American fertility rate hits all-time low as Dems clamor for foreign replacements
A study published last year in the Lancet revealed that fertility rates have declined in all countries and territories since 1950 and that "human civilization is rapidly converging on a sustained low-fertility reality."
The fertility rate references the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime if she were to experience the age-specific fertility rates of a given year.
In 1950, the global fertility rate was 4.84. In 2021, it was 2.23. By the end of this century, it is expected to drop to 1.59 globally — a rate that Britain, Europe, and a number of Asian countries such as South Korea have long been well below.
This trend is catastrophic, especially for those hoping to bequeath their nations to native-born persons as opposed to imported multitudes and for those keen more broadly to stave off a global population collapse. After all, the fertility rate necessary for a population to maintain stability and replenish itself without requiring replacement by foreign nationals is 2.1.
The United States set a fertility record last year — in the wrong direction.
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that U.S. fertility rates dropped to an all-time low in 2024, with 1.599 children being born per woman. By way of comparison, the latest reported fertility rates in Australia, England and Wales, Canada, and China are 1.5, 1.44, 1.26, and 1.01, respectively.
The data released on Thursday indicates that birth rates — the number of births per 1,000 females — dropped for women aged 15-34 between 2023 and 2024 while rising for women aged 40-44, signaling that some women are delaying having kids.
'The number of births has declined 16%; the GFR is down 22% from 2007 to 2024.'
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"U.S. birth certificate data show that, from 2023 to 2024, the number of births increased by 1%, while the [general fertility rate] declined 1%," the CDC stated. "From 2007 (the most recent high) to 2023, the number of births has declined 16%; the GFR is down 22% from 2007 to 2024."
Last year, there were only 3.62 million births registered in the United States — 429,880 fewer births than reported in the U.S. in 2000 and 370,452 fewer births than in 2010, and only 1.5 million more than the known number of illegal aliens who stole over the southern border into the homeland last year.
The U.S. has been on a downward trend for centuries, interrupted only by the mid-20th-century baby boom which saw a fertility rate of 3.7 at its zenith.
The new record was set under the Biden administration, which championed the slaughter of the unborn and the effective sterilization of vulnerable populations while enabling millions of foreign nationals to steal into the country — a demographic substitution that one Democrat referred to as a "replenishment" of the population and critics have long referred to as the "great replacement."
The Trump administration has taken a different tack, not only protecting children from sterilization at the hands of gender ideologues and tackling chemicals linked to infertility, but promoting pro-natalist and pro-family policies.
Vice President JD Vance said in his address to pro-life advocates at the 52nd annual March of Life in January, "I want more babies in the United States of America; I want more happy children in our country; and I want beautiful young men and young women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them."
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With this aim, the Trump administration got Trump accounts — the baby bonus program that has the federal government contribute $1,000 to each qualifying child after the birth — passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and has taken steps to reduce the cost of in vitro fertilization.
'They start seeing humans as a plague, a blight on the surface of the earth.'
Such policy efforts, the impact of which are not immediately clear but have not produced great results abroad, have enraged the likes of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who said earlier this year of conservatives' supposed plan for America: "It's all in there. Return to the family, the nuclear family, return to being a Christian nation, return to, you know, producing a lot of children."
"[It's] sort of odd because the people who produce the most children in our country are immigrants, and they want to deport them," Clinton added.
Clinton is hardly the only Democrat who figures that immigration is the answer to low American birth rates.
Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, suggested while stumping for Kamala Harris last year that "America is not having enough babies to keep our populations up, so we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work."
Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said in 2022 that the answer to declining birth rates was amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens.
"We're short of workers; we have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to," Schumer said. "The only way we're going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants — the Dreamers and all of them — 'cause our ultimate goal is to help the Dreamers but get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here."
Elon Musk, among those who have raised the alarm about the risk of population collapse, claimed last year in an interview with Tucker Carlson that the "civilizational suicide" under way in the West was caused in part by climate alarmism.
"The environmental movement in the extreme is fundamentally misanthropic and anti-human," Musk told Tucker Carlson in an interview. "They start seeing humans as a plague, a blight on the surface of the earth — that earth would be this paradise if only the humans weren't here."
Morgan Stanley analysts told investors in 2021 that the "movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline."
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The Islamification of America is well under way
America was built on a Christian foundation, rooted in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and a devotion to God Almighty.
These weren’t trivial ideals. They were bricks in the wall — pillars that held up a republic unlike anything the world had seen.
This is not a religion as the West understands religion. It is a comprehensive theocratic legal system, one that seeks total submission.
That foundation is cracking. Not from earthquakes but from erosion, from silence, from fear. By 2040, Islam is expected to be the second-largest religion in the United States, surpassing Judaism.
Let this census-level reality sink in for a minute.
With growth comes influence: cultural, legal, political. The consequences will be profound, and they will not wait politely at the door.
Mosque and state
Islam is not like Christianity. It does not draw clean lines between worship and law or between private belief and public life. In Islam, the personal is political. The religious is legal. The mosque is a courtroom, a legislature, and a military command center. Sharia is the spine of Islamic thought — codified, enforced, and upheld across centuries.
It governs every facet of life, down to what you wear, what you eat, what you’re allowed to say, who you can marry, how you discipline children, what rights women don’t have, and what punishments must be meted out to the disobedient. There is no distinction between moral failure and criminal offense. There is no distinction between private sin and public punishment.
Total submission
Under Sharia, apostates are to be executed, blasphemers silenced, homosexuals thrown from rooftops. Thieves mutilated. Women veiled, owned, constrained, beaten. Contracts, taxes, and warfare are governed by divine statute, not civic reason.
This is not a religion as the West understands religion. It is a comprehensive theocratic legal system, one that seeks not peaceful coexistence but total submission. To invite it in under the banner of tolerance is a form of national self-harm.
In Islamic doctrine, there is no freedom of conscience — absolutely none. Conversion away from Islam is considered treason, not metaphorically but literally. To leave the faith is to forfeit your life. The Quran, the hadiths, the scholars — they agree. A Muslim who becomes an “infidel” is not merely mistaken. He is a traitor. And traitors, in Islam, must be dealt with.
The West, shaped by Christianity, grew to celebrate the soul’s autonomy: the right to believe, to doubt, to wrestle with God in private. Islam has no such allowance.
Moderate ... by Taliban standards?
The West clings to the idea of the “moderate Muslim.” The polite neighbor. The assimilated voter. The religious man who just wants peace. That man exists. Of course he does. But moderation isn’t the standard that matters — not in politics, not in law. Not in demographics. The real question is this: moderate compared to what?
Moderate compared to the Taliban? Compared to ISIS? Compared to a suicide bomber in Gaza? That’s not a useful metric. A man without a suicide vest isn’t necessarily a friend in waiting. Just because someone isn’t brandishing a weapon doesn’t mean he believes in democracy, equality, or pluralism.
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"Moderate," when measured only by distance from violence, is absolutely meaningless. It allows the West to pretend that surface-level civility equals compatibility with liberal values. This is idiotic thinking. Scratch beneath the surface, and you’ll often discover core beliefs completely at odds with constitutional freedom.
In the context of Islam, moderation is relative only within its own system. A moderate Muslim might still believe that Muhammad was the perfect man, that the Quran is the literal word of God, and that Sharia is the ideal legal system for humanity. That’s not moderation by American standards. That’s just a quieter form of absolutism. Moderation, when measured only by what someone doesn’t do, becomes meaningless.
Creeping accommodation
America isn’t being overtaken by terrorism. It’s being overtaken by submission and quiet demands for accommodations. Foot-washing stations in public universities. Prayer breaks in workplaces. Hijabs in courtrooms. Schools dropping pork from lunch menus. And behind every new policy is a pressure campaign. Behind every pressure campaign, a precedent. And behind each precedent, a message: Bend or be called a bigot.
Islam doesn’t bend to host cultures. It outlasts them. It absorbs them. Ask France. Ask Sweden. Ask Belgium. Ask Britain, where entire towns operate under de facto Sharia. Where police turn a blind eye to grooming gangs. Where bloodthirsty psychopaths murder concertgoers. Where the fear is so thick it doesn’t need to be spoken. It just lives in the back of the throat.
CAIRing is sharing
In America, the same pattern is forming. Activist groups disguise their intentions in the language of civil rights. The Council on American-Islamic Relations calls itself a defender of religious liberty. However, behind the appeals to tolerance lies a pernicious political project — a theocratic one that sees American values not as rights to protect but as threats to eliminate.
Islam is not a race. It is not an ethnicity. It is not a vague spiritual belief. It is a legal-political system that carries with it specific obligations. The devout are not asked to live and let live. They are instructed to spread the faith — through da’wah, through influence, through numbers, through laws. The ultimate goal is not coexistence. It is dominance. Peace, in Islamic jurisprudence, comes only after submission.
And no, this isn’t xenophobia. This is history. This is reality. This is theology meeting demography. Look at Iran, once Persia. Look at Lebanon, once Christian. Look at Afghanistan, once Buddhist (yes, really). What Islam cannot conquer by weaponry, it conquers by the womb. Slowly. Relentlessly. Without apology.
China's 35 million incels face bleak future of state-run AI 'romance' — are American men next?
In China today, there are more single men than the combined total population of Australia and Singapore. Thirty-five million “leftover” males, the legacy of a once-celebrated one-child policy and a cultural obsession with sons, are now wandering through life invisible, unwanted, and alone.
The government’s solution? Dating camps. Week-long romantic boot camps for men to learn how to talk to women, brush their teeth, and hopefully get lucky with one of the few women available.
It’s not satire. It’s state policy. And it reeks of desperation.
While China’s numbers are uniquely staggering, the West is heading in the exact same direction.
In some provinces, officials are subsidizing flirtation seminars. Men — mostly from rural backgrounds, working low-paid jobs — are taught how to make eye contact, speak without trembling, and understand female preferences. They practice smiling. They are warned not to talk about tractors, dead relatives, or pig feed on a first date.
Fear of incels
Local governments are pitching this as a social stability initiative, because too many single men in a society often mean unrest, crime, and, eventually, revolution. The Communist Party may not believe in God, but it definitely believes in the threat of incels.
Let’s stop and define that word before it gets distorted by the usual suspects. Incel — short for “involuntary celibate” — doesn’t mean terrorist or keyboard troll, no matter how loudly feminist bloggers try to paint it that way. It means exactly what it says: men who want a relationship but can’t get one.
Not by choice, but because they’ve drawn the short straw — genetically, financially, socially, or all three. In China, there are tens of millions of them, walking proof that when a society turns love into a transaction, only the top bidders get through the door.
Feminism's lab leak
The reason dating camps exist is simple: Everything else has failed. Chinese women, especially those in cities, just aren’t interested. Why would they be? They’ve spent decades leapfrogging men in education and career status. Raised on a steady diet of Korean dramas, Western rom-coms, and aspirational Instagram reels, they now see marriage less as a necessity and more as a downgrade.
The guy who turns up in worn sneakers, quoting Xi Jinping, still living with his mother, and offering a life of austerity? He’s not Prince Charming. He’s a cautionary tale. And yes, China might look sealed off from the West, but don’t be fooled. The mind virus of modern feminism, which escaped from a university lab somewhere in California, leaked through the global media pipeline and infected everything it touched.
It told women they deserve everything and owe the world nothing, that motherhood is a trap, men are optional, children are a nuisance, and career is salvation. And now even in Beijing, you’ll find women with sky-high expectations and an allergic-like reaction to commitment.
