Is immigration the answer to low birth rates? Not so much, but it does wonders for welfare rolls

From Mark Steyn:

"The reality is encapsulated in this remarkable statistic from the Bundesausländerbeauftragte: between 1971 and 2000, the number of foreign residents in Germany rose from three million to about 7.5 million. Yet the number of foreigners in work stayed more or less exactly the same at about two million. Four decades ago, two-thirds of German immigrants were in the workforce. By the turn of the century, barely a quarter were. These days, Germany’s Gastarbeiter (“guest workers”) are heavy on the Gast, ever lighter on the Beiter.

Turks in Germany have three times the rate of welfare dependency as ethnic Germans, and their average retirement age is 50. In the Stockholm suburb of Tensta, where immigrants and their children make up 85 per cent of the population, one-fifth of women in their late 40s collect disability benefits. Foreigners didn’t so much game the system as discover, thanks to family “reunification” and other lollipops, that it demanded nothing of them. Indeed, entire industries were signed up for public subsidy. Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole."