The "two problems" referred to in the title of this essay are faced by the crowded countries of the global south and of the western nations in Europe and North America. While birthrates are declining in the West to the points where the population size has begun to decline. Demographers have identified 2.1 children per woman as the replacement rate; anything above that results in increasing the size of the population while rates below that mean declines in the size of the population.

Rates that are way above or way below the replacement level means problems that public policy needs to address. The African continent has very high fertility rates while those in North America and Western Europe have declined to the point at which the economies are being hurt.

I will take Canada and the United States as two examples in North America that have used different public policies to deal with large-scale immigration. Countries in western parts of Europe are encountering a different set of problems including rise in Islamophobia which will be the subject of a later article.

Canada has gone full circle from encouraging immigration to discouraging it. The Canadian situation was discussed at some length by Matina Stevis-Gridneff in an article titled "Long Immigrant Friendly Canada is Changing Course", carried by The New York Times on October 3, 20244. The article's focus was the change in government policy allowing foreign students who came to the country for education but once they had achieved their intended goals they were allowed to stay on and do jobs in Canada. The international student programme followed by large number of foreign students "made one route to the........

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