Population Disadvantage GDI 2005

GDI 2005 Population DA KELLY/SUNI LAB

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POPULATION DA INDEX

2 – 1NC SHELL UNIQUENESS 6 – GLOBAL FERTILITY DOWN 9 – IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS UP LINKS 12 – MANDATORY DETENTION 15 – KOREMATSU 16 – CONTAINER SECURITY INITIATIVE 18 – RACIAL PROFILING INTERNAL LINKS 19 – IMMIGRATION CRUSHES CARRYING CAPACITY 22 – IMMIGRATION INCREASES FERTILITY RATES 24 – SAFETY VALUE / PERCEPTION LINKS IMPACTS 25 – EXTINCTION (US KEY) 26 – RESOURCE WARS 31 – WATER WARS 34 – BIODIVERSITY 37 – URBAN SPRAWL 41 – DIE BACK 42 – DISEASE 45 – ECONOMY 47 – CLIMATE CHANGE 48 – TERRORISM 49 – LINEARITY 50 – 5 YEAR TIME FRAM 51 – TURNS RIGHTS ADVANTAGE AT: IMPACT ARGUMENTS 52 – AT: TECH SOLVES 54 – AT: MORALITY 55 – AT: JULIAN SIMON 57 – AT: ADAPTATION 58 – AT: HUMAN RIGHTS /REFUGEE ABUSE AFF ANSWERS 61 – NON-UNIQUE – OVERPOP NOW 62 – NON-UNIQUE – IMMIGRATION HIGH NOW 63 – NO INTERNAL LINK – IMMIGRATION NOT KEY 65 – IMPACT TURNS – POPULATION GOOD (***ALSO SEE RIMAL FILE) 69 – AT: URBAN SPRAWL BAD


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POPULATION DA – 1NC

A. UNIQUENESS – GLOBAL FERTILITY IS DECLINING NOW – BIRTH RATES ARE RAPIDLY DECLINING Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies, April 2005 (“A Review of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It,” The Claremont Review of Books, http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/mskoped042505.html) Goodbye, population explosion. Hello, population implosion. Well, not quite yet, but soon. Birthrates are falling in almost every country, changing the way the public and policymakers think about a wide range of issues. To mention only the most obvious, Social Security reform, once a taboo topic in American politics, is now up for debate as lower birthrates lead to an unsustainable ratio of workers to retirees. Two new books explore these changes and their implications. Each presents a wide variety of information that will be news to most readers; each offers policy prescriptions; and each, in its own way, falls short. Wattenberg's Fewer has the more extensive description of the new demographic realities faced by humanity, while Longman's The Empty Cradle offers a more detailed look at the likely causes for the fertility decline as well as ways to address it in the United States. Although the birthrate decline has begun to have significant effects in the U.S., it is in Europe and East Asia that the consequences will be most dramatic. In demographic terms, a "total fertility rate" (TFR) of 2.1 is necessary to keep a population from declining—the average woman needs to have two children (plus the 0.1 for girls who die before reaching reproductive age) to replace herself and the father. The TFR in the U.S. is just a hair below that benchmark, having bounced back from its nadir in the 1970s. But in every other developed nation it is lower, and falling: Ireland, 1.9; Australia, 1.7; Canada, 1.5; Germany, 1.35; Japan, 1.32; Italy, 1.23; Spain, 1.15. Birthrates this low are unprecedented in peacetime societies. As Wattenberg writes, "never have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly."


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B. LINK – 1. THE PLAN CREATES THE US AS A BEACON FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES – SPURRING IMMIGRATION TO THE US Michele R. Pistone, Fellow, Cato Institute, March 24, 1998 (“Undermining an American Ideal” http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa299.pdf) Throughout its history, the United States has been a refuge for oppressed peoples from around the world. The Pilgrims, the Quakers, the Amish, and countless others came to these shores in centuries past, while in the more recent past immigrants have been Cubans, Jews, Southeast Asians, and others. What those diverse people shared was a belief that America could offer them refuge from government oppression. Many people worldwide today face similar oppression; they live under governments that forbid them to freely exercise rights that Americans hold dear as fundamental freedoms and persecute them when they try. We grant political asylum to such persons: as a nation, we believe that government oppression because of one's race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or social group is wrong. Oppression undermines our fundamental values. Thus, we traditionally have granted sanctuary to victims of human rights abuses from around the world. Through its refugee and asylum protection policies, the United States has always been at the forefront of protection issues, serving as a leader in garnering international attention and responses to refugee and humanitarian emergencies around the world. America's example has great influence on how other countries respond to refugees. 2. INSERT SPECIFIC LINK


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C. IMPACT 1. EXCESSIVE IMMIGRATION SENDS A GLOBAL SIGNAL THAT THE US IS A SAFETY VALVE FOR GLOBAL POPULATION PRESSURE – ENCOURAGING GLOBAL OVERPOPULATION Population-Environment Balance Organization 1992 (“Why Excess Immigration Damages the Environment,” June, http://dieoff.org/page52.htm) Population Carrying Capacity is Adversely Affected by Excess Immigration The United States' population is increasing by 3 million per year. Since immigration from foreign countries causes 50% of the United States' population growth (and over 60% of the population growth of some states such as California and Florida), and since the United States, too, has a limit on its carrying capacity, excess immigration creates a significant environmental threat. Worldwide, a common response to carrying capacity problems is to migrate to areas where the carrying capacity has not yet been pushed beyond the limit or is perceived to still provide opportunities. Much of the immigration into the United States is fueled by this perception, but the United States does not have infinite resources. Since the world's population is now increasing at an alarming rate—by about one billion people every 11 years—these pressures will only increase. The problem is that such migration not only threatens the carrying capacity of the destination countries, but also creates the harmful illusion in the sending countries that continued population growth is an acceptable option. Numerous other present and historical examples can be cited of population size exceeding the sustainable capacity of the environment due in part to the false perception of an adequate carrying capacity. The result is almost always increased migration pressure as well as the other components of overpopulation: Environmental damage, unemployment, and social disruption. For example, the introduction of the potato into Ireland in the eighteenth century both increased productivity of the land and encouraged new estimates of how many people could be supported on a piece of land, and thus provided an "incentive" for large family size. However, no allowance was made for population growth or for scarcity—less than optimal harvests. The result (of that "longage" of people or "shortage" of food, depending on how one looks at it) was the Irish potato famine. Populations try to move out of countries where they have overwhelmed the carrying capacity. Today, the pressures from every continent continue to increase— world population is growing by 93 million people per year! Many already have come to the United States, but no region, including the United States, has the capacity to absorb all those desiring to immigrate. It is doubly unfortunate, therefore, that the perception of opportunity in the U.S. acts as a disincentive for overcrowded countries to face and begin to correct overpopulation problems at home. Thus, allowing too much immigration both creates an environmental threat and sends a misleading signal. Perhaps all countries should consider limiting immigration to levels within their carrying capacities in order to more effectively protect the environment. Slowing immigration in excess of carrying capacity ignores limits in both sending and receiving countries. Such a disregard represents a serious threat to the environments of all countries involved. Limiting Excess Immigration is Ethically Right and Environmentally Sound People on the move always create moral dilemmas since it is natural to be sympathetic with the migrants. However, the practical and moral question is what to do about those wishing to come to areas, like the United States, that are perceived, falsely, as affording virtually unlimited opportunities and resources. In our case, we are forced to carefully consider whether allowing continued or increased immigration is a net benefit or a detriment to the United States, to the immigrants themselves, and to the countries from which they come. In addition to the carrying capacity of the natural environment already discussed, a number of social and economic carrying capacity factors are relevant here. Most immigrants to the United States are poor and either semi-skilled or unskilled. The fact is that they compete with our own poor, unemployed and homeless for housing, employment and opportunity. It is not fair to our own poor and unemployed to increase competition when we do not have unlimited natural and social resources or unlimited jobs or budgets. The cornucopian notion of unlimited bounty held by many abroad and by some Americans is, in fact, a myth to which our budget deficits, resource shortages, overcrowded cities and environmental ills amply testify.


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2. THE IMPACT IS NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST AND EXTINCTION Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1990 (Paul & Anne, Professors of Population Studies, Stanford University, The Population Explosion, p. 187) The population explosion contributes to international tension and therefore makes a nuclear holocaust more likely. Most people in our society can visualize the horrors of a large-scale nuclear war followed by a nuclear winter. We call that possibly an end to our civilization “the Bang.” Hundreds of millions of people would be killed outright, and billions more would follow from the disruption of agricultural systems and other indirect effects largely caused by the disruption of ecosystem services. It would be the ultimate “death-rate solution” to the population problem. There remains the problem that, as the world gets further and further out of control, crazies on both the left and the right may exert increasingly xenophobic pressures on national governments. The rise of fundamentalism in both East and West is a completely understandable but not at all encouraging sample of what the future may hold in terms of conflict. Those struggling to achieve a permanently peaceful world still have much work to do, especially as growing and already overpopulated nations struggle to divide up dwindling resources in a deteriorating global environment. But for now, after forty years of worrying about it, the Bang seems to be getting less likely. The same can’t be said about “the Whimper.” The Whimper is simply the way that civilization will end if current population/resource/environment trends continue. Such a continuation could bring us essentially to the same sort of world as would be left after a nuclear war and a nuclear winter—just more slowly, on a time scale of years rather than weeks.


