Targeted Migration Campaigns: Why They Will Make a Comeback

Join Simone and Malcolm as they delve into the fascinating world of targeted immigration and its historical and modern implications. From Mennonites being lured to Canada and Mexico with special privileges to modern-day initiatives like the Tulsa Remote program and network states like Balaji's Charter City, discover how demographic shifts and fertility collapse are reshaping global migration patterns. Explore the unique characteristics that make certain populations highly desirable and discuss how future communities can thrive amid changing promises and regime changes. Don't miss this in-depth exploration of what makes a family or community attractive enough for governments to compete for their settlement!

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I'm so glad to be with you today because we are going to talk about something I found quite intriguing the other day.

Picture this. What if countries and cities started fighting over you, offering cash, land, and even your own laws just to get you to move there? From Canada and Mexico, luring Mennonites with special privileges to Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, paying remote workers to relocate targeted immigration is actually quietly reshaping the world, and it has been for.

Maybe hundred years. Yeah. This is a

Malcolm Collins: huge thing. I see many as, as fertility collapse is going on. Mm-hmm. And what a lot of people you know, misunderstand about fertility collapse is they think it's a problem of warm bodies. It's not a problem of warm bodies that we, no. This is about getting

Simone Collins: the people that you want.

To your country to do certain things. Right. But you, the, the whole thing that we need to talk about here is what makes a family or a community so desirable that governments compete to track them. Like people don't realize that this isn't just like, oh, we're opening our borders to, to solve this problem.

No, it's, we want Mennonites, we want bougie couples. Do or jinx we want, but

Malcolm Collins: let's, let's talk about how this problem creates itself, okay? Mm-hmm. So the problem creates itself. It, it's uniquely bad now because it is the communities that are more economically productive and the groups that are more economically productive that are undergoing fertility rate collapse the fastest.

Yeah. But in a historic context, you also had this problem luring one immigrant group into your country was not seen as the same as luring another immigrant group into your country. Totally. Some immigrant groups were seen as. More desirable because they were more desirable. Mm-hmm. They created more economic prosperity.

Mm-hmm. Or did more development than other groups. Mm-hmm. So let's get into which groups are which.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. And well, and how in a post demographic collapse world, you want your family culture to be such that you basically have your pick of the litter in terms of what. Country or charter city or techno feudalist empire you go to because you want, you want the keys to the kingdom.

You don't wanna be that deformed, post-apocalyptic family living in the borderlands. So just, I wanna also like this is. I think one thing that's important to talk about before we move forward is we recently had a podcast talking about how Hillary Clinton sort of espoused this idea that, well, it's immigrants who have all the kids and the obvious solution to.

Demographic lapse is immigration. And isn't it so crazy that the Trump administration is deporting people? And then one of our podcast followers tweeted us a report in 2000 by the UN Population Division. It was, it was titled Replacement Migration is a, is it a solution to declining in aging populations?

And this is definitely one of the most common rebuttals that we get to. Oh no. Population declined. And then the answer from so many mostly uninformed people is. Oh, just solve it with immigration. There are many, many, many issues with that. But I do wanna point out that even this 2000 report from the un, which I would say is one of the more bullish groups on like immigration solving the problem.

Yeah. Plus also the graphical options from the problem. It's going down slowly and then they're always wrong with their projections. But basically that report explored the the potential role of international immigration and migration and addressing population decline in aging. And the conclusion actually of the report is that while immigration can help mitigate the effects of the trends, the scale of migration required to significantly alter population size and age structure is likely unrealistic and potentially unsustainable.

Now, that coming from the UN is basically them admitting it's not gonna work at all. For them being like, well, it might not, it might not be sustainable to like really solve the problem means that it really isn't gonna work. But that doesn't mean that countries aren't going to try. And also a, again, just because this is something that, that countries have turned to for a long time, and this is what I had no idea about, was these like niche examples also of targeted migration.

So let's talk about Canada and Mennonites. Okay. Because this is, I, I just had no idea about this until yesterday when I started digging into it. Yeah. So in the 18 hundreds, so this is a long time ago someone in Canada's government was like. Those dudes. We want the Mennonites. How do we get these Mennonites?

And they made this package of, of special privileges just to attract them. So they actively recruited Mennonites in the 18 hundreds pr, particularly from Russia. Interestingly, by offering what they called it, a pum. A formal agreement, just like I mean, really targeted for them. It guaranteed exemption from military service, the right to run private schools, religious freedom and land grants for settlement.

And, and they were designed both to attract hardworking agricultural settlers to develop Canadian West, which makes sense. Why, like targeted Russian Mennonites. 'cause they're like, these, these dudes can handle the cold. They'll be okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Makes, makes sense. Yeah. I was looking for a group of people to develop like Canadian agricultural land.

Yeah. Russian Mennonites. Yeah.

Simone Collins: They're like the the, scottish cows, oh, sorry. People who, dunno

Malcolm Collins: what the Mennonites are. It's like a br They, they're an Baptist, which means they're related to the Amish. They're basically Amish.

Simone Collins: They're, they're slightly less strict than the Amish, so depending on the Mennonite group.

And a lot of the groups that I've been looking at recently are much more conservative, almost Amish, like in, in, in how strict they are. But you, you're more likely to see Mennonites owning cars, some select machinery, like they're, I think they're more consequentialist than deontological when it comes to anti baptism, where they're like.

All right. Like, this machine actually isn't that worldly. It's just helping me do my job, so I'm gonna be okay with it. But anyway the, the long-term impact and changes this, it's interesting over time. So a bunch of, a bunch of Mennonites came over to Canada and there still are a lot of Mennonites in Canada.

But then over time, Canada started to. Erode these privileges, like especially concerning private education, which also was a problem with indigenous populations, but no one talks about Canada and their immigrant populations. Those also had some rights to private education eroded. So I think that's also interesting that.

Canada was equal opportunity and it's taking children and trying to homogenize them. So yeah,

Malcolm Collins: