From Washington to Brussels to Canberra, aging powers are repelling the workers they need — and calling it policy.
Demographer Nicholas Eberstadt asks: “Can America continue to prosper even if it veers into indefinite depopulation?” For the first time since the Great Depression, population decline looms. It could arrive before a baby born this year enters high school, Eberstadt warns, and America is “not well positioned to pass the stress test that depopulation will unforgivingly impose.”
Washington’s response is the opposite of what the moment demands.
In 2025, US population growth was just 0.5%. Net international migration fell from 2.7 million to 1.3 million. In 2026, net immigration could range from a gain of 185,000 to a loss of 925,000 — enough to shrink the population by over 400,000, a decline unseen since 1970.
This is arithmetic. The native-born population is aging, fertility is at record lows, and deaths increasingly outnumber births. Immigration is the only variable that can meaningfully change the trajectory — yet Trump administration policies are sharply reducing net migration and accelerating decline.
Europe is trapped in the same contradiction. It needs immigrants to sustain its economies and welfare systems. An internal EU report predicts a decline of nearly two million working-age people annually to 2040; migration is already slowing natural decline. Yet anti-immigrant politics is rising, with right-wing parties capitalizing on cultural anxiety. Europe needs immigrants but treats them as threats.
China faces a starker cliff. After its disastrous one-child policy, it has one of the world’s fastest-aging populations. Its working-age population, once around one billion, could fall to 300 million by 2100. Beijing has loosened birth limits and pivoted aggressively to robotics. By 2024, China installed more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined and accounted for 90% of humanoid robots shipped globally. The logic: if you cannot replace workers with babies, replace them with machines. But robots do not pay taxes, consume goods, or build communities. They are a stopgap, not a solution.
Australia offers a warning. Without immigration, it is a generation from the same decline as Europe and the US. It depends increasingly on Pasifika workers, especially from Fiji, under programs like PALM. Canberra calls its relationship with Fiji “Vuvale” — family. Australians can enter Fiji visa-free; Fijians cannot do the same in Australia. As one Fijian commentator put it: “In the Vuvale family, one sibling is trusted with the house keys while the other is asked to wait outside until Immigration finishes checking their references.” Australia welcomes Pasifika labor for orchards, hospitals, and aged care, but closes the door when those workers want to visit relatives. This is not partnership. It is exploitation dressed as family.
Pasifika nations are not passive. They see the contradiction: needed as labor, rejected as visitors. They see remittances — Fijian workers in Australia send home about $2,010 monthly — but also visa rejections and waiting rooms. Australia’s demographic future depends on the Pasifika, yet its politics treats them as temporary conveniences. That cannot hold.
The US is closing the door entirely. The Supreme Court’s expansion of deportation powers, reduced temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands, and the chilling effect on legal immigration all point one way: a nation of immigrants repelling immigrants. This is demographic suicide dressed as border security.
Eberstadt warns that America has developed “undesirable new habits — political, social and economic” that steady growth masked. Depopulation will expose them. A shrinking population means fewer workers paying into Social Security and Medicare, fewer consumers, fewer entrepreneurs, fewer communities sustaining schools and hospitals. It means a smaller, older, poorer nation — not because of enemies, but because it refuses to see arithmetic.
Can America still prosper as it depopulates? Eberstadt says yes. Human ingenuity and adaptability enriched the world during the population explosion; they can during decline. But that requires policy, practice, and behavior to change. It requires recognizing immigration not as a threat to national identity but as a lifeline to prosperity — and treating would-be immigrants as future citizens, not temporary labor or security risks.
Australia calls Fiji family while keeping it outside. Europe decries demographic winter while voting for parties that worsen it. China bets on robots to replace the children it told people not to have. And America — built on the idea that anyone can become American — is building walls.
Eberstadt asks whether a depopulating America can still prosper. Yes — but not if it keeps slamming the door on those who could help it do so. The arithmetic is unforgiving. The politics are worse.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 