Harry Dent: We Need More Immigration, Not Less

“Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery that countries can receive: when people risk everything to be part of your society, it says a lot about what you’ve built.”

– Boris Johnson

America has been built on legal immigration, encouraging the world’s brightest and best to start anew.

November 4, 2025 — I always marvel when I go to Australia, and it is the country I have spoken in the most outside the U.S., even more than Canada.

That’s thanks to Greg Owen of GOKO that has been promoting me for the last three decades there.

You walk down the streets of Sydney and it seems that every third person is Asian. And I always jokingly say: No one complains about Asian immigrants, especially their work ethic.

It clearly appears to me that the immigrants there do not appear to come from third or second world countries. They blend in more and are actually more educated on average than the native Aussies.

Australian’s foreign-born population is a whopping 31.5%, double the U.S., and we are known as the global magnet for immigration with 15.8% of our population currently. That’s due more to our size overall. 51% of immigrants over age 15 in Australia hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 29% of native Australians.

Because of both higher immigration as a percent of population and higher quality of immigration, Australia our cousin “English Offshoot” country (along with the U.K., Ireland, Canada and New Zealand) has a much different future than the U.S.

Here’s Australia’s Spending Wave projected out to 2100:

I would think this was an emerging country with a younger population and/or higher population growth. This is due to high levels of high-quality Asian immigrants, who are highly productive and blend in easier with high English-speaking and higher education.

Meanwhile, America is the best large, developed country for long-term demographic growth.

However, our demographics plateau between 2007 and 2037 and then decline as far as the eye can see, and more sharply from 2054 into 2071, using recent 2024 immigration-adjusted births.

The important point here: This huge difference is not because of substantially higher birth rates among Australia’s native-born citizens. It’s due to higher immigration as a percent of its population. Unlike Japan and many European countries, they have a lot of space to fill, but so does the U.S.

We need more immigrants today and into the future, not less, if we are going to avert a major decline for our kids and grandkids as Japan has already seen since the mid-1990s.

Many other countries in East Asia and Southern Europe are already following.

We have the immigration trump card, and hence, can fight this otherwise inevitable downward trend longer term if we act now, and don’t wait until this becomes painfully obvious decades from now.

This may be farther out than most would care to think, but we are going to look like Japan, China, and South Korea with slowing growth and ultimately a shrinking population unless we not only keep our current immigration rates, but actually increase them substantially… What?

All DCs (developed countries) should study Japan. They were the first to show what happens to an affluent country when it has no immigration to offset the slowing births that are paradoxically most driven by rising affluence!

Affluent families tend to have fewer children and want to raise and educate them better. Japan’s stock market peaked at the end of 1989 and only made new highs 34 years later in early 2024… and those highs will likely collapse hard and fast and never be seen again in our lifetimes, if ever.

Harry
Harry Dent & Grey Swan Investment Fraternity

P.S. from Addison: This is another piece of classic Harry – straight to the point, pulls no punches, and gets right to how demographics are affecting your life.

We first met Harry way back… while doing research for Financial Reckoning Day after the collapse of the tech bubble.

Harry is a notable authority on demographic trends and had just published a book called The Roaring 2000s, in which he examined the investing trends of the baby boomers and how they were likely to impact the stock market indexes. As the stock market had just sustained a severe correction following the tech wreck, his forecast that the Dow and S&P 500 were about to embark on a multi-year bull market seemed outrageous.

In October of 1999, when Harry’s book hit the shelves, the Dow had yet to correct and was trading around 11,000. The Roaring 2000s then made the case that baby boomers preparing for retirement would drive the index above 35,000 within the decade.

In the throes of the tech bust, the forecast seemed improbable.

But today, quite the opposite. In fact, it sounds kind of quaint now, doesn’t it?

The Dow hit a historic 47,835 last Wednesday.

This week on Grey Swan Live!, (Thursday @ 2pm EST/11am PST) Mr. Dent will join us to bring us up to date on his demographic forecast for the next decade. And why he’s decided to “re-enter the public spotlight” with a forecast on the impact of the AI bubble and employment trends for the next generation.

We’ll also take a peek behind the scenes of the presentation Harry and Grey Swan alum Adam O’Dell will be releasing this Wednesday. They are forecasting that today’s tech bubble will end up much like the dotcom bubble… and will be digging into how, when and why.

To get on the reservation list for Harry Dent’s Wednesday announcement, please do so here.

If you’d like, you can drop your most pressing questions right here: Feedback@GreySwanFraternity.com. We’ll be sure to work them in during the conversation.