An impossible standard
Today, to qualify as marriage material in China, a man must not only own a home (in one of the most inflated property markets on earth) and earn a steady wage. He also must be tall, handsome, emotionally literate, domestically competent, family-minded, and — critically — politically invisible to a regime scanning constantly for subversives and problematics.
It’s a checklist designed not by facts but by fiction. And for millions of men, the message is blindingly clear: You're not good enough and never will be. So they retreat. Not to the village, but to the screen.
More and more are turning to AI girlfriends, chatbots programmed to listen, flatter, and never say “ew.” It’s not love. It’s code in a dress. But unlike real women, she won’t ghost you for being 5'5" and earning less than a guy selling boiled eggs off a scooter.
Sound familiar, American reader?
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Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Don't laugh
Because while China’s numbers are uniquely staggering, the West is heading in the exact same direction, just with better PR. The birth rate is plummeting. Marriage is on life support. Millions of young men in the U.S., U.K., and Australia are quietly disappearing into online worlds, their real ones offering nothing but rejection and ridicule.
We laugh at China’s “virtual girlfriend” industry, where AI chatbots simulate love for lonely bachelors. But those same bots now dominate Western app stores too. Replika. EVA AI. Nomi. The West isn’t mocking China. We’re beta-testing the same collapse.
In both East and West, the crisis isn’t really about dating. It’s about worth and meaning. A generation of men — especially those without degrees, city jobs, or six-figure paychecks — have been quietly told they’re surplus. Not needed as protectors. Not wanted as providers. Not seen as viable partners.
In China, it’s a demographic failure. In America, it’s cultural warfare dressed up as progress: “Do better,” “toxic masculinity,” “the future is female.”
Eradicating mutual need
China has its dating boot camps and AI waifus whispering sweet nothings in Mandarin. America has OnlyFans, SSRIs, and emotional detox tutorials from 23-year-old YouTubers. But none of it touches the core problem: We’ve waged a full-scale war on traditional male value. You can’t shame a man into being lovable. And you can’t seminar your way out of a dating market that treats him like a broken appliance.
The dating camps won’t work. You can’t reverse decades of isolation, emasculation, and techno-distraction with a weekend crash course on how to compliment a woman’s hair without sounding creepy. The deeper issue is that men and women no longer need each other in the same way they used to. That need has been severed, replaced by individualism on steroids, rising costs of living, and the dopamine drip of digital attention.
So we raise women to believe they should never rely on anyone. And we raise men to believe no one will ever rely on them. Then we stare blankly at the birth charts when neither wants to start a family.
Coming (non)-attractions
And if you think the CCP’s dating camps sound bleak, just wait until a U.S. senator proposes government-subsidized speed dating in Youngstown, Ohio, with tax rebates for every successful match. The disease is spreading. Fertility in the West is collapsing almost as fast as China’s. And our men aren’t just failing to marry. They’re failing to care. About women. About themselves. About the future.
We are witnessing the slow, quiet unmaking of civilizational continuity.
Thirty-five million forgotten men in China aren't just China’s problem. This is a preview, a grim symptom of a larger decay: post-industrial societies that gutted meaning, mocked fatherhood, pathologized masculinity, and outsourced intimacy to machines.
What remains are men no longer needed by anyone and women no longer impressed by anything. There is no app for that. No seminar. No quick fix. Only a rather brutal reckoning.
Trump's baby bonus won't work — but we already know the real solution
People are finally noticing that there aren’t as many children as there used to be.
Because demography is destiny when it comes to the future — as opposed to, say, climate science or fortune cookies — even people who don’t like children are alarmed. In case you’ve not heard, times have changed. We’ve gone from worrying about a population bomb to fretting about a population bust. The fertility rate is tanking.
We know what happened — we just don't want to admit it: Our society lost faith in God.
