The sad reality is that Europe needs immigration to "survive" as a civilisation. Demographic realities progress very slowly. Like the frog in a heating pot, they do not present an immediate crisis to focus the mind. Nor do they admit quick fixes. Demographic catastrophes, when they arrive, are too late to stop. They cannot be corrected--at least not in the short term--if ever.
Europe is in the midst of a looming demographic crisis. In general terms, the civilisation that is Europe has decided that it is chic and culturally correct to have small families, few children. Consequently, Europe is not producing enough children to sustain its culture or civilisation.
For a society to remain the same size, the average woman needs to have 2.1 children in a lifetime (the so-called "total fertility rate"). All European countries except Muslim Albania are well below it. There is a "safe zone" above 1.6 children per woman, where population declines are gradual and easily reversed. Below that, population tends to collapse rather than decline. A society that maintains a 1.8 total fertility rate will be 80% as large at the end of a century; a society with a total fertility of 1.3 (Italy, Spain, Eastern Germany and the Baltic nations are such societies) will fall to a quarter of its size.We can assume, therefore, that one reason why European authorities are sanguine about admitting huge numbers of immigrants is their understanding of these demographic realities.
At current rates of decline, Italy's native population will be half its current size by the middle of this century little more than a generation from now. [Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West (New York: The Penguin Group, 2009), p.13.]
