My father-in-law likes to give me newspaper articles that he thinks I should read or might be interested in reading. These are almost always from the Globe and Mail since he knows that I would never buy it on my own. (I’m a National Post girl. Can you tell we have different political opinions?)
Anyway … the latest article to come my way was Saturday’s cover story: “Hardening the line on illegal workers.” Since I’m from Iowa, the illegal immigration bust in Postville was of interest. This is apparently the largest single site immigration bust in US history with over 375 illegals arrested. The article has the usual sob stories of families who just want a better life. The Des Moines Register has much more coverage including more “human interest” stories such as a 16-year-old Mexican girl who has a young daughter with her 18-year-old Guatemalan boyfriend who she might never see again.
We get it. Real people are having their lives disrupted and may not see friends and loved ones for a very long time after they are deported. Seriously … what did they expect? They came into the country illegally and were working using fake identities and forged documents. Illegal. Fake. Forged. The authorities were bound to find them. Some argue that this company had been functioning with illegals for many years and the community seemed to accept them so what’s the harm of leaving the status quo as is? The harm is that illegal immigrants cost the US BILLIONS of dollars each year — at least $10 billion in federal costs, at least $10 billion in costs to California, plus all of the other states and municipalities. And the argument that nothing was done before now doesn’t make any sense. Should someone be allowed to get away with stealing from a company just because they didn’t get caught for the first ten years? No. Should we let polygamists continue to marry young girls just because no one has stopped them before now? No.
I also don’t buy the argument that the children of these illegal immigrants are American citizens so we should allow the parents to stay as well. That will just aggravate the problem since the illegals have children in America on purpose so that their kids will be citizens. I’ve known foreign grad students who had babies in the US so that they could try to stay in the US after the expiration of their student visas. I’ve known foreign doctors who do the same to try to overstay their J-1 visas. It doesn’t work. Only an adult American citizen can sponsor a parent to immigrate. They chose to have children in the US knowing that they themselves could be deported at any time. The kids will still be American citizens and they can move to the US when they are adults. Then the kids can sponsor their parents legally.
There are hundreds of thousands of people following the proper channels to immigrate to the United States. If you think immigration reform is needed, then work to create new policies. Until then, our current policies should be enforced which is exactly what is happening in Postville.
I’ll save the rant about illegal immigrant criminals for another day. Besides, Michelle Malkin already does it so well.
/rant off
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 am the author of “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” To make a long story short, 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 the only developed country 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 for free, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
By: Pete Murphy on May 27, 2008
at 3:13 pm
close-minded coments from close-minded minds. Proud of only knowing part of the picture, but eager to tell everyone the truth. You are not worth a response…No, you don’t get it!
By: Lucia Patino on June 9, 2008
at 5:54 pm
Who are you responding to?
By: Michele on June 9, 2008
at 6:18 pm
[...] | Discussion question posed by a moderator in a Des Moines Register forum about the Postville immigration raid: What do you think of federal immigration authorities targeting Iowa workplaces in search of [...]
By: Do you think the government should enforce the law? « Because No One Asked on June 11, 2008
at 12:13 am