The math is simple: We need every woman to bear at least 2.1 children to maintain a steady population, or about two children to replace every man and woman alive. The 0.1 accounts for the sad fact that some children don’t live to see adulthood.
Let this sink in: I said every woman, not some women. Every. Single. Woman.
Of course, there have always been childless women. But other women have always made up the difference. We must be blunt: Our distaste for reality is acute. For every woman who does not bear children, there must be two women who have three or another who has four. You might not like the math, but too bad.
I know this is an unpopular message. Just mention the facts, and feminists clutch copies of "The Handmaid's Tale" to their breasts.
So how bad is it? Here are the numbers: Last year, the fertility rate in the United States dropped to 1.62 children per woman. But in the global race to zero, we're a laggard.
By comparison, here are a few other nations:
- The United Kingdom: 1.53
- Hungary: 1.5
- Switzerland: 1.44
- Greece: 1.34
- Chile: 1.17
- China: 1.02
- Singapore: 0.97
- South Korea: 0.75
While it is true that the global population continues to rise, that's because people are taking longer to die. And despite the best efforts of Bryan Johnson and Ray Kurzweil (a couple of "don't die" techno-utopians), the death rate is still 100%. This means that the global population, when it finally begins to do gown, will drop like a rock.
For some people, this is great news. They don't like kids anyway, and they're not too sure about the rest of us. But the implications are bad for everything from social welfare to technological innovation to even personal happiness.
We've been fooling ourselves. Social Security and your retirement savings are not replacements for children (i.e., the original retirement plan). Young adults with children to feed do most of the consuming and innovating in any economy. And with fewer children, we're likely to experience economic stagnation and decline for the foreseeable future.
There are naysayers — there always are. In this case, techno-utopians assure us that AI and robots will fill the gaps. But Elon Musk (of all people) isn't so sanguine. And while he is doing his part (with 14 children), no one would call him "Dad of the Year." He scatters his seed like Genghis Khan. His children will have the best of everything, I'm sure, but what they won't have is a father in the home. Honest sociologists and psychologists (not easy to find) say this is one of the most important factors when raising healthy children, a fact people don't like to admit.
So what do we do?
Recently, the Trump administration floated the idea of a $5,000 incentive for every baby born. Really? Back in 2017, a Department of Agriculture study estimated that raising a child to the age of 17 would cost a whopping $233,610. While that number is absurd in its own right, no one denies that children are expensive.
The U.S. is not the first to try to incentivize childbearing. Some countries, such as Hungary and South Korea, have been doing it for a while.
The question is: Does it work? But as you noticed from the fertility rate numbers above, no. The incentives have barely moved the needle in those countries.
But why doesn't it work? People desperate for answers wonder what is responsible for the declining birth rates. Sperm counts? Something in the air?
While environmental toxins do contribute to infertility, the real culprit is modernity itself. It is the most powerful sterilization drug ever invented. In our thoroughly modern "have it your way" world, people aren't even getting married — let alone having children. It's the same everywhere. In fact, it's even more the case in the Orient than in the Occident. Turns out, China did not need that "one-child" policy. They finally eliminated it, but modernity cemented it.
Let's get real. People don't have children for the money, and declining fertility can't be explained away by falling sperm counts. We know what happened — we just don't want to admit it.
Our society lost faith in God.
Secularists know this, but it makes them uneasy. In 2011, sociologist Eric Kaufmann wrote the book "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century." The book has barely received a modest four-star rating on Amazon. Not because he isn't right — but precisely because he is.
Kaufmann's message is clear: Even in the modern world, religious people have children — and lots of them. Because of their high fertility rates, the future belongs to them.
Religious people have a lot of children because they believe that life has meaning and purpose and that the sacrifices required to bring new life into the world are worth it. In the modern world, with its emphasis on markets and quantifiable things, religious faith is dismissed as nothing more than a matter of personal taste. But if you ask people of devout faith, they would never say it like that, because religious faith isn't concerned with personal preferences but with reality itself.
