Issue 65: March 7, 2001

Advocating an immigration time-out is no more "anti-immigrant" than family planning is "anti-child."

+== TIME OUT PROJECT ==+

Dressing up self-interest in the garb of altruism is one of humanity’s least attractive, but most enduring, habits.

For example, China has been engaged in the systematic destruction of the Tibetan culture for the last half century, but the average Chinese will maintain resolutely that China is just "helping Tibet modernize."

Great Britain once colonized India, and to the average Briton, the British Empire was "spreading civilization."

And today, America is engaging in the same hypocrisy through our immigration policies. Under the guise of "offering immigrants the American Dream" our government and globalist corporations are exploiting through mass immigration the poverty, desperation and cheap labor of the world’s billions.

New studies show that even though U.S. immigration policy is now almost entirely responsible for an explosive U.S. population growth rate that will double the size of the country within the lifetimes of today’s college students, we still take in only about 1% of yearly world population increase — all of which occurs in the developing world (U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/wp98001.html).

In other words, the vast majority of people in developing countries will not be able to migrate in order to raise their standards of living. They will have to "bloom where they are planted." Unfortunately, selfish U.S. mass immigration policy actually hobbles attempts by developing countries to "bloom" — something most Americans don’t realize.

One of the authors of a recent study on immigration and global fertility rates, Dr Virginia Abernethy of Vanderbilt University, points out that those countries that rely to a significant degree on the export of cheap labor experience higher fertility rates. virginia.abernethy@mcmail.vanderbilt.edu

It is widely accepted that high population growth hinders developing countries in their attempts to implement the educational and economic reforms necessary to 1) raise the standard of living for all their citizens, 2) promote women’s rights and educational opportunities, and 3) lower birth rates.

And yet, many well-meaning Americans mistakenly feel that support for current record-breaking mass immigration is the morally right thing to do. Instead, it is just another example of the age-old practice of exploiting and harming others while claiming virtue. We import an endless stream of cheap pliable labor and congratulate ourselves on our generosity — even as our policies sentence the huge numbers left behind to a degraded standard of living.

Americans need to condemn our globally irresponsible mass immigration policies and denounce the hypocrisy of justifying such exploitation with moralistic arguments about "helping others." There is nothing noble, generous or high-minded about importing masses of poor people to labor for us.

further readings:
http://www.numbersusa.com/cgi/text.cgi?Ethical

To learn about microlending, a non-exploitive form of local development, see:
"Alleviating the Pressure to Emigrate."
http://www.limitstogrowth.org/WEB-text/alleviating-pressure.html

+== TAKE POSITIVE ACTION ==+

The "anchor baby" mechanism is one of the most insidious baits our government uses to entice prospective cheap laborers seeking a life of higher consumption.

An "anchor baby" is a child born in the U.S. to a woman or parents illegally in the country. Under current policy, a child born on U.S. soil is automatically an American citizen and entitled to numerous taxpayer-subsidized benefits. These babies, nearly a quarter of a million per year (!), "anchor" their parents, who may then sponsor their other children, each of their own parents, and their adult siblings. All of these people may then legally sponsor all THEIR relatives and so on without end — in effect, removing control over U.S. immigration policy from the American people themselves.

The 14th Amendment, on which the policy is purportedly based, was intended to help right the wrongs of slavery by guaranteeing freed slaves the right to vote. Now it is being misused to grant automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States — regardless of whether the parents are here legally. (See: Anchor Babies: Is Citizenship an Entitled Birthright? http://www.fairus.org/html/04139708.htm)

There is a bill in Congress now, H.R. 190, that would eliminate this misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment.

You can find your Representative and Senators at: http://profiles.numbersusa.com/

+== EMAIL OF THE WEEK ==+

I have been receiving your newsletter for the past year or so, and in that time my eyes have really been opened…

I have been working in the Automotive Engineering field for the past 15 years and I have seen a lot of changes in the automotive industry.

Companies such as Chrysler, Ford, and GM have all but stopped hiring directly…they use Contract/Temp Companies (who) import people from India and Pakistan because they will work for the lowest wages.

The Contract Companies put 10 to 15 of these foreign workers into a tiny inner city home, charging them an exorbitant rental fee, charging each one the full cost of utilities, as if they were living in the house by themselves. Most of all, the contract companies pay these workers just a little over minimum wage and before the worker gets his check, all the charges are removed. The automotive companies turn a blind eye to this wage slavery, looking only to the profitability.

(Name withheld by request)

+== QUOTE OF THE WEEK ==+

"It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates."

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Tags:   developing world · globalism · immigrationNo Comments