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UNIQUENESS – GLOBAL FERTILITY DECLINING

GLOBAL POPULATION IS RAPIDLY DECLINING NOW Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies, April 2005 (“A Review of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It,” The Claremont Review of Books, http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/mskoped042505.html) Not only is this causing an increase in the median age of these populations, as in the U.S., but many of these countries will soon see declines in total population. By the middle of this century, we could find a Europe home to 100 million fewer people than today, and a Japan shrinking by one-fourth. Despite their huge and growing populations, the most rapid birthrate declines (and thus the most rapid rates of population aging) are taking place in the Third World. The total fertility rate in less-developed countries as a whole, as defined by the U.N., has fallen by half since the 1960s, to 2.9 children per woman, a much faster drop than anything experienced in the developed world. This is happening almost everywhere: China and India, Mexico and South Africa, Iran and Egypt. Population "momentum" will cause continued increases in these countries for a time, as large numbers of girls have babies, albeit fewer than their mothers, and the Third World will potentially add another 2.5 billion people before population growth stops. This is still a very large increase, but it will come to an end in the foreseeable future (in some countries surprisingly soon). After that, their populations will also start to fall. FERTILITY RATES ARE DECLINING AND POPULATION PROJECTIONS ARE LOWER Abernathy, Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, 2004 (Virginia, World Watch Magazine, 9/1, p. 26) The "fertility opportunity hypothesis" holds that parents want more children when they perceive forthcoming opportunities for a better life, but have fewer children if they anticipate hard times ahead. Perceptions of a coming global oil scarcity could result in population growing less than the UN expects. The Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was notorious for the view that "positive checks"--meaning poverty, famine, and premature mortality--are the only means of keeping population size in balance with resources. But his second edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population is far from pessimistic: it develops the idea that "moral restraint" (encompassing social rules as well as personal decisions) often depresses the fertility rate, thus slowing or stopping population growth before calamities occur. Worldwide, the dynamics of self-restraint are causing fertility rates to fall much more rapidly than generally anticipated, vindicating Malthus's foresight. Projections of an ultimate population size of 12 billion have been forgotten. In 2003, the United Nations offered a middle projection of 8.9 billion as the ultimate peak world population. A March 2004 report by the U.S. Census Bureau projected a most-likely scenario of 9.1 billion by 2050, with average fertility below replacement level and with hotspots of elevated mortality. My own view is even more optimistic: world population is unlikely to rise above 8 billion (from approximately 6.4 billion today), and the fertility rate will fall from the Population Reference Bureau's 2003 estimate of 2.8 children per woman to below replacement level within the next dozen years. With population size peaking at a level lower than either the Census Bureau or the United Nations project, much excess mortality may be avoided. Fertility and Opportunity Why do I believe this? Because my data show that people faced with real or perceived deprivation typically exercise reproductive caution. Whether in hunter-gatherer or agrarian societies, or developing or industrialized countries, intimations of scarcity (with respect to wants as well as needs) encourage restraint. And in the near term, expensive fossil fuels could trigger an acute sense of scarcity. Put another way, this fertility opportunity hypothesis proposes that people usually have as many children as they think they can afford, and that the motivation to have more or fewer arises from perception of economic prospects. Perceptions crystallize through comparisons to past experiences or a reference group.


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GLOBAL POPULATION AND FERTILITY IS PROJECTED TO DECLINE NOW Ben Wattenberg, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 2005 (The American Enterprise, January 1, p. 28) There's a gaping hole in these claims, though. Soon--probably within a few decades-- global population will level off and then likely fall for a protracted period of time. The number of people on Earth will be headed down. Many nations will be "depopulating." Why? Because fertility rates have fallen faster, farther, and for longer periods of time than nearly anyone anticipated just a few years ago. In many developed nations depopulation has already begun. Europe is now losing about 700,000 people each year, a figure that will grow to about 3 million per year (or more) by mid century. Russia alone is losing close to a million people each year. Within the next few years Japan will begin losing population. The steep trend toward fewer children per woman has been nearly universal in the modern nations. But what's going on is not restricted to the well-to-do nations. While the poorer, Less Developed Countries (LDCs), still have higher fertility rates than the rich countries, their birth rates are falling tester than in the rich countries. As recently as 1970 the typical woman in a less developed nation bore six children. Today, the rate has tumbled to 2.7 children, and is continuing downward rapidly. Such declines are taking place in India, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and many other countries. PREFER OUR EVIDENCE BECAUSE IT SIGHTS DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS FROM THE TOTAL FERTILITY RATE INDEX – THIS IS THE MOST QUALIFIED PREDICTOR OF GLOBAL POPULATION Ben Wattenberg, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 2005 (The American Enterprise, January 1, p. 28) These birth trends are not idle speculation, or theoretical projections. Many of the future population trends are already pretty well baked into the global cake of the future. A stark New Demography is here. This new demography portends a different world. Joseph Chamie, director of the U.N. Population Division, puts it this way: There was the Industrial Revolution. There was the Information Age. Now there is the Demographic Revolution. The numbers of people on Earth will grow at an ever-diminishing rate, level off, then begin shrinking. Whom does this help? Whom does it hurt? Why is it happening? Can we do anything about it? Should we? What demographers call the "Total Fertility Rate" (TFR) is, put simply, the average number of children born per woman over the course of her childbearing years. The TFR is the keystone of all demographic calculations, and I argue that it is the single most important measurement of humankind. Moreover, it comes with some certainty. Demographers can tell you in 2004 with precision how many 20-year-old potential mothers there will be in 2025. POPULATION WILL DECLINE NOW Ben Wattenberg, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 2005 (The American Enterprise, January 1, p. 28) But today's new population data are so dramatically different from what happened in the past that new interpretations are necessary. Even what is happening in poor countries has to be seen in a different way. The less developed world is very much a part of the forthcoming depopulation process rather than an exception to it.


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FERTILITY RATES ARE DECLINING TO REPLACEMENT LEVELS Seattle Times 1-26-2005 UNITED NATIONS ? Men and women in developing nations are marrying later,having fewer children and having them later in life, U.N. demographers reported yesterday. As a result of these trends, average fertility in poor countries has for the first time fallen below three children per woman, according to the latest data from the U.N. Population Division, which looked at 192 countries for its latest report on population trends. Fertility in the developing world today averages around 2.9 children per woman, the division reported. In 20 developing nations, fertility has fallen below 2.1 children per woman, the birth rate generally seen by population experts as replacement-level fertility. Nearly a quarter of all women aged 25 to 29 years old were single in the 1990s compared with 15 percent in the 1970s, according to the new report. Among men in the same age group, 44 percent were unmarried in the 1990s compared with 32 percent two decades earlier, the report said. It did not give figures on the ages of first-time parents but said they were having children later. In a major shift, U.N. demographers had reported three years ago that fertility rates in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America had unexpectedly begun dropping, easing fears of a future global population explosion that would leave the world overcrowded and short of needed resources. In a sign the trend was accelerating, the demographers predicted two years ago that fertility in most of the developing world would fall below the replacement level before the end of the 21st century. In a related trend, use of contraceptives has jumped around the world, with 52 percent of all women either married or in a long-term relationship using some kind of birth control in the 1990s, up from 38 percent in the 1970s. ALARMISTS ARE WRONG – POPULATION IS DECLINING NOW Ben Wattenberg, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 2005 (The American Enterprise, January 1, p. 28) Overpopulation alarmists had made their case by showing geometric trends upward. Now New Demographers see geometric progressions downward. Demographers used to talk about the "doubling rate," the number of years it takes for a population to rise by 100 percent. These days one hears of the "halving rate," the number of years it takes for a population to fall to 50 percent. A population explosion notwithstanding, the world generally did quite well in the second half of the twentieth century, by most economic and social standards. We don't yet know whether that will continue to be the case as population falls. We don't know because the world has never seen anything like it. Should these rates not turn around soon and sharply, the ramifications are incalculable--or as Italian demographer Antonio Golini mutters repetitively at demographic meetings, "unsustainable, unsustainable." GLOBAL POPULATION STABILIZING NOW Jack M. Hollander, Professor Emeritus, Energy and Resources & Berkeley, 2003, The real environmental crisis, p. 31 We can now be confident that such extreme population growth is not going to happen. Much more likely is that global population growth will slow and then cease altogether as the world moves from poverty toward affluence. The beginnings of the transition to a stable population are already quite in evidence. Global population growth has actually been slowing over the last two decades. Global population reached 5 billion in 1987 and passed the 6 billion mark in October 1999. The current growth rate is about 1.3 percent per year, which translates into a net global addition of 77 million people annually. On the basis of continually monitored demographic data, the United Nations now conclude that the growth rate will continue to decrease, and in consequence the UN’s population projections have been steadily revised downward. In its 2000 revision, the UN Projects a population of 9.3 billion for the year 2050 (middle-case projection), significantly lower than the 10 billion projected only four years earlier and nowhere near the 14 billion figure quoted above from the extrapolation of earlier trends. The United Nations further projects that, with growth tapering off, the world’s population will be almost static by 2100.


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UNIQUENESS – US TIGHTENING BORDERS NOW

BORDER SECURITY IS BEING BEEFED UP NOW Michelle Mittel Stadt, June 22, 2005 (“Bush immigration plan now linked with increased border security,” The Dallas Morning News) The White House is placing new emphasis on border enforcement to improve the prospects for President Bush's plan to provide temporary guest worker status to illegal immigrants. The new focus, Sen. John Cornyn and others say, is a result of what the White House has heard from key members of Congress: No immigration liberalization plan will pass without first tackling tougher enforcement. "What's been missing in the discussion about immigration reform is a strong commitment to border security," said Cornyn, a Texas Republican who chairs the Senate immigration subcommittee. Cornyn predicted the White House would soon issue its priorities for border enforcement. The White House wouldn't confirm any imminent announcement. Bush "is working closely with Congress on ways to build upon the steps we have taken to strengthen our border security, said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan. He noted that the Border Patrol is receiving funds to hire new agents and use new technologies to detect illegal crossings. The Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved nearly $1 billion in new funds for border security and immigration and customs enforcement. Yet a congressional panel on Tuesday highlighted a weakness that has allowed illegal immigration to explode to 11 million to 12 million people: lax interior enforcement. Congressional investigators said the number of investigations of companies suspected of employing illegal immigrants has plummeted in recent years. Federal investigators went after only three companies last year - down from the 417 firms fined in 1999, the General Accountability Office said. The administration's focus on border enforcement follows an acknowledgment by Bush this month to congressional leaders that he needs to do a better job selling his immigration plan. Immigration liberalization advocates and foes alike agree that a tougher White House message on enforcement could provide momentum for immigration changes. "If they are going to move forward and get something passed, they have to get the Republicans in a position where they are comfortable," said Michele Waslin with the National Council of La Raza, which is pressing to legalize illegal immigrants' status. Rosemary Jenks, director of government affairs for Numbers USA, a group seeking to reduce illegal immigration, said: "On the House side, for sure, there is already a huge push towards enforcement. And I think those efforts will be made easier because they will at least in appearance have the White House's support." The Bush guest worker plan would permit illegal immigrants to obtain permits to work here legally for up to six years before returning to their homeland. The plan has been criticized on both sides - conservatives insist it's an amnesty; immigrant-rights advocates complain it doesn't provide for legal permanent residence. Cornyn and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., intend to introduce a bill in July that includes a temporary guest worker plan, the details of which are being finalized. The border enforcement component would authorize over five years 10,000 new Border Patrol agents, 1,000 new immigration inspectors and $2.5 billion for border security technologies.


