are trying to get on terms with their heterosexual environment somehow and first go to college or look for a job. If the Gay State gains dynamic, it is very probably that you might keep right and the immigrants become younger, which would be of course a very positive developement.

The initial immigration will be, on contrary, indeed a very difficult issue. It is out of question that gays from highly industrialized democratic countries would in large amounts go to an uninhabited distant island, however many less wealthy gays from Iraque, Iran, Afghanistan and Nigeria probably would move without overly greate hesitations. Now we of course cannot assume that all migrants from oppressive countries are poor and unskilled, and of course a highly qualified Iranian surgerist must not be expected to work as a construction worker somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A well-coordinated developement plan will be required, concentrating on installation of infrastructure and basic communal facilities. A developement bank will support the establishment of necessary businesses, be it tourism, transportation or industry. It is clear that we do not want to go the way of civilisation once again, therefore we should choose the stand-of-the-art standards right from beginning. An instant colony with basic comforts is very well possible, but of course with sufficient financial support from our background organizations.

Many immigrants can be those refugees who were not granted asylum on grounds of their homosexuality - we must achieve agreements with various governments that regulate the process of transferring such refugees to our protection instead of deportation to their country of origin. The UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (article 32) clearly obligates the states to give each refugee the chance to seek protection by a third party in case his/her request for asylum was denied.

Others will come either by their own means, or be picked up in transit countries.

Feral:
I confess I have seen no figures on the movements of gay people; it would come as a bit of a surprise to learn that someone had bothered to analyze them. Still, it is my perception that only a small fraction of the gay people remain in the towns in which they were born. Every single gay man of my acquaintance has moved to a place more accepting of gays. Now, it is true that young str8 people also move from the places of their birth for better prospects, and do so in very large numbers. I think this impulse may be somewhat greater for gays, since they share all the economic reasons to migrate and have social reasons as well.

While thirty years is certainly a reasonable lower limit for the purposes of calculation, I think it may be too high. The urge to escape one's surroundings quite often occurs much younger. While I would suggest an alternate figure of 20 years, some of the statistics I have been reading on gay homelessness suggests that 16 is more than occasionally the age in which some gay people flee their former lives, often to ill effect.

I think it is not so much a question of IF gay people would relocate -- I believe they already do. It is a question of WHERE they relocate. Should some place be seen to offer both economic prospects and true political liberty to gays, I think this place would see a substantial influx of people. If financial and physical assistance were available to facilitate migration, I think the initial numbers might be very high indeed.

I do not think that this would be the case if the future offered by such a place were more speculative. A rough pioneer's life on some island or some arid wasteland would hardly be attractive to many unless the prospects of imminent success were certain and obvious signs of progress were clearly visible. Such a fantasy is unlikely. Many things are possible, but not, I think, some instant colony in the middle of nowhere.

Mogul:
If you remember, we were discussing about renewal of population on some other place. Due to importance of immigration politics, I suggest this separate thread shall be dedicated to this issue.

If we assume the average age of immigrants be 30 years and the average life expectation be 70 years, we can count with 40 years to be the average time of a citizen spent on the gay territory. This would require then the annual population renewal rate be at 2.5%, in other words the gay state would need a netto migration rate of + 25 persons per 1000 inhabitants to keep the population constant. There was then a question whether such an immigration rate would be unusually high and if this would not cause problems connected to proper integration of new citizens. Though there should be less problems with gay people than straight immigrants by times cause/experience in their new societies, it is usefull to compare the net migration rates of other countries, using the statistics from the CIA factbook.

Here are some selected countries:

Importing countries:

Liberia: + 27.39 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 2.74 %)

Kuwait: + 15.66 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 1.57 %)

Qatar: + 14.12 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 1.41 %)

San Marino: + 10.7 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 1.07 %)

Turks and Caicos Islands: +10.54 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 1.05 %)

Singapore: + 9.12 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.91 %)

Luxembourg: 8.75 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.88 %)

Northern Mariana Islands: + 8.26 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.83 %)

Monaco: + 7.68 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.77 %)

Andorra: + 6.47 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.65 %)

Hong Kong: + 4.89 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.49 %) [Bithrate: 0.73%, death rate: 0.63%, netto population growth: 0.59%]

Macau: + 4.56 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.46 %)

Australia: + 3.85 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.39 %)

New Zealand: + 3.83 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.65 %)

USA: + 3.2 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.32 %)

Germany: + 2.18 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.22 %)

Malta: 2.05 per 1000 inhabitants (+ 0.21 %)

Exporting countries:

Bahamas: - 2.17 per 1000 inhabitants (- 0.22 %)

Seycheles: - 5.4 per 1000 inhabitants (- 0.54 %) [birthrate: 1.60%, deathrate: 0.63%, netto population growth: + 0.43%]

Virgin Islands: - 8.73 per 1000 inhabitants (- 0.87 %) [Birthrate: 1.40%, deathrate: 0.64%, netto population growth: - 0.12%]

Trinidad and Tobago: - 11.07 per 1000 inhabitants (- 1.11 %)

Grenada: -12.59 per 1000 inhabitants (- 1.26 %) [Birthrate: 2.21%, deathrate: 0.69%, netto population growth: + 0.26]

Micronesia: - 21.03 per 1000 inhabitants (- 2.10 %) [Birthrate: 2.47%, deathrate: 0.48%, netto population growth: - 0.11%]

American Samoa: - 21.11 per 1000 inhabitants (- 2.11 %) [birthrate: 2.25%, deathrate: 0.33%, netto population growth: - 0.19%]


The analysis of these data allows few conclusions:

1)  A net migration rate of + 25 persons per 1000 inhabitants is comparable with many other modern societies. Certainly, it is 2-3 times higher than the rates of Luxembourg and San Marino, but the numbers are within the same range.

2) Procreation is not a necessary and sufficient condition for maintanance and growth of the population. There are various countries in the list which grow thanks to the immigration, and some which have a declining population in spite of enourmous birth rates (e.g. Micronesia and American Samoa).

3) The migration is dependent mostly on general life prospectives awaiting the potential migrants in their new countries in contrast to their home countries. One can not say that insular nations are particularly affected by emigration, indeed there are many islands which have very high positive netto migration rates (Singapore, Turks and Caicos Islands). The ones loosing population are the ones with extreme birth rates and poor economies, while those who grow have jobs to offer and generally promise a better life.

What are the conclusions applied for the case of the Gay State? If so many young people emigrate purely of economic reasons, how many more would emigrate in expectation of a better personal life? The government will, however, be in responsibility of offering some economic prospectives to all these people and guaranteeing reasonable health services.

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