Italian study warns that current demographic trends spell end of Italians

A recent report by the Italian think tank Centro Machiavelli revealed that if current trends continue, by 2065 first- and second-generation immigrants will exceed 22 million persons, or more than 40 percent of Italy’s total population.

The study revealed the incredibly fast demographic change occurring in Italy, a phenomenon “without precedent” in Italy’s history, the study asserts. Not long ago, in 2001, the percentage of immigrants living in Italy crossed the low threshold of one percent.

At the beginning of 2017, five million foreigners were living in Italy as residents, a growth of a remarkable 25 percent relative to 2012 and a remarkable 270 percent over 2002. In fifteen years the figure has nearly trebled to 8.33 percent of the population.

Fertility has dropped from 2.7 children per Italian woman to just 1.5 children per woman currently, a figure well below the replacement level.

Children being born in Italy from immigrants however are statistically massively over-represented. Italian regions with the highest fertility rates are the Italian north and in the Lazio region, where there is also a higher concentration of immigrants.

According to the report, by 2065 if current trends continue, first- as well as second-generation immigrants will exceed 22 million people, which is more than 40 percent of Italy’s total population.

Even more alarmingly, the high concentration of immigrant populations only list a few countries of origin – all Muslim – and has created “closed, homogeneous communities that fail to integrate with their host society,” or ghettos, the study notes.

Some 64 percent of the total immigrant population, comes from just ten countries.

And Italy is not alone this demographic downward spiral of the host population, the study stated. Extrapolating from current trends, British citizens will no longer be the majority of the population in the United Kingdom around 2050. Britain is in denial, Vincent Cooper wrote in The Commentator. “If population trends continue, by the year 2050, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation.”

In Germany today, 36 percent of children under five are born to immigrant parents, which presages a significant demographic shift in the next generation in that country as well.

In this regard, Italy represents a microcosm of Europe itself, which accounted for over a fifth of the entire world population in 1950 (22 percent), yet is expected to make up just 7 percent of the world population in the year 2050, the study states.

The impact of demographic free-fall is most visible in the former Soviet bloc countries such as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

Eastern Europe is now most exposed to the “depopulation bomb”, the devastating collapse in birth rate that the current-events analyst and author Mark Steyn has called “the biggest issue of our time”.

The New York Times has questioned their resistance to immigration. It lamented that “despite shrinking population, Eastern Europe resists accepting migrants”.

But the shrinking demography is precisely the reason Eastern Europeans fear being replaced by migrants. History has not been kind to much of Eastern Europe, as many countries had already experienced the occupation by Muslims for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire.

“There are two distinct views in Europe today to consider”, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán noted. “One of these is held by those who want to address Europe’s demographic problems through immigration.”

But he added: “There is another view, held by Central Europe – and, within it, Hungary. Our view is that we must solve our demographic problems by relying on our own resources and mobilising our own reserves, and – let us acknowledge it – by renewing ourselves spiritually”. Orbán added that “the question of the upcoming decades is whether Europe will continue to belong to Europeans”.

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is even more pessimistic: “In the coming 30 years, the number of Africans will grow by more than one billion people. That is twice the population of the entire European Union… The demographic pressure will be enormous.

“One-third of the Africans want to move abroad, and many want to come to Europe. Last year, over 180,000 people crossed in shabby boats from Libya. And this is just the beginning. According to EU Commissioner Avramopoulos, at his very moment, 3 million migrants are waiting to enter Europe.”