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Post 9/11 spurred massive immigration restrictions Cynthia Tucker editor Atlanta Journal-Constitution LN LAST Wednesday, intelligence officials may have handed anti-immigration zealots the ammunition they needed. In a wide-ranging analysis of terrorist threats, CIA chief Porter Goss and other ranking intelligence officers warned Congress that al-Qaida operatives may try to sneak in through Mexico. Never mind that they wouldn't be Mexicans. Xenophobes in Congress and state legislatures will no doubt use the warning as an excuse to turn up the pressure on Latinos who are in the United States illegally. Indeed, despite President Bush's talk of less-punitive immigration reform, Republican lawmakers have already started to tighten the screws. This month, citing security concerns, House Republicans rammed through a bill that would prohibit states from issuing standard driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. (Apparently, they had no compunction about throwing over the vaunted GOP principle of local control.) The bill also makes it easier for immigrants seeking political asylum to be expelled. Not to be outdone, the GOP-controlled Georgia Legislature may consider legislation that would restrict illegal immigrants in a number of ways - prohibiting not only driver's licenses, but also food stamps, college classes and work on state-funded projects. State Sen. Chip Rogers, a Republican from a small town near Atlanta, said the laws he has proposed are not intended to discriminate. They're not intended to deal with illegal immigration, either. Not really. To deal effectively with illegal immigration, the GOP would have to crack down on its major patron: business. If a few business executives went to prison for violating federal law, fewer would risk hiring illegal workers. And if Latino workers knew they'd be unlikely to find jobs here, fewer would endanger life and limb trying to get in. But the fact is that the United States has never had a consistent policy of punishing employers. Indeed, for the past 20 years, the unofficial policy of the federal government has been to accept illegal workers with a wink and a nod. In 1998, for example, Immigration and Naturalization Service agents raided several farms in south Georgia, rounding up illegal workers who were harvesting highly prized Vidalia onions. It took only two days for four Georgia congressmen to complain to the INS about "a lack of regard for farmers." The four are still in office: GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Republican Congressmen Jack Kingston and Charlie Norwood and Democratic Congressman Sanford Bishop. The INS got the message and backed down. Despite lip service about national security, standard practice hasn't changed much since 9/11. Businesses still depend on unauthorized workers - mostly from Latin American countries - to build houses, landscape lawns, clean office buildings and wash dishes in restaurants. After all, businesses like employees who work hard for low wages and are unlikely to complain about brutish conditions. The hypocrisy doesn't end with big-league farmers or business executives, either. It extends right down to the homeowners who are only too happy to pay Mexican laborers low wages to mow their lawns or clean their houses. Then those same people bellow big time over the notion that illegal immigrants might attend a college class to try to get a better job. Who's kidding whom? Bush has suggested a kinder, gentler approach that might actually begin to reconcile the nation's bipolar attitude toward illegal workers. He has proposed broadening the guest-worker program, allowing illegal immigrants already working here to apply. But many congressional Republicans oppose the plan, and it is not yet clear that the president intends to fight for it. That's too bad. In addition to national security, there are several good reasons to try to get a handle on illegal immigration. For one thing, illegal immigrants tend to drive down wages for legal laborers. For another, it's exploitative to use undocumented workers for their cheap labor while refusing to give them benefits. It violates America's sense of itself as a land of fair play. But if the xenophobes get their way, we're going to keep right on doing it


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Immigration up statistics are taken out of context, immigration is actually down Mark Franken Director Migration and Refugee Services US Conference of Catholic Bishops 06-26-2002 http://www.usccb.org/mrs/talkcleveland.shtml Listening to some in the public policy debate over immigration, one might assume that total immigration to the U.S. in recent years is at unprecedented levels. The restrictionists would also have us believe that, in fact, immigrants are overwhelming us. Have you read Pat Buchanan’s book? The title says it all: The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization. He and others would have us believe that immigration is out of control and fast leading us to what Buchanan calls a “Third World America.” However, a more objective look at the facts and a reasoned analysis of the implications of immigration trends point us in a different direction. Yes, it is true that since 1965, when our immigration laws got rid of the severe restrictions against immigration from non-European countries, the demographics of immigration have changed dramatically. And, yes, at the turn of the 21st century the gross numbers of immigrants arriving to our shores exceeded the last great wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1910, nearly 9.5 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. Between 1990 and 2000, there were almost 11 million immigrants. However, these numbers must be put into perspective. Let’s take a closer look... Permanent immigration levels aren’t that high. Mark Franken Director Migration and Refugee Services US Conference of Catholic Bishops 06-26-2002 http://www.usccb.org/mrs/talkcleveland.shtml Chart #2: Immigration to the U.S. -- The Numbers (“Permanent Immigrants”) First we’ll look at the categories of immigrants who generally come into the country with the intention to remain, at least for a while. Here we see that in 2000, nearly 850,000 people immigrated to the U.S. using legal means. In other words, they obtained visas of one type or another. This figure is broken down as follows: Almost 350,000 people who are considered by our immigration law to be “immediate relatives” of U.S. citizens. “Immediate relatives” are defined as spouses, children under 21, and parents of U.S. citizens. Some 235,000 people obtained visas by virtue of their relationship with a U.S. citizen or legal resident. This group includes, for instance, children and spouses of “permanent resident aliens,” and siblings and adult children of U.S. citizens. Just over 100,000 people who were sponsored by employers who certified to the government that the immigrant would be filling jobs for which labor is in short supply and/or for which the immigrants possess special skills not available in the local labor pool. Almost 70,000 persons were admitted as refugees; meaning that they met the definition of having fled their homelands due to persecution. Refugees enjoy a special status in the international community and U.S. admits some number of refugees each year. Then there are about 50,000 people who won a visa through a “visa lottery.” One of the qualifications for being in this lottery is to be from a country from which visas have been underrepresented through normal immigration visa processes. To round out the numbers, almost 40,000 others obtained other types of visas. For instance, some of these people got visas by investing a substantial sum of money in the U.S.; others obtained a visa to perform certain religious ministries; still others were granted political asylum. A second major category included in the “permanent” immigration picture includes those people who arrived in 2000 without proper immigration documentation or who overstayed their visas. Though there is no precise way of counting these people, an educated guess is that there were about 300,000. Another group to include in this “permanent immigrant” category are the people who are trafficked into the U.S. The U.S. State Department tells us that 50,000 women and children are trafficked into this country each year. So, we come to about a million point two (1.2 million) “permanent immigrants” in 2000


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LINKS – MANDATORY DETENTION

MANDATORY DETENTION DETERS IMMIGRATION TO THE US – INCREASED REFUGEE PROTECTIONS WILL CAUSE A FLOOD OF IMMIGRANTS TO THE US Don Barnett, asylum and refugee immigration, March 2002 (“The Coming Conflict Over Asylum: Does America Need a New Asylum Policy?,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back102.html) The law today mandates detention of asylum seekers until their asylum request is adjudicated when there is a flight risk, no clear means of support is available, or when the INS has reason to believe the applicant is not who he says he is. This reflected Congressional concern over the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the terrorist attack near the CIA headquarters that year. Some of the leading actors in these incidents were asylum seekers who had been released pending the outcome of their asylum claim.Detention and deportation of asylum seekers are contentious issues and were becoming the stuff of pre-9/11 Congressional hearings and Hollywood protests. Even the Bush-appointed head of the INS, James Ziglar, came to the post vowing to do something about expedited removal and detention. Isolated cases of bureaucratic ineptitude and abuse of detainees provided a public relations boost to the broad array of advocacy groups attempting to overturn expedited removal and weaken detention provisions. The image of innocent immigrants in jail had been used to good effect by advocacy groups’ "Fix ‘96’" campaign, in a debate that is almost totally defined by public relations and media images. The actual detention statistics for asylum seekers — roughly 5 percent of those granted asylum in 2000 spent any time in detention, and those for an average stay of 35 days7 — belie a media-fostered image of asylum seekers routinely thrown into jail upon arrival. World Trade Center 2 has stalled the Refugee Protection Act of 2001 (S.1311), a major legislative effort aimed at liberalizing asylum admission. It may seem unnecessary to devote discussion to a bill that is now off the table, but such efforts have been "delayed, not derailed," according to J. Kevin Appleby, Director of the Office of Migration and Refugee Policy at the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Aides for Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), legislative sponsors of the Refugee Protection Act, are confident that a return to "normalcy" will mean passage of the bill in 2002. Though not intended as a protection for the average undocumented immigrant apprehended crossing the border with Mexico, the fact is, under the Refugee Protection Act, no one making an asylum claim, regardless of its implausibility, would be denied the right to counsel and right of appeal through immigration courts and federal courts. Further, the law would require the United States to explain those rights in the applicant’s own language. Expedited removal would be ended except for "immigration emergencies." Instead of detention, those awaiting adjudication of their claim would be released to the supervision of 10 large "voluntary agencies" and their affiliates. The "volag" affiliates comprise hundreds of non-governmental agencies, most organized along ethnic and racial lines and dedicated to increasing the flow of their own countrymen as asylum seekers and refugees. For most asylum seekers, the asylum process is a matter of getting to the United States on any valid visa and then walking into any of a number of immigration law offices or government-supported charities. U.S. Catholic Charities alone has over 100 offices where a visitor to America with, say, a tourist visa can pay $200 to have an asylum application filled out and receive advice about how to act in a hearing with INS asylum officers. This is the way asylum is done in America today. Under the Refugee Protection Act it will be almost as easy to file an asylum claim for those who simply show up on U.S. shores without valid immigration documents. Today about 75,000 individuals seek asylum annually. In a dozen interviews with aides to Senate sponsors of the bill, officials at the INS and the Executive Office of Immigration Review, and refugee NGOs, no one would hazard a guess as to how much of an impact the bill might have on this number. Most agreed the Refugee Protection Act would result in an increase in both the number who seek asylum and the number who are granted asylum. Most important may be the number of those attempting to gain asylum, as this leads directly to illegal immigration. Simply put, there will be more opportunity to make an asylum claim and then disappear. A reversal of key asylum components of the 1996 reforms would lead to renewed large-scale asylum immigration. The number of asylum seekers could go well beyond even the numbers seen in the mid-1990s for several reasons. Migratory flows have exploded around the globe. With the end of the Cold War, the United States is less inclined to give national interest weight in refugee and asylum policy, preferring instead to define its role as one of "international burden sharing" and humanitarianism. Also, asylum and refugee flows are no longer the concern of private charities taking risks and committing their own resources, conditions which, in the past, provided an element of control and stability over the process.


