Ramon Castellblanch, The Progressive, July 18, 2008
Sen. John McCain is no hero on immigration.
His 2006 immigration proposal, which he has disowned in front of anti-immigrant audiences, would have meant cheap labor on both sides of the border and would have made a joke of the idea of integrating immigrants into our way of life. And it would have allowed the heartless immigration raids on Latino workplaces to continue, breaking up families and disrupting communities.
McCain’s proposal would have done nothing to address the root causes behind the immigration problem: low-wage businesses here and south of the border and a U.S. trade policy that is devastating the Mexican countryside.
Low-wage U.S. employers like those in agribusiness and the construction industry like access to the desperate Mexican and Central American economic refugees so that they can avoid paying fair wages. McCain’s proposal would have turned a blind eye to such practices.
Mexicans are being forced north by pathetic wages and squalid living conditions. They are being driven to our country by U.S.-subsidized corn being dumped on the Mexican market due to trade agreements such as NAFTA, ruining many of their small farmers and leaving them with no choices but immigration or destitution. McCain would have ignored all of this.
For the immigrants who are here, we need an immigration policy that reflects American values of democracy and justice. Rather than more fences and raids on Latino communities, we need an orderly approach to bring immigrants into our system.
1 response so far ↓
Pete Murphy // July 20, 2008 at 12:06 am |
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 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.)
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