The ominous signs of our evolving immigration difficulties are being waived aside as the rich see the Dow climb ever higher and the traditional signs of a US economic recovery such as housing starts are cited on the financial TV channels and elsewhere in the mass (asleep?) media. Then, this past week the first US House of Representative Majority Leader in history ever to be ousted, Eric Cantor, brings national attention to the seething underbelly of middle class dissent while America watches as countless interpretations are offered for why this defeat occurred. The explanations include Tea Party extremism (although Cantor’s opponent David Brat received little Tea Party support), low voter turnout (typical in such elections but the percentage of victory was decisive), the recent border rush of unaccompanied minor children from Central and South America, all of which taken together (as some pundits report), made for the perfect storm.
The telling statement, however, came from the successful candidate, David Brat himself. Brat stated that discontent over the country’s non enforcement of immigration laws played a major role in Cantor’s defeat. Wow, do we finally get it? For a long time many average Americans have NOT. While a majority of Americans have favored reducing immigration levels to the U.S. for decades, no real action was taken. We know the reasons, but let’s not discuss them in this op-ed now… rather let’s get real about where we are NOW. The blame game is worth playing, but first let’s get the facts straight. The 100 plus million immigrants allowed to enter the country over the past several decades are here to stay and America’s booming population is placing ever-increasing pressure on our social and safety structures. To me, many of the things that made America special have vanished. Due to the policy of catch and release an untold number of criminals are being released from our prisons and far too many of our own schizophrenic citizens are being untreated and undetected until they shoot people regularly, but these latter poor souls won’t find help as we are too busy spending money to engage in foreign conflicts overseas. Then of course the continuing wars in the Middle East will create cadres of enemy combatants, some of whom will enter the US via our President’s open border regime, which sadly has 2 years to run with the prospect of no better candidate from either of our major political parties.
Does this fetid situation remind any of our leaders of the time in the 1920’s when we finally passed immigration regulations which acknowledged that foreign terrorism could easily come to U.S. shores? Of course not, as they are not leaders who give a whit about American citizens, only their own perks and power and the money from the greedy to maintain it.
The relative paradise that was the U.S. after WWII and that continued for several decades until our military stupidity got us into foreign wars is long gone.
Now, let’s make the ultimate argument with as much power as print can make it and then augment the obvious (but not obvious to the majority of Americans) with what to me was the best of those compelling videos made by NumbersUSA founder, Roy Beck. IT’S THE NUMBERS, FOLKS! We now have 7 plus billion humans on the planet and experts tells us could have 11 billion by 2100. There are now more people on the planet than ever in its history and the ability to feed, house, cloth and sustain them in safety and decency has vanished for billions and is getting worse as we see daily from the mealy mouthed mass media which seldom fingers the obvious reasons for the violence they report.
At home our funding priorities are so screwed up that instead of properly caring for the large number of schizophrenics in appropriate settings we ignore them and according to a respected MD expert on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night, we can expect these shooting incidents to continue at the same pace. All the while a recent Washington Post story reported that the coming draw down of U.S. support in Afghanistan will reduce its GDP by75%.
Of course our militarism has bankrupted us already, but our leaders seem perfectly content to add to our nation’s $17 trillion national debt until our greenbacks are no longer accepted by the world as its reserve currency.
So let us once again review where we are in 2014. There are now 320 million of us living in the United States. That means that since the U.S. immigration laws were changed in 1965, the country has added over 100 million people. At our current numbers, even were illegal immigration to be stopped and the numbers of legal entrants the country to be significantly reduced, the nation would still add hundreds of millions more to its population in the decades ahead. If we continue as we are, then I respectfully beg your indulgence to take the few minutes to watch this 2011 video made by Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, whose eloquence in describing our likely fate far surpasses anything I could opine. Just go there! As the Monopoly Game tells you, ”Do not pass go, do not collect $200” JUST GO THERE.
Here is the prompt. Do it and then ask yourselves if we really want to go there.