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MANDATORY DETENTION DETERS WIDESCALE IMMIGRATION Don Barnett, asylum and refugee immigration, March 2002 (“The Coming Conflict Over Asylum: Does America Need a New Asylum Policy?,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back102.html) Binding on U.S. law since March 1999, the convention holds that anyone who could be tortured if returned home must be given asylum. Where other forms of asylum are extended at the discretion of the United States and therefore represent a theoretical "national will" (which could be changed at some time), Torture Convention asylum overrules U.S. intentions and is mandatory. Unlike other forms of U.S. asylum, this protection extends unconditionally to criminals, even to torturers, mandating asylum for anyone who meets the criteria outlined in the law. Convention asylees are not subject to the immigration bar that relates to those with TB or HIV. Under Convention asylum, the only points that can be argued are what constitutes torture, whether the claimant would "more likely than not" be subject to it, and whether or not such torture is the work of a state agency or is carried out with the "acquiescence" of the state. The U.S. Senate inserted language to the effect that pain and even death caused by the state while carrying out punishment for a crime is not necessarily torture. But state-administered punishment that is "arbitrary" or "cruel and unusual" is torture under the law. Legal experts agree that the death penalty for drug dealing or economic crimes would qualify as torture under the law, as would any number of punishments used by states today under Islamic law. According to Amnesty International, 125 countries practice state-sponsored torture. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, declared the Chinese practice of detention in re-education and labor camps to be torture under the Convention. The Convention offers great potential for broadening the definition of asylum criteria. The requirement of state persecution in such cases will not deter its use, as the evolution of asylum law has shown that if the state is incapable of totally eradicating cultural practices and social behavior that fall outside western norms then it "acquiesces" to them. Jailhouse of Nations In recent testimony before Congress, the INS seemed overly anxious to allay concern that the Convention Against Torture is abused by criminals, such as Haiti's Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, founder of Haitian paramilitary organization FRAPH, which is blamed for a wave of murders and other atrocities. The good news might be that some of these can be prosecuted in U.S. courts under the "international jurisdiction" clauses of the Convention. The United States is already known as a haven for criminals fleeing retribution at home. The possibility of an encounter with the U.S. justice system would hardly be a deterrent to immigration for someone who faces retribution for, say, genocide at home. According to INS General Counsel Bo Cooper, "the stringent standards set out in the new torture regulations are not resulting in overbroad protection for criminal aliens...but it is still early to assess fully the progress of interpretive law development."10 In other words, as with all such statues, the Convention will go through a ramp-up period as precedent builds upon precedent and the legal arts develop the full potential of the law. Approximately 600 Convention asylum claims were granted in the first 16 months after implementation of the law — not a large number, but eligibility standards and the definition of terms will doubtless prove as elastic as those found under other asylum laws. This together with its inflexible hold over U.S. law could make it a powerful engine of humanitarian immigration in the future.


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MANDATORY DETENTION IS ESSENTIAL TO DETER MASS MIGRATIONS TO THE US US State Department 11-08-2002 (“INS Announces Notice Concerning Expedited Removal,” http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/statements/expremnotice_ST.htm) The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) remains committed to ensuring that all aliens are treated humanely and fairly under the law. The arrival of the smuggling vessel on Key Biscayne in South Florida on October 29 underscores the need to do so. In that incident, 211 Haitians and 3 Dominicans came ashore illegally, which raises concerns about a dangerous mass migration by sea that could cost many lives. As a nation that respects human rights and human life, it is essential that we address this situation fairly and with an eye toward deterring dangerous, unsafe voyages to the United States. In 1996, the Congress enacted expedited removal procedures and authorized the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to designate any group of individuals for placement in expedited removal proceedings. Therefore, we are publishing in the Federal Register a notification that from the date of publication forward, all individuals who arrive illegally by sea will be placed in expedited removal proceedings and during their legal process will remain in detention at the discretion of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Department of Justice. The decision announced today is not a change in policy but a continuation of recent policies and the activation of pre-existing authority. While expedited removal will be applied from today forward, our policy of deterring mass migration has led us to seek the continued detention of the migrants arriving on the October 29 vessel as well. Cuban nationals are subject to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act and will continue to be processed consistent with that law. In expedited removal proceedings, under U.S. law, even if an individual establishes a credible fear of persecution, the Attorney General and the INS Commissioner retain the authority to detain individuals without bond while their immigration hearings and any appeals take place. Individuals may be released for humanitarian reasons at the discretion of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The United States government continues to believe, based on information received from a variety of federal agencies, that the detention of these aliens has significant implications for the national security. These concerns focus on two areas. First, there is evidence that shows the government's legitimate concern that the release of aliens who arrive illegally by sea may increase future mass migrations by sea, and the potential for death and injury to those attempting to migrate. Second, key resources of the Coast Guard and Department of Defense would be diverted from the primary mission of protecting the homeland and fighting the war on terrorism. Any message that may encourage a mass migration and detract federal resources from our homeland defense is unacceptable. Rumors of successful entry into the United States have fueled recent migration surges, and any perception of a relaxing in U.S. immigration policy could cause future migrations by sea. The assessment of the U.S. is that releasing these aliens would encourage additional illegal migration. Such a surge in migration threatens our national security as well as the safety of these smuggled aliens. This policy is not based on any specific nationality, but rather by the clear threat posed by a mass migration. Finally, it must be underscored that many of these individuals are brought to the U.S. as part of illegal smuggling operations. Any actions by the government, including the release of these individuals, may be interpreted by the smugglers as a victory and encourage further criminal smuggling activity. In order to provided widespread notice of this policy as it pertains to irregular arrival at sea, we are publishing in the Federal Register a notification that in the future individuals coming to the United States illegally by sea will be placed in expedited removal proceedings.

MORE TOLERANT INS POLICIES ENCOURAGE IMMIGRATION Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) Recent heavy migrant flows from Mexico and Central America are deemed "somewhat transitory" because legalizations under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, and subsequent sponsorship of immediate relatives for legal immigration, are presumed to soon be running their course and finishing up. But this makes no allowance for additional, expanding "chain migration" as these relatives request their relatives. Moreover, it ignores the fact that in the current tight labor market, the INS is looking the other way as employers give jobs to illegal aliens. As reporter Louis Uchitelle writes in The New York Times, "... the more tolerant I.N.S. policy may be inducing more workers to immigrate, particularly from Mexico, because — once they get here — they face less risk in taking a job."10 At the same time, political pressure is building for yet another nationwide amnesty for the illegal immigrant population, estimated at approximately 6 million.


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LINKS – KOREMATSU OVERTURNING KOREMATSU FORCES US TO ROLLBACK IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS Dean Masaru Hashimoto, Professor of Law, UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal, ”THE LEGACY OF KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES: A DANGEROUS NARRATIVE RETOLD” 1996 http://web.lexisnexis.com/universe/document?_m=8b9794c83136e552a9126406e67daa58&_docnum=13&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVA&_md5=f1a263ad7c4435b1a92a4cb7804b9154 Korematsu has been cited as being on point and thus supportive of an outcome reached as well as being distinguishable and of no persuasive value. A typical example of the former is Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, n108 decided in 1952 at the beginning of the Cold War. The Court upheld a statute authorizing the deportation of a resident alien based on a past history of membership in the Communist Party. n109 The Harisiades Court cited Korematsu for two principles. First, the Court observed that federal policy governing aliens was "vitally and intricately interwoven with contemporaneous policies in regard to the conduct of foreign relations, the war power, and the maintenance of a republican form of government." n110 The Court concluded that because these policies were "so exclusively entrusted to the political branches of government," n111 they were "largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference." n112 The Court cited Korematsu in a footnote to show the extent of the "war power over even citizens." n113 The Court cited Korematsu a second time when it observed that Communist aggression was creating "hardships for loyal citizens" n114 and thus "it is hard to find justification for holding that the Constitution requires that its hardships must be spared the Communist alien." n115 The Court then turned to the example of the government's exclusion of Japanese citizens from their homes and businesses and cited Korematsu. n116 Thus, Korematsu provided direct support for the use of immigration policy to support the exclusion of a resident alien.

