Thread: Overpopulation: Illegal immigration is about more than ethnic identity

Friday, December 13, 2013 - The Conscience of a Realist by Joseph Cotto
The Washington Times

OCALA, Fla., December 13, 2013 — Illegal immigration is almost always treated as a political issue. Ethnic and racial identity are constant, intrusive and divisive elements of the discussion.

The issue is about far more than the politics of race, however.

“For NPG, immigration is strictly about the numbers,” says Craig Lewis, the executive director of Negative Population Growth. “It is not a leading contributor — it is THE leading contributor to our nation’s population growth. Studies have shown that immigration — legal, illegal, and the children born to immigrants — is responsible for 80 percent of U.S. population growth.

“America has an estimated population of over 11 million undocumented immigrants, with some estimates ranging to nearly 20 million. Each year, we permit over 1 million legal immigrants to arrive. The average immigrant family (regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, religion, or nation of origin) has more children than the average American-born citizen, and the children of those immigrants also tend to have larger families.

“The fact is simple: The United States must slow, halt, and eventually reverse our population growth to preserve an enjoyable quality of life for future generations. To do so, we must reduce our immigration levels.”

Jo Wideman, the executive director of Californians for Population Stabilization, explains that “overpopulation is a fact, not a myth.

“Human innovations — medicines and antibiotics, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation, exploitation of fossil fuels, the Green Revolution, etc. — have allowed for a higher standard of living and quality of life for most of the world’s 7.2 billion inhabitants. And these advances have occurred in spite of a global population that quadrupled over the last century, and grows by 80 million annually.

“These increases in human numbers and overall rates of resource and energy consumption are not, however, sustainable. They have taken place at great ecological cost, enabled by the ongoing depletion of non-renewable natural resources, over-exploitation of renewable natural resources, and the accelerating degradation and disruption of environments — air, water, lakes, ocean, atmosphere, climate — upon which the modern industrialized human economy, and indeed civilization itself, depends.

“To believe that the human capacity for innovation is infinite, and that therefore human populations can grow infinitely, is to believe in fairy tales. It is to believe in a parallel universe in which we live on a flat earth, because only a flat earth extending infinitely in all directions — as opposed to a round earth, which is bounded and finite — could support a human population that never stopped growing.”

Approaching illegal immigration from a population stabilization perspective can be difficult. During the 1960s and ‘70s, overpopulation was a mainstream political issue. Since then, though, both the left and the right have come to ignore it.

“As America continues to ignore the problem of overpopulation, our size continues to grow larger and our resources continue to dwindle,” says NPG’s Lewis. “Our infrastructure decays, unemployment rises, our roads and hospitals become more crowded, our environment continues to deteriorate, schools and universities become more expensive and more competitive for our young people, and more of our green spaces vanish.

“At some point, it is inevitable — we will reach ‘critical mass’ in our population size. We will be forced to address the situation, and we will have to make difficult decisions as a nation. Under those circumstances, elected officials will have no choice but to take a position on the issues. We can only hope that, once they begin to face reality, it won’t be too late.”

Urban designer and public policy analyst Michael E. Arth says that “American politicians spend half their time begging for money from the business interests who control public policy, and the rest of the time giving their paymasters what they want while pretending to represent the people.

“People who sell stuff want a growing pool of consumers, so it’s not in their perceived self-interest to support low birth rates. Also, some think we need a constantly growing population so the young can take care of the old. The information explosion, robotics and people living indefinitely long (while remaining youthful) will eliminate this problem, while also exacerbating the overpopulation problem.”

Illegal immigration and population growth are closely linked issues that are crucial to our long-term viability as a nation. To treat them as a matter of race, fairness, and an opportunity for political advantage trivializes the enormous problems facing us and is short-sighted.

http://communities.washingtontimes.c...out-more-ethn/

During the 1960s and ‘70s, overpopulation was a mainstream political issue.

Remember those days well, it was a huge political issue.

Oh oh, showing my age. lol

“The fact is simple: The United States must slow, halt, and eventually reverse our population growth to preserve an enjoyable quality of life for future generations. To do so, we must reduce our immigration levels.”

“People who sell stuff want a growing pool of consumers, so it’s not in their perceived self-interest to support low birth rates. Also, some think we need a constantly growing population so the young can take care of the old. The information explosion, robotics and people living indefinitely long (while remaining youthful) will eliminate this problem, while also exacerbating the overpopulation problem.”

The above two paragraphs for me say it all, we cannot support current immigration levels over a long period of time, I was born in the 40's a time with half of the current population most people had the same goals to work and achieve success and most believed enough opportunity existed to do so, now the opposite is true, few people believe they can move up.

Few days ago I had a young educated professional tell me he believed the melting pot was broken and ask me why, I replied, it is simply far too many coming in at one time and without peer/government pressure to blend in they simply form there own communities and live life as they did in there previous countries this is a certainly path to internal war.

As stated above in quote business people love to see huge numbers coming in to purchase beer, cell phones, etc these business folks don't care the money to purchase there products come from taxpayers greed kicks in and grows there bottom line. To add insult to injury majority of products sold are made in China.

Large numbers of poor people coming in while jobs go out along with increasing prices and lower wages destroying quality of life in this country,does anyone reading this believe that we have one politician in DC understanding this, or perhaps they just don't care.

Since the 70s many of the crop fields in my area are gone due to the so called diversity(immigrants both legal and illegal) that have come to my area. Housing, industrial, commercial and recreational facilities have gobbled up those former farm lands due to the exploding population here. Nebraska is part of the bread basket that feeds the world and as the world population keeps expanding we need those former fields now more than ever.

Added to Homepage--

http://www.alipac.us/content/overpop...identity-2503/

Originally Posted by Jean

“The fact is simple: The United States must slow, halt, and eventually reverse our population growth to preserve an enjoyable quality of life for future generations. To do so, we must reduce our immigration levels.”

It's really a simple matter: Quality of life for Americans or quality of life for foreigners. We should, of course, help others. But it would be much less expensive to help them in their own countries. Helping people in their own countried would make it easier for us to help many more people - and still preserve our own quality of life.

Reducing our population would make it possible to reclaim lost open space, which we could bequeath to our children and their children.
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