The faithful don't believe in their religions because they're "fulfilling." They believe in them because they think they're true.
Christianity doesn't have a corner on the pro-natal market, but it does have a long and illustrious history of encouraging childbearing and raising children in the faith. Recently, liberal churches have equivocated on this, and some are downright hostile to traditional forms of family life.
But those churches are dying. It won't be long before they're nothing more than cautionary tales.
I'm honored to serve a church in one of America's most liberal states. Despite this, our church has many large and growing families. I estimate the fertility rate in my congregation to be approximately four children per woman. Some women, of course, have more than four children. Fathers in my congregation take an active role in not only providing for their children, but raising them as well.
My church is not isolated. When I travel, I see the same phenomenon playing out in churches across the country. Churches are growing, those that believe children are a heritage from the Lord.
Our churches, of course, aren't heaven on earth, and we don't live in epistemic bubbles. My wife and I come from families made up largely of academics and artists, so we're accustomed to "alternative lifestyles." In fact, we have many childless relatives who are bitter, lonely, and oddly self-righteous. They think they can gin up the purpose of their lives out of their own desires. But they're failing — clearly.
The future doesn't belong to them, and, frankly, they don't care. Progressives don't live for tomorrow. They live for the present moment. Religious people, on the other hand — the traditionally religious — live for the future.
If demography is destiny, we will indeed inherit the earth.
Trump administration open to $5,000 baby bonus for new mothers: 'Sounds like a good idea'
President Donald Trump said it seemed like good policy to hand out money to new mothers as an incentive to increase U.S. birth rates.
Trump endorsed the idea at the White House on Tuesday when he told the New York Post he liked the idea of a cash incentive to get more Americans to have children.
"Sounds like a good idea to me," the president reportedly said.
The sum of $5,000 would be given to new mothers, with 30% of Fulbright educational grants given to applicants who are married or have children.
Another proposed program, according to the Post, would involve education surrounding menstrual cycles and ovulation so women can better determine the best time for them to conceive.
Pundits have often pointed to Hungary's reward system as a way to increase birthrates; the European country touts tax deductions and credits for each child a family has.
According to a government website, a family's first child allows for a credit equivalent to around $185 USD, while a second child earns a credit of around $370, and a third child credit is worth $610. Tax deductions are also provided per child.
At the same time, mothers with four children or more are exempt from income tax.
'A $5,000 baby bonus is wasteful and won't make a dent, especially among middle to upper class families.'
However, Hungary's birth rates have not seen a huge resurgence despite the country expanding its offers for new families. Hungary offered no-interest loans of around $33,000 to its citizens, which would be forgiven if the family has three children.
As of 2022, Hungary's live births per 1,000 people was just 9.3, according to Macrotrends, falling short of the United States' rate of 11 per 1,000.
U.S. birth rates first dropped drastically in the 1970s before increasing until 1990, when the rate was 16.7 per 1,000 people.
Commentator Maggie Anders, who has spoken extensively on the topic, reacted to the story about $5,000 for new mothers and cited statistics that showed the national average cost of raising a child annually is $23,000. This totaled $414,000 from birth to 18 years old, rendering $5,000 negligible in that journey, she claimed.
"A $5,000 baby bonus is wasteful and won't make a dent, especially among middle to upper class families," she wrote on X. "Obviously, the cost of raising a child depends on a number of factors, but it does not negate the point that housing, daycare, food costs are all very expensive. $5,000 doesn't begin to cover it," the commentator continued. "A 'that'd be nice' isn't good policy. It's wealth redistribution with unclear goals."
Comedian Mark Normand also reacted to the news story on X, and in a since-deleted remark commented, "Elon Musk just became a trillionaire!"
