The writing clearly is on the wall. Nothing stands between us and a North American continent of 500 million people by the year 2050. Nothing except perhaps peak oil, peak soil, water shortages and a basic ecological meltdown. What brokers might euphemistically term as "buying opportunities" of which I'm sure even another K2 event would qualify. But short of those trifling road bumps to "progress", nothing else seems to offer much hope in stopping this juggernaut of mindless population growth. The corporate machine demands cheap labor and the rhetoric of cultural diversity offers the perfect smokescreen for its cold and mercenary motives.
Key minority groups and their hired guns have unwittingly become collaborators in this agenda to squeeze working and middle class Americans out of decent paying jobs and weigh down the environment of America beyond its carrying capacity. They rallied behind a candidate who received, by the end of August, some $389 million in donations from Wall Street corporations, much more than his opponent John McCain received, leader of the GOP, reputedly the party of plutocrats#main-fn1">1. A candidate who, while he exhibited so many obvious virtues not in McCain's possession, nevertheless did not demonstrate any ecological literacy concerning the country's tolerance of growth or the fact that five million American workers lost their jobs to out-sourcing and the kind of immigration policies that he supports.
The emerging power of the multicultural electoral coalition to turn the tide of American politics can best appreciated by looking at Hispanic voters. 10 million Latinos voted in the November 2008 Presidential election. 67% (6.7 million) voted for Obama. 40% of them, or 4 million Latino voters, were immigrants.
78% of immigrant Latin voters voted for Barrack Obama, a porous-borders candidate. That translates to 3.12 million votes.
3.12 million votes is but 2% of the votes cast in the 2008 election. Not much. But not chicken feed either. It certainly wouldn't have been in 2000. And the disposition of votes is what is critical. The Latino vote grew by 32% in just four years to 9% of the electorate, but that 9% is not spread like a pancake across America. It is concentrated in such a way as to have played a pivotal role in denying McCain 6 states.
If that isn't enough, Republicans have to look over their shoulders at the growing electoral force of Asian Americans, twice as many whom preferred the Democrats in 2008 in percentage terms as they did in 1992.
Is the ethnic immigrant voter like the aggressive door-to-door salesman? Once he gets his foot in the immigration door, that door can never be closed? What is the tipping point of political sycophancy? Once a solid 10%, 15% or perhaps 20% of ethnic voters demonstrate that they will vote en bloc as their orchestrators command, the other 80% of the electorate which is fragmented around other issues then just folds? The ethnic tail need not be long. Just solid and determined, and when it wags the Euro-American dog will roll over and perform tricks for it.
Thus what we will have is not a two party system but a one party state. Two growthist "big tent" rainbow coalition parties that embrace cultural and racial diversity, bravo, but not intellectual diversity--because they don't entertain the cognitively challenging concept of population stability or steady state economics.
Do multicultural lobbies play disproportionate and decisive roles in keeping the floodgates open in other countries? Australia? The United Kingdom? In Canada it has been said that ethnic voting blocs deliver two dozen seats, and that federal policy toward Israel or India for example is unduly governed by the sensibilities of expatriates living in those constituencies. Should this be the case then, it is no wonder that the policy of mass immigration should persist for decades in the face of adverse public opinion. For it is not public opinion that matters. But the opinion that is channeled through the ballot box and concentrated in strategic areas.
As time passes, more and more of these areas will become fortified with immigrants. In the United States, some 12% of the population are foreign born (officially), and in Canada, it is 18% and rising. For some the newcomers' culture and even their pigmentation is cause for alarm. What should be worrisome is the impact their numbers will have, and that of the children and grandchildren that they will issue from them. I could live with tortillas and Spanish-only. I couldn't live without an environment.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
9 Nov 08
See also: "An immigration policy bought and paid for?" of 24 Feb 08.
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1.#main-fn1-txt">↑ www.opensecrets.org All of Obama's Wall
Street donors and the amounts they gave can be found here. Quite enlightening.
Comments
James Sinnamon
Mon, 2008-11-10 13:04
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Even choosing between two poor alternatives is often necessary
Pete Murphy (not verified)
Wed, 2008-11-26 01:24
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U.S. immigration
As an American, I am deeply troubled by my country's ridiculous rates of immigration.
Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. Immigration, both legal and illegal, are fueling this growth.
I'm not talking just about the obvious problems that we see in the news - growing dependence on foreign oil, carbon emissions, soaring commodity prices, environmental degradation, etc. I'm talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.
I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled "Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America." To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management, especially immigration policy. Our policies of encouraging high rates of immigration are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight other countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China - as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050. The U.S. is one of the few developed countries still experiencing third world-like population growth, most of which is due to immigration. It's absolutely imperative that our population be stabilized, and that's impossible without dramatically reining in immigration, both legal and illegal.
If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It's also available at Amazon.com.)
Please forgive the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph. I just don't know how else to inject this new perspective into the immigration debate without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"
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