KOREMATSU DIRECTLY GIVES THE GOVERNMENT POWER TO EXCLUDE ALIENS DEAN MASARU HASHIMOTO, Ass. Prof. of Law, Boston college, FALL 1996. “The legacy of Korematsu v. United States: A dangerous narrative fiel,” UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal. The Korematsu case has been applied in a traditional manner under stare decisis, primarily from the 1940s through the 1960s, in cases involving postwar regulation, n104 immigration law, n105 and national security law. n106 Stare decisis typically requires analysis based on analogy: the Court compares the holding and the associated [*86] facts of a case previously decided with the legal issues and facts in a case at issue. n107 If the pertinent legal issues are sufficiently analogous, the Court may follow the prior case and cite it for support. Alternatively, if the prior case bears some analogy, but is not sufficiently on point to be determinative -- or perhaps there is a more analogous case already decided -- the Court may distinguish it.Korematsu has been cited as being on point and thus supportive of an outcome reached as well as being distinguishable and of no persuasive value. A typical example of the former is Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, n108 decided in 1952 at the beginning of the Cold War. The Court upheld a statute authorizing the deportation of a resident alien based on a past history of membership in the Communist Party. n109 The Harisiades Court cited Korematsu for two principles. First, the Court observed that federal policy governing aliens was "vitally and intricately interwoven with contemporaneous policies in regard to the conduct of foreign relations, the war power, and the maintenance of a republican form of government." n110 The Court concluded that because these policies were "so exclusively entrusted to the political branches of government," n111 they were "largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference." n112 The Court cited Korematsu in a footnote to show the extent of the "war power over even citizens." n113 The Court cited Korematsu a second time when it observed that Communist aggression was creating "hardships for loyal citizens" n114 and thus "it is hard to find justification for holding that the Constitution requires that its hardships must be spared the Communist alien." n115 The Court then turned to the example of the government's exclusion of Japanese citizens from their homes and businesses and cited Korematsu. n116 Thus, Korematsu provided direct support for the use of immigration policy to support the exclusion of a resident alien.The Court's reliance on Korematsu in Harisiades shows the potentially large influence Korematsu might have on constitutional law. It could be used to justify sweeping measures by the government over aliens and citizens alike by way of a fortiori logic. As shown in Harisiades, if the government can show that its activities are connected to its sovereign powers, Korematsu could be construed to justify measures at least equivalent to excluding citizens from their homes without providing due process.


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LINKS – CONTAINER SECURITY INITIATIVE

DECREASE IN CSI POLICY ALLOWS UNCHECKED ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION GMT, Online News Source, 1999 Human Smugglers Caught off US Coast, GMT The immigrants were found in the bow of the boat More than 130 men, believed to be Chinese, have been found hidden in a ship intercepted off the United States east coast. Immigration authorities say the incident was clearly one of smuggling. Immigrants cling to rocks after landing in Canada. One report said the men had to be cut free from an area in the bow of the vessel, which had been welded shut. All those found were detained after the ship docked in the port of Savannah, Georgia. The discovery comes a day after Canadian authorities seized a boat carrying about 150 illegal Chinese immigrants in the second such incident in less than a month. Canadian officials, who had been monitoring the vessel, said it unloaded its cargo on Wednesday in cold, stormy conditions on the remote and largely uninhabited Queen Charlotte Islands, about 500 miles north west of Vancouver. The ship was intercepted by a military plane as it tried to flee. The BBC's Ian Gunn: "This is the second group in a month." Canadian police boarded the vessel and arrested the eight crew of Korean origin. Last month another ship smuggled 128 Chinese to Canada's Pacific Coast. ALL POLICIES MONITERING SHIPPING CARGO NECESSARY TO PREVENT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION Patricia Hurtado, journalist for Newsday Inc, 2005 Sister Ping convicted of immigrant-smuggling, Golden Venture involvement, Newsday Inc Sister Ping was convicted Wednesday of running a global immigrant-smuggling ring that included the 1993 ill-fated Golden Venture that left 10 Chinese nationals dead in the waters off the Rockaways. The federal court jury in Manhattan, however, announced it was deadlocked on a count of hostage-taking, which carries a life prison term upon conviction. The jury had earlier this week sent notes indicating it was having difficulty agreeing on some charges. With yesterday's convictions, the Chinatown businesswoman, 56, who real name is Cheng Chui Ping, already faces at least 35 years in prison. Ping showed no emotion as the verdict was read. She has a prior federal conviction for conspiracy to commit alien smuggling that the judge will also factor into her sentence. "It's a long time," said her lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser said. "There's enough years there to cause a problem." U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mukasey, who has presided over the six-week trial, told lawyers that he would give the panel a so-called Allen Charge when jurors returned to court Thursday and ask them to see whether they could agree on a verdict on the outstanding count. The jury acquitted Cheng of laundering $60,000 from other illegal alien smugglers in December 1992. Assistant Manhattan U.S. Attorneys David Burns, Leslie Brown and Christine Wong charged during the trial that the money was intended to promote the smuggling of 300 illegal immigrants from China to New York. The jury convicted Cheng on conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, money laundering and trafficking in ransom proceeds as well as in hostage taking of illegal immigrants she helped smuggle into the country. They also determined that she had fled New York in 1994 to avoid prosecution. The trial provided a rare view into the world of snakeheads, or illegal immigrant smugglers, who preyed on Chinese nationals, dominating them through gangland muscle. Two snakeheads who once worked for Sister Ping testified at trial: Weng Yu Hui, and Guo Liang Qi. They described Sister Ping's multi-million-dollar empire that smuggled immigrants out of China to Hong Kong, Thailand, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico and Africa and eventually to New York City. They said her operation used ships, cars, planes trucks and vans to move in tens of thousands of immigrants from the Fujian province of China and recruited members of the violent Fuk Ching gang to hold immigrants hostage until the smuggling fees were paid.


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LINKS – CONTAINER SECURITY INITIATIVE

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SHIPPED IN CARGO CONTAINERS AND PUT IN SWEATSHOPS Honolulu Star Bulletin, News Source, 2000 Illegal immigrants from China are being smuggled into the United States in cargo containers, Honolulu Star Bulletin, http://starbulletin..com/2000/01/13.html AFTER years of attempting to sneak people -- mostly Chinese -- into the United States by ship in squalid conditions, the smugglers have turned to a more horrifying tactic. They are hiding would-be illegal immigrants in shipping containers. The dangers involved are obvious. Three Chinese were found dead this week in containers unloaded in Seattle.Officials and shipping executives in Hong Kong, where many voyages of cargo ships to the United States originate, say they will try harder to stop the trafficking in people. But they can't hope to stop the grisly trade completely. Dozens of Chinese immigrants, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, have been caught since 1998 on ships arriving at West Coast ports from Hong Kong, including 88 just this month -- 63 on four ships and 25 in two containers. In addition to the West Coast problem, hundreds of illegal immigrants from China were apprehended on vessels in waters off Guam last year. Closer to Hawaii, the Coast Guard responded last August to a distress call from a vessel 350 miles from Midway Island and found 120 Chinese passengers on board. The vessel was towed to Midway. Four Chinese nationals were indicted here on smuggling charges. In the early 1990s there was another surge of immigrant smuggling by ship in the Pacific. One vessel carrying 96 illegal immigrants succeeded in entering Honolulu Harbor in 1992 but immigration officers were able to detain all of the aliens before they could escape into the city. In 1993 another ship, carrying 527 illegal immigrants, was found adrift 1,500 miles southwest of Oahu and towed to port by the Coast Guard. Illicit passage to the United States, even under dreadful conditions, can be attractive to people desperate to leave China. They are usually forced to pay huge fees -- up to $50,000 -- for their passage, to be worked off in sweatshops after they arrive. Barbara Zigli, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong, said officials must act fast to stay ahead of the smugglers. "Smuggling is not a static thing," she observed. "Criminals are using new and innovative ways to smuggle and the methods change over time." Hong Kong shipping and customs officials can't search every container; six million containers pass through Hong Kong annually. The officials say they will target those with soft canvas tops, which allow air to filter to people inside. Officials will also use sensing devices to check containers for extra warmth or carbon dioxide that could indicate human cargo. The people attempting to enter the United States illegally are more victims than criminals. The real criminals are those who so cruelly exploit the desire for a better life. Shipping people in cargo containers is a new low in depravity and desperation. Stronger efforts must be made to stop it.


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LINKS – RACIAL PROFILING

RACIAL PROFILING NECESSARY TO DECREASE ILLIGAL IMMIGRATION William Fisher, online journalist, 2004 Racial Profiling and Civil Rights, http://billfisher.blogspot.com/2004/11/racial-profiling-and-civil-rights.html Its report states: “After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, securing the nation’s borders became the administration’s most urgent job. Among responses, President Bush authorized federal officials to round up hundreds of Arabs, Muslims, and Arab Americans as material witnesses in its investigation of the attacks and detain them on minor immigration violations. Arab and Muslim immigrants and visitors were identified as a ‘dangerous class’, signaling the government’s intention to deny them entry into the country whenever possible. America’s borders thus became more tightly controlled, and certain immigrants bore the burden of the administration’s policies.” The Commission found that by November 2001, “the DOJ had detained more than 1,100 men of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. DOJ did not reveal who it had detained, the reasons for detention, nor where detainees were held, not even to their families. Many detainees alleged mistreatment by prison guards, including being hosed down with cold water, strip searched, forced to sleep upright in freezing conditions, denied food or legal representation, and kept in their cells for long periods. President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to replace Ashcroft, who resigned last week. Gonzales is the author of a controversial memorandum to President Bush suggesting ways the United States could legally deprive detainees designated as ‘enemy combatants’ the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales described international conventions governing prisoners of war, including the Geneva Conventions, as ''obsolete.'' The administration’s policies also affected immigrants and visitors already in the United States, the report says. “When the USA Patriot Act was signed into law on October 27, 2001, the attorney general was given the authority to detain foreign citizens if believing that they pose a national security threat.” The Commission’s Report claims that, while, “detentions were reserved for those believed to be a national security threat, other Arab and Muslim immigrants were also viewed with suspicion.” In November 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft ordered the “voluntary” interviews of approximately 5,000 men, ages 18 to 33, “who had entered the United States with nonimmigrant visas from countries suspected of giving refuge to terrorists These men were not suspects in the attacks, but interviewers were told to ask about their religious practices, feelings towards the U.S. government, and immigration status.”


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INTERNAL LINKS – IMMIGRATION CRUSHES THE CARRYING CAPACITY

IMMIGRANTS ADOPT US CONSUMER VALUES WHEN THEY ASSIMILATE – THIS MAGNIFIES THE IMPACT OF THE US ENVIRONMENTAL CRUNCH Paul Ehrlich & Anne Ehrlich, Professor of Demographics, Stanford University, 1995 (“Population and Immigration Policy in the United States,” http://dieoff.org/page98.htm) At the same time, there are many rational reasons for restricting immigration to well below the present legal rate. First, most immigrants are transformed sooner or later into U.S. superconsumers, furthering both local and global environmental deterioration. Second, immigrants often bring with them cultural preferences for large families, which take a generation or more to fade away, meanwhile adding to our nation's gross overpopulation. A third, sad cost may be political fractionation as an ever larger and more diverse set of pressure groups oppose one another and all manner of legislative proposals. We have long been fans of diversity (e.g., Ehrlich, 1980), but wonder whether the American political system can stand much more without grinding to a halt. Whatever the actual costs and benefits of immigration, it seems highly unrealistic to expect fertility rates within the United States to drop to less than one child per couple; rapid achievement of ZPG will therefore require a complementary restriction of immigration. This brings us to the question of how, from both ethical and practical standpoints, the United States can restrict immigration. The United States is the most resource-wasteful nation in the world with the largest share of responsibility for global environmental deterioration. IMMIGRATION COLLAPSES THE US CARRYING CAPACITY Population-Environment Balance Organization 1992 (“Why Excess Immigration Damages the Environment,” June, http://dieoff.org/page52.htm) Immigration policy in the U.S. should be based on the reality that a stable U.S. population size is essential if we are to prevent further deterioration of the very system that supports us—our environment and natural resource base. Regardless of how conservatively we use resources, the fundamental fact is that growing numbers of people unavoidably place increasing demands on our natural and social environment. More people mean more energy use, more traffic jams, more production of toxic wastes and increased tensions that result from living in crowded urban environments. However efficient we may be in the use of resources and however much we conserve in our attempt to preserve our environment, more people simply mean more stress on the ecosystem. The phenomena of crowding, deforestation, acid rain, global warming and the whole litany of environmental ills in the U.S. and elsewhere amply demonstrate that every person, however conservative, adds to the environmental burden. NEGLIGENT IMMIGRATION POLICIES ESCALATE THE CRUNCH Betsy Hartmann, director of the Hampshire College Population and Development Program 2004 Population and Development Program, http://popdev.hampshire.edu/projects/dt/pdfs/DifferenTakes_27.pdf Immigrants are the main cause of overpopulation, and overpopulation in turn causes urban sprawl, the destruction of wilderness, pollution, and so forth. Internationally, it draws on narratives that blame expanding populations of peasants and herders for encroaching on pristine nature. In the first instance, the main policy “solution” is immigration restriction; in the second it is coercive conservation, the violent exclusion of local communities from nature preserves. Both varieties of the greening of hate are about policing borders.


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IMMIGRANTS FLEE TO AVOID THE CRUNCH ONLY TO BRING IT DOWN ON US Peter Skerry, Professor of the Department of Political Science at Boston College, 1989 Immigration and the affirmative-action state, http://www.carryingcapacity.org/va2.html Both the push factor of overpopulation and the pull factor of jobs and other benefits in the United States maintain the demand for immigration. Rewards from having offspring who emigrate include receiving remittances. In some rural areas of Mexico, "remittances constitutes over 80% of monthly cash incomes" (Sullivan, 1988, p. 1059; Wiarda and Wiarda, 1986; Hong Kong Women, 1989). Similarly, "Economists often say El Salvador's best export is its residents. In fact, the estimated $700 million that Salvadorans living abroad send back each year is more than the country earns from coffee, sugar and all its other exports combined" (Johnson, 1992, p. 9A). Families in these and like communities may rationally calculate that the chances of having at least one child emigrate improve with the total number of children they have. Children may seem a good investment as parents conclude that scarcity within their own country, which would otherwise encourage reproductive restraint, is outweighed by opportunities for their children to move. LAX IMMIGRATION POLICIES MAKES THE CRUNCH INEVITABLE Meredith Burke, nationally-published public policy commentator, with the Washington D.C-based Negative Population Growth, 2000, Immigration’s Dire Effect on the Environment, Seattle Times, http://www.commondreams.org/views/061500-104.htm Editors decide daily which stories to print and how much space to give them. If unbiased, they lead with the important points, subordinate all others. Discerning the important from the trivial is a judgment call. The recent resignation of David Brower from the board of the Sierra Club was unarguably newsworthy. The San Francisco-based organization has 600,000 members and ranks among the most influential environmental advocacy groups. Brower joined the club in 1933, was its first executive director in the 1950s and 1960s, and is ranked after John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt as a signal environmentalist. Yet on May 18 he resigned from the board "with no regret and a bit of desperation.” Fittingly, Brower's act received its fullest coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle. A surprisingly large number of papers, including the Atlanta Constitution, chose not to run it at all. Others edited out what prompted Brower's act. Brower asserted that "the planet is being trashed, but the board has no real sense of urgency." He protested the board's support of federal government proposals that he felt would contravene the club's original mandate to protect the California Sierras. He further chastised the club's leadership for not taking a strong stance on U.S. population growth and immigration. "Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed," he said. Even retaining this admonition left the casual reader ill-informed about the severity of the country's overpopulation problem. Shortly after the first Earth Day in 1970, the President's Commission on Population Growth and America's Future urged Congress to act with alacrity to stabilize the population of 200 million. Ecologists such as Paul and Anne Ehrlich of Stanford University peg 150 million as the maximum level consonant with long-term habitat preservation. Congress rejected demographic accountability. Instead, it adopted policies that have added 75 million people in a scant three decades. This January, the Census Bureau updated its historically conservative projections of future growth. Finally falling in line with academic demographers, the Bureau conceded that with unchanged immigration policies we are likely to add 300 million persons by the year 2100! If immigration policies - including our family reunification, refugee asylum, and H-1B visa programs - are liberalized, we could approach one billion. At that level we will menace both our survival and the world's with our rapacious appetite for resources, renewable and nonrenewable.


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IMMIGRATION MUST BE LIMITED TO CONSERVE RESOURCES Roy Beck, President of Numbers USA, 2001 The environment establishment abandons u.s. population stabilization, center paper, http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/forsaking/turning.html#237 Even as environmental groups increasingly distanced themselves from the population issue, Nelson’s concern with U.S. overpopulation through the years never wavered, and his speeches around the country on environmental sustainability spotlighted the U.S. population problem.236 A newspaper article describing an Earth Day 1998 speech began: "Senator Gaylord Nelson spoke to a standing-room only audience at Beloit College’s Richardson Auditorium [in his home state of Wisconsin], advocating the U.S. limit immigration before U.S. resources are depleted."237 Later that year, in a Washington, D.C., press conference, Nelson bristled at the idea that what really motivates attempts to limit immigration is racism. He said that such accusations only served to silence a debate that was long overdue: "We ought to discuss it in a rational way. We have to decide if we’re going to be comfortable with half a billion people or more."238 In a March, 2000 speech to a civic group in Madison, Wis., Nelson warned that if immigration and fertility rates continued, the U.S. could become as overpopulated as China and India. "With twice the population, will there be any wilderness left? Any quiet place? Any habitat for song birds? Waterfalls? Other wild creatures? Not much," he said.239 When he saw an earlier version of the present monograph, Nelson wrote one of the co-authors that its thesis that U.S. population growth was no longer being addressed primarily because of immigration and fears of being labeled racist was "right on target."240 David Brower first became concerned about population growth decades ago, in part under the "coaching" of his friend and Berkeley neighbor, scientist Daniel Luten.241 In 1997, Brower was one of the original signatories of the Sierra Club ballot measure in favor of reducing immigration to stop U.S. population growth. He later withdrew his name, because as a member of the Sierra Club board of directors at the time, it conflicted with the board’s official position. However, he never endorsed Ballot Question B, put forth by the board in explicit opposition to Ballot Question A, the immigration-reduction measure. And immediately after the vote, he spoke out against the board’s position. "The leadership are fooling themselves. Overpopulation is a very serious problem, and overimmigration is a big part of it. We must address both. We can’t ignore either.


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INTERNAL LINKS – FERTILITY RATES

FERTILITY RATES ARE HIGHER AMONGST IMMIGRANT POPULATIONS – MAKING ZERO POPULATION GROWTH IMPOSSIBLE Leon F. Bouvier, demographer, former Vice President of Population Reference Bureau, January, 1991 (“Immigration and Rising US Fertility: A Prospect of Unending Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/1991/back191.html) The fertility of Americans, well below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman since 1972, has risen markedly since 1988. Some small portion of the increase may represent a statistical quirk or increased childbearing among American women who have delayed maternity and are now "catching up." But powerful and enduring factors in this trend are rising fertility among immigrants and the increasing proportion of high fertility ethnic groups in the U.S. population. Asians' and Hispanics' share of the overall population is rising because of their greater fertility, high immigration from Asia and Latin America, and continued low fertility among the largest ethnic group, non-Hispanic whites ("Anglos"). California, which receives a third of all immigrants and has large minority populations and rapidly rising fertility, may well be the precursor of a lasting rise in national fertility. Fertility in the Golden State rose 20% between 1982 and 1988, reaching 2.3 statewide. Hispanic fertility, already the state's highest, grew by 10% to 3.5. Fertility of Asians rose to nearly 2.5, and that of Blacks to 2.4. Fertility of Anglos rose modestly to 1.7, still well below replacement level. Between 1982 and 1988 the Hispanic and Asian shares of California's population grew considerably through immigration. Higher fertility among those groups, along with their expanded proportional shares, accounted for 39% of California's increase in fertility. Within the Hispanic and Asian populations, the rising proportion of those ethnic groups that are higher fertility immigrants —and the corresponding decline in the proportion of less fertile native-born — was a major cause of higher group fertility. These trends have important implications for the population future of California and eventually the nation: California's fertility will continue rising, reaching 2.6 by 2020, when the state's population will near 40 million. California will become a state with no ethnic majority by 2010. Nationally, Anglos' share of the population will fall from 75.6 percent in 1990 to 54 percent in 2050. Hispanics will increase their share from 8.7 percent now to 23 percent in 60 years; Asians from 3.3 percent now to 10 percent. The proportion of Black Americans will grown modestly from 12.4 percent to 13.6 percent. High immigration coupled with persisting high fertility among the foreign born portends higher U.S. population growth than now projected under prevailing assumptions. The "high scenario" of the Census Bureau's 1989 projections — fertility of 2.2 and yearly immigration of 800,000 — has now become the most plausible. The result would be a u. s. population of 471 million in 90 years. An important condition for reaching zero population growth in the next century has been an assumed rapid decline of fertility among the foreign born. Recent fertility trends make that outcome seems increasingly remote. Persistent high fertility rates among the foreign born, and the prospect of continuing immigration and refugee flows of a million yearly, virtually rule out attainment of a stationary U.S. population in the 21st century. IMMIGRANT FERTILITY RATES ARE EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH – ACCELERATING US POPULATION PROJECTIONS Leon F. Bouvier, demographer, former Vice President of Population Reference Bureau, January, 1991 (“Immigration and Rising US Fertility: A Prospect of Unending Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/1991/back191.html) The higher fertility of new immigrant groups, as well as the shifting shares of the population as a result of continued high levels of immigration, bring a new and inadequately studied accelerating effect to fertility, and thus to future population size. These trends force a reexamination of projections of the nation's population in the 21st century. The projections now receiving most credence were those published by the Census Bureau projections in 1989. As is often the case, public attention focused on the Bureau's medium projection — one of 27 possible scenarios offered, but the one emphasized by the Bureau itself in its publication. HIGH RATES OF IMMIGRATION RAPIDLY RAISE FERTILITY RATES Leon F. Bouvier, demographer, former Vice President of Population Reference Bureau, January, 1991 (“Immigration and Rising US Fertility: A Prospect of Unending Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/1991/back191.html) As immigrants become an ever expanding proportion of the nation's population, fertility levels could rise to least 2.2. Any hope of attaining zero population growth at any time in the 21st century depends almost entirely on rapid fertility declines among these new minorities. However, with rising refugee inflows and the recent passage of legislation augmenting levels of immigration to perhaps 1


