Birth crisis and immigration: plan or economic inertia?

Birth crisis and mass immigration: a plan or economic inertia?

Why does Europe combine policies that discourage having children with an open-door immigration policy that seems to have no limit? Anyone trinc Spain's demographic debate encounters two schools of thought: one that sees a deliberate roadmap drawn up by elites – with the Club of Rome and the 1973 crisis as the starting gun – and another that attributes the outcome to the mere alignment of corporate and state incentives. Both converge on an uncomfortable diagnosis: the pension system needs young contributors, and businesses need cheap labour. The logic behind importing population is as simple as it is brutal.

The vicious circle: fewer children, more immigration

The central argument is that low birth rates are not addressed with family support policies – childcare, leave, affordable housing – but with demographic replacement. It is pointed out that as early as debates in the late 1980s, warnings were issued that immigration would be the solution to the shortage of children. But that solution has been applied without quotas, without contracts signed in countries of origin and without planning, producing the opposite of the intended effect: the rise of reactionary parties and growing polarisation. Those who defend this thesis speak of a preconceived roadmap, executed in a disorderly manner so as not to raise suspicion.

Structural incentives vs. global conspiracy

Another school of thought, more sceptical of conspiracies, points to the simple logic of capitalism. "If you double the supply of workers – women plus immigrants – the price of labour falls, end of story," the argument goes. There is no need for a secret committee in Davos: business lobbies and think tanks set the guidelines, the left buys the diversity narrative and the economic right buys the cheap labour. The local – Spanish – worker is the adjustment variable. Add to this the financialisation of housing and the outsourcing of family life, which turn the home into an investment product and child-rearing into a luxury.

Pensions and energy: the backdrop nobody openly discusses

Behind the debate lies a problem of sustainability of the public pension system and energy decline. The Club of Rome report (1972) and the 1973 oil crisis are cited as the moment when technocrats began planning the reduction of Western birth rates and the importation of docile labour. Cheap energy made it possible to sustain the welfare state and a credit economy that promised rights without duties. But net energy available per capita in the West has been stagnant since 2018, and energy decline looms as the great social leveller. "Scarcity will produce fragmentation, not an orderly return to traditions," one analysis warns. The return to the extended family or to barter will come out of necessity, not ideology.

Five concrete mechanisms to demand democratic transparency in immigration:
- An annual plan voted in Parliament, with targets and limits.
- Prior assessment of fiscal, housing, health, education and labour market impact.
- Quarterly public data on arrivals, departures, administrative status, employment and use of services.
- A sunset clause: the policy is not extended by inertia.
- Independent ex-post evaluation, with an obligation to respond and correct deviations.

When energy becomes more expensive, intangible professions (lawyers, consultants) will lose value compared to tangible ones (plumbers, electricians). But that revaluation will come with misery in tow. The debate over whether mass immigration is a plan or an inertial drift remains open. What seems clear is that, so far, nobody has asked whether we want to keep the population growing forever. Perhaps because the uncomfortable answer is that there is no plan B, only kicking the can down the road.