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Austria’s struggle with mass migration holds a lesson for America
The croissant isn’t French — it’s an Austrian culinary rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Since the 13th century, Austrian bakers have been shaping the croissant’s predecessor, the crescent-shaped kipferl, mimicking the Ottoman moon, which, according to popular lore, was used to celebrate the Habsburgs' final standoff against Turkish invaders after the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
Austria’s long-standing defiance against the Turks is as integral to its national identity as Charlemagne’s victory over the Muslim Moors is to France. As Christendom’s last line of defense against Islamic expansion into Europe, Austria held the line. Yet today, Turkish kebab shops fill nearly every street in central Vienna, competing with bakeries that once symbolized the Ottoman Empire’s defeat. The contrast is striking.
Parallel societies will inevitably form without a clear path for immigrants to adopt a national identity.
The Turkish community has become Austria’s largest minority. As of 2023, approximately 500,000 residents of Turkish origin live in the country, a sharp rise from 39,000 in 2001 — a 1,200% increase.
Does this shift reflect modern-day “tolerance” ending nearly 1,000 years of imperial rivalry, or are deeper forces at work?
Tolerance or dire straits?
Popular explanations of Europe’s recent mass migration credit events like the Syrian war in 2015 or the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, which prompted waves of asylum-seekers. However, mass migration in Austria dates back to the aftermath of World War II, when the country lay in rubble with a diminished male population.
To rebuild, Austria sought foreign workers. With the Iron Curtain blocking labor from Eastern Europe, the former Catholic empire turned to its historical rival across the Bosphorus. Austria actively recruited Turkish workers in the following decades, promising employment and economic opportunities.
One local Turkish resident, Metin, remembers, as a child in the 1980s, seeing Austrian embassy billboards in Istanbul promoting jobs and benefits — a golden ticket. Like tens of thousands of others, his family eagerly accepted the offer. However, both Austrians and Turks miscalculated. Austrians assumed the Turks would return home when the job was over. The Turks believed they would be welcomed in their new land. Neither were correct.
“I quickly realized that I wasn’t wanted,” Metin recounted. “My work was wanted, but I wasn’t.”
What started as a temporary workforce has transformed Austria. Turks have established their own parallel society, which continues to grow in influence and numbers. Today, Muslim immigrants, particularly from Turkey, are surpassing Austrians in birth rates while preserving a strong religious and cultural identity from their home country.
Meanwhile, the once-Catholic imperial stronghold is becoming increasingly secular, stepping away from the faith that once defined its national identity. This demographic shift has profound implications — not just for Austria but for all of Europe.
What America can learn
The United States can learn valuable lessons from countries that have dealt with mass migration for generations. Today, 14.9% of the U.S. population is foreign-born, the highest percentage since the immigration surge of 1910.
While left-leaning arguments favor foreign workers to boost the economy, the long-term challenges cannot be ignored. Postwar Austria may have benefited from such policies, but history shows that immigration requires more than economic justification — it demands integration and assimilation.
As Turkish-born Metin warns, welcoming workers means welcoming people. Parallel societies will inevitably form without a clear path for immigrants to adopt a national identity. At best, they may coexist peacefully, leaving the long-term impact dependent on demographics. At worst, clashing cultural norms could threaten national cohesion for generations.
The United States holds a key advantage over Austria in shaping national identity. Unlike European nations, which often tie identity to ethnic heritage, America, for good or ill, does allow for hyphenated identities, such as African-American or Mexican-American. In Austria, one is either Turkish or Austrian — there is no equivalent of a blended national identity. As a result, Turks and Austrians live as separate cultures rather than uniting around shared ideals. Over time, Austria’s future will not be determined by external threats but by shifting demographics within its borders.
America’s strength lies in its ability to forge a national identity independent of ethnicity. In theory, people from all backgrounds can participate in the American experiment, but assimilation does not happen automatically. If we continue to welcome immigrants, we must also provide the framework for integration — otherwise, we risk facing the same challenges Austria now confronts.
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