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million annually, any hope of' attaining an end to population growth within the next century becomes an illusion, even with reduced fertility among all groups of Americans.


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INTERNAL LINKS – GLOBAL SIGNAL / SAFETY VALVE

OPEN DOOR IMMIGRATION ERODES DEVELOPING NATION INCENTIVES TO LIMIT THEIR POPULATION GROWTH Population-Environment Balance Organization 1992 (“Why Excess Immigration Damages the Environment,” June, http://dieoff.org/page52.htm) Since many in these countries hold the illusion that the United States has unlimited resources and an unlimited capacity to accept immigrants, and will continue to accept large numbers of them, their governments have no real incentive to take steps to limit their own population by encouraging small family size and making contraception more widely available. The conclusion that they can justifiably draw from the present "open door" U.S. immigration policy is that a significant portion of their "excess" numbers can always go to the United States. This misconception only delays their attempts to slow their own population growth. OPEN IMMIGRATION SENDS THE WRONG SIGNAL TO THE DEVELOPING WORLD – ENCOURAGING MORE POPULATION GROWTH Population-Environment Balance Organization 1992 (“Why Excess Immigration Damages the Environment,” June, http://dieoff.org/page52.htm) In short, we are being unethical and unjust to our own people and to those from other countries by allowing excessive immigration and thus refusing to directly confront the carrying capacity problem. We send these countries the wrong signal, the signal that their high emigration and high birth rates can continue since the United States will provide a safety valve. This is neither good for other countries nor good for the United States. We should be sending them another signal, namely that the United States will take a strictly limited number of immigrants who can be successfully absorbed within our population carrying capacity, but no more. This policy would send the right signal to other countries and, in the process, allow us and them to protect the environment. Each would limit its own population growth, so each could help its own poor and employed. REDUCED IMMIGRATION SENDS A SIGNAL TO THE REST OF THE WORLD TO SAFEGAURD THE PLANET’S CARRYING CAPACITY Population-Environment Balance Organization 1992 (“Why Excess Immigration Damages the Environment,” June, http://dieoff.org/page52.htm) In sum, overpopulation is the ultimate threat to the environment, and immigration is the critical component in our rapid population increase, which is the highest in the industrialized world. We owe it to ourselves, to our poor and homeless, and to other countries to act now to limit immigration into this country to replacement level in order to protect our environment and safeguard our long-term carrying capacity. By working first in the United States to stabilize our population, we can send a signal to other countries that says we have limits to our capacity to absorb immigrants. We can become a model of population stabilization for others so that we can each work toward safeguarding our own carrying capacity and thus safeguard the carrying capacity of our planet.


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IMPACTS – EXTINCTION (US KEY)

US POPULATION EXPLOSION WILL CAUSE THE US TO COLLAPSE – RISKING ALL OF CIVILIZATION – IMMIGRATION REDUCTIONS ARE KEY Philip Shabecoff, Center for Immigration Studies, November 27, 1994 (“So Many People…How Will We Feed Them,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, http://www.cis.org/articles/1994/HMAreview.htm) Harshness against aliens, however, is not really what this book is about. The authors are not xenophobic. They have nothing in particular against Mexicans or Chinese or East Europeans. What they are against is people or, more precisely, too many people. Their central thesis — and I believe they are correct — is that excessive numbers of human beings are the single greatest threat to the environment, to a healthy economy and to the quality of life of American citizens. The current U.S. population, around 255 million, is already too high, the authors contend. We are producing too much waste and too much pollution, consuming unsustainable amounts of energy, eroding our soil, degrading our air and water supplies, using up our forests, making housing ever more expensive, creating more joblessness and poverty. Our cities are becoming more crowded, dirty and violent, our traffic choking, our open space is disappearing. If population trends continue on their current path, the book argues, we will be in much worse, perhaps desperate straits in the not-very-distant future. According to their projections, there would be just under 400 million Americans by 2050, when children born in the 1990s will still be in the prime of their life. By the end of the 21st Century, unchecked population growth would mean as many as a half-billion people living in this country. Except for the rich few, Americans will be living mean, hungry lives in an unstable, violent society by the middle of the next century. And that might not be the worst. The stress placed on life-support systems by the pressure of human numbers could cause "the collapse or extinction of our own species." The answer to this threat, Bouvier and Grant argue with cool, cogent urgency, is not just to slow population growth but to roll it back to an optimal level. Their number is 150 million, the size of the U.S. population at the time of World War II. Continued reductions in already declining fertility rates would not be sufficient to achieve this goal. Legal immigration must therefore be limited to 200,000 a year, down from the current level around 700,000, and illegal immigration must be stopped entirely.


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IMPACTS – RESOURCES WARS

US POPULATION GROWTH CAUSES GLOBAL RESOURCE WARS Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) Our growing energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, farmland and topsoil loss, and endangered species are all symptomatic of a nation headed the wrong way on the path to sustainability. Yet conventional wisdom holds that both population and per capita resource consumption will grow tremendously in the new century. U.S. energy consumption increased 22 percent from 1973 to 1995, with growing dependence on finite reserves of gas, coal, and imported oil.29 Population growth accounted for about 90 percent of this.30 The 1991 National Energy Strategy forecasted moderate growth in U.S. energy use in the coming decades, more or less matching population growth.31 If per capita energy consumption remains constant by dint of ever-increasing energy efficiency, then total U.S. energy consumption will still double along with population over the coming century. But national and world petroleum and natural gas reserves are likely to dwindle to insignificance well before this.32 Competition for the world's remaining oil, much of it concentrated in the volatile Middle East, will be a source of escalating global insecurity. However, the United States is richly endowed with two other fossil fuels: coal and oil shale. Unfortunately, both are plagued with egregious environmental problems: landscape disfigurement, heavy water demands, acid mine drainage, and high sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions. Technological optimists argue that growing energy needs could be met with some combination of nuclear fission, fusion, breeder reactors, solar thermal, photovoltaic cells, wind, biomass, and efficiency improvements, but none of these is problem-free. Even the "green" renewables are not panaceas: they are land-intensive, unsightly, and in the case of wind turbines, have even been implicated in bird kills. Climatologists generally agree that global warming is underway and that human emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and methane (CH4), are responsible.33 Without controls, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that average global surface temperatures will rise by 2°C (4°F) and sea levels by 0.5 meters (1.7 feet) by 2100.34 Concern over possible economic and ecological ramifications led to the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Treaty in Japan. As the country with by far the largest industrial CO 2 emissions, the United States must play a major role in any international effort. In Kyoto, the Clinton-Gore administration committed the United States to reducing its CO 2 emissions to 7 percent below 1990 emissions by 2010, an ambitious but attainable goal.35 Yet a booming economy and population — and no firm resolve — have only served to boost our carbon emissions. We are moving away from the target rather than toward it; population growth in the United States almost doubles the required per capita reduction of carbon emissions needed.36 IMMIGRATION UNDERMINES POPULATION STABILIZATION WHICH IS NECESSARY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) Certainly it is well beyond the "head-counting" mission of the Census Bureau to address such profound questions. Yet one would have hoped for more from the country as a whole. But this is typical. In describing America's lackadaisical approach to energy, historian Otis Graham weighs the evidence that "the inevitable end of the petroleum era will begin to be felt in the first half of the twenty-first century, and the time to prepare for it has been poorly used."41 The same might be said about other environmental bills that will be coming due. The nation with the greatest technical and financial means of any in the history of the world is postponing the difficult choices on the path to a sustainable future. Several years ago the President's Council on Sustainable Development advised that the United States move toward population stabilization.42 The Council's Population and Consumption Task Force added: "This is a sensitive issue, but reducing immigration levels is a necessary part of population stabilization and the drive toward sustainability." These recommendations went largely ignored. That, too, seems to be the fate of the latest projections on the demographic consequences of current immigration levels.


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WE MUST EMBRACE THE TRANSITION BEFORE ITS TOO LATE – OVERPOPULATION WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, 1990 The Population Explosion, Simon & Schuster, pg 176 The exact sequence of events in the Whimper is impossible to predict. If population growth continues on its current path, both ecosystems and social systems will be subjected to greater and greater stresses of many kinds, it seems likely that hunger, already affecting a billion or so people more or less chronically, will become acute in more places. That, in turn, will make the epidemiological environment ever more precarious and increase both intranational and international socio political tensions. People in rich nations may be able to ignore starvation in the poorest nations for a while, but increasing hunger and disaffection among the poor within rich nations will be difficult for elites to overlook. Unless emissions of greenhouse gases, of chlorofluorocarbons and nitrogen oxides and other ozone-depleting gases, and the precursors of acid precipitation are strongly curtailed, the breakdown of both natural and agricultural ecosystems will accelerate. Agricultural systems, under current practices, will continue to deteriorate anyway from massive erosion, faulty irrigation, and depletion of groundwater supplies. Most likely, some crucial system that we don’t understand in detail, such as the global climate system, holds the key to the overall downhill slide. If, by some miracle, the climatic system returned to the relatively stable, favorable conditions of 1930—70, it might take three decades or more for the food- production system to come apart unless its repair became a top priority of all humanity. If, on the other hand, recent climate events were not part of “normal variability,” but rather were caused by atmospheric warming, we will be plagued by very difficult problems in this decade or the next. EVEN IF IT DOESN’T CAUSE NUCLEAR WAR – WE STILL WON’T SURVIVE Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, 1990 The Population Explosion, Simon & Schuster, pg 176 If a large-scale nuclear war (followed by a nuclear winter) can be avoided, and if societies continue to behave much as they do now, we can expect an uneven but relatively continuous deterioration of the human condition over the next four to six decades. The pace of the downward slide is exceedingly hard to predict. The workings of the climate, the epidemiology of virus diseases, the success of technological fixes now being sought, and the resilience of various societies under severe stress are among the important factors that simply are not well enough understood. Furthermore, many scientists studying the human predicament are apprehensive that problems totally unanticipated today will arise. They realize that luck will be involved as well.


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IF WE CAN AVOID A LARGE SCALE WAR REGIONAL CONFLICT WILL FOLLOW Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, 1990 The Population Explosion, Simon & Schuster, pg 179 Even if large-scale war can be avoided, it seems likely that regional conflicts will become more frequent as disputes over land, dwindling water and energy sources, environmental refugees, and “who’s to blame” become more frequent. Whatever form it ultimately took, the Whimper would destroy civilization just as effectively as a large-scale war. The changes in our environment seen over the last fifty years will be dwarfed by those of the next fifty, and those changes are likely to be accompanied by an enormous rise in death rates. That’s the rub. The world is ill-equipped to handle a massive escalation in death rates. The deaths of many hundreds of millions of people in famines, for example, will present utterly unprecedented problems—especially when the nations in which they are dying have the capability of threatening nuclear terrorism. THE CRUNCH WILL BE THE END OF CIVILIZATION Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, 1990 The Population Explosion, Simon & Schuster, pg 180 The Whimper thus could lead to a collapse of civilization just as surely as the Bang. Populations of human beings could be greatly reduced, and national governments could be so weakened that they would be replaced by something resembling feudalism with a strong overlay of tribalism. Large cities with ethnically mixed populations could suffer fates similar to that of Beirut, made all the more difficult by severe shortages of food and the nearly total breakdown of centralized services. Attempts would be made to keep high technology going, but it might prove impossible. As the “standing crop” of automobiles, trucks, railroad engines and cars, refrigerators, power-plant turbines, and the like were destroyed or fell into disrepair, society could revert to the sort of conditions that prevailed in the Dark Ages, with fundamentalist religions and local despots playing a greater and greater role in human affairs. This precipitous decline would be most noticeable to those living in the now rich nations and to the very poorest people who now depend on aid for survival. The adjustment might be less severe for survivors in less-developed regions, and hundreds of millions of people might hardly notice at all, since they are living at a subsistence level now


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POPULATION GROWTH WILL INCREASE GLOBAL CONFLICT Carla Koppell, Wildrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, PREVENTING NON-TRADITIONAL CONFLICTS, 2003 wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1411&fuseaction=topics.item&news_id=40287 There are direct and indirect stability and security-related implications of population growth and the differentials in population growth rates. In addition to the pressure on resources and increase in resource-driven conflicts, which will be most acute at the local level but will also be felt globally, a cultural and political shift may accompany demographic changes. As Nicholas Eberstadt has said "Current population trends are redistributing global population and moving it away from today's industrial democracies." 17 By the year 2025, industrial democracies may account for less than one-fourteenth of the total population of large countries. Samuel Huntington warns "the juxtaposition of a rapidly growing people of one culture and a slowly growing or stagnant people of another culture gener- ates pressure for economic and/or political adjustments in both societies." 18 Huntington believes that lack of accommodation could lead to conflict. Eberstadt has suggested that the continuation of these trends could lead to an international environment "even more menacing to the security prospects of the Western Alliance than was the Cold War for the past generation."19 At the local and regional level, differential population growth rates can decrease stability and increase tension. The Middle East provides a case in point. Despite healthy population growth rates, Israeli Jews are a decreasing percentage of Israel's population. The population growth rates of the country's Arabs are higher; those of Palestinians in the territories are higher still. Israel has sought to compensate for this by encouraging large-scale immigration. According to Dennis Pirages this immigration has, however, increased Palestinian's sense of insecurity as immigrants place greater pressure on the land and give Israel further justification to retain the territories. Pirages notes that similar friction between different ethnic and religious groups exists in Russia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Canada. Nichiporuk adds examples from Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Bosnia. At times, even the perception of differential fertility rates (whether real or imagined) has created friction; this has been the case in India, where despite evidence to the contrary, Hindus believe higher birth rates among Muslims will soon lead to a shift in the majority population. ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION INCREASE THE RISK OF INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT AND TERRORISM Homer-Dixon, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Toronto, 1991 (Thomas F., International Security, Fall, Vol. 16, No.2 “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict”, www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh1.htm, Page 76-116) We can narrow the scope of this research problem by focusing on how environmental change affects conflict, rather than security, but still the topic is too vast. Environmental change may contribute to conflicts as diverse as war, terrorism, or diplomatic and trade disputes. Furthermore, it may have different causal roles: in some cases, it may be a proximate and powerful cause; in others, it may only be a minor and distant player in a tangled story that involves many political, economic, and physical factors. In this article, I accept the premise that environmental change may play a variety of roles as a cause of conflict, but I bound my analysis by focusing on acute national and international conflict, which I define as conflict involving a substantial probability of violence. How might environmental change lead to acute conflict? Some experts propose that environmental change may shift the balance of power between states either regionally or globally, producing instabilities that could lead to war.3 Or, as global environmental damage increases the disparity between the North and the South, poor nations may militarily confront the rich for a greater share of the world's wealth.4 Warmer temperatures could lead to contention over new ice-free sea-lanes in the Arctic or more accessible resources in the Antarctic.5 Bulging populations and land stress may produce waves of environmental refugees6 that spill across borders with destabilizing effects on the recipient's domestic order and on international stability. Countries may fight over dwindling supplies of water and the effects of upstream pollution.7 In developing countries, a sharp drop in food crop production could lead to internal strife across urban-rural and nomadic-sedentary cleavages.8 If environmental degradation makes food supplies increasingly tight, exporters may be tempted to use food as a weapon.9 Environmental change could ultimately cause the gradual impoverishment of societies in both the North and South, which could aggravate class and ethnic cleavages, undermine liberal regimes, and spawn insurgencies.10 Finally, many scholars indicate that environmental degradation will "ratchet up" the level of stress within national and international society, thus increasing the likelihood of many different kinds of conflict and impeding the development of cooperative solutions.11


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POPULATION OVERSHOOT INCREASES THE RISK OF INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT Homer-Dixon, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Toronto, 1994 (Thomas F., International Security, Summer, Vol. 19, No.1 “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence From Cases”, www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh1.htm, Page 5-40) Within the next fifty years, the planet's human population will probably pass nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple. Largely as a result, scarcities of renewable resources will increase sharply. The total area of high-quality agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain. Coming generations will also see the widespread depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers, and other water resources; the decline of many fisheries; and perhaps significant climate change. If such "environmental scarcities" become severe, could they precipitate violent civil or international conflict? I have previously surveyed the issues and evidence surrounding this question and proposed an agenda for further research.1 Here I report the results of an international research project guided by this agenda.2 Following a brief review of my original hypotheses and the project's research design, I present several general findings of this research that led me to revise the original hypotheses. The article continues with an account of empirical evidence for and against the revised hypotheses, and it concludes with an assessment of the implications of environmentally induced conflict for international security. In brief, our research showed that environmental scarcities are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts are probably the early signs of an upsurge of violence in the coming decades that will be induced or aggravated by scarcity. The violence will usually be sub-national, persistent, and diffuse. Poor societies will be particularly affected since they are less able to buffer themselves from environmental scarcities and the social crises they cause. These societies are, in fact, already suffering acute hardship from shortages of water, forests, and especially fertile land. Social conflict is not always a bad thing: mass mobilization and civil strife can produce opportunities for beneficial change in the distribution of land and wealth and in processes of governance. But fast-moving, unpredictable, and complex environmental problems can overwhelm efforts at constructive social reform. Moreover, scarcity can sharply increase demands on key institutions, such as the state, while it simultaneously reduces their capacity to meet those demands. These pressures increase the chance that the state will either fragment or become more authoritarian. The negative effects of severe environmental scarcity are therefore likely to outweigh the positive.


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IMPACTS – WATER WARS

OVERPOPULATION CAUSES WATER WARS, DEFORESTATION, GLOBAL ETHNIC CONFLICT, FAMINE, AND WORLD-WAR – IF WE WIN THIS IMPACT ALL OF THE CASE IS INEVITABLE Thomas, Member, Global Population Concerns, 1994 (Steve, “Overpopulation and Violence,” November, http://perc.ca/PEN/1994-11/s-thomas.html) The world's population is increasing at a rate of over 1.5 million people a week—95 million people a year—equivalent to a country the size of Mexico. Population is the key to the matrix of environmental degradation, scarcity of resources and political disorder. It is the most easily controlled factor and therefore should be the highest priority on any agenda. Overpopulation results in a scarcity of water, a scarcity of arable land, deforestation and depletion of fish stocks in the oceans. Because of population pressures, especially in the third world, the environment is being continually despoiled. There are limits to the resources needed to satisfy basic human needs: food, shelter, education and health care. Poverty, ignorance, fear and hunger exacerbate ethnic conflict and political instability. The inevitable result is violence, civil war and inter-state strife. Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan both stated that the only reason they would go to war would be over water. Both countries have high birthrates and a pressing need for water. Syria and Iraq both rely on water from the Euphrates. This river originates in Turkey and its flow is now being altered by the Turkish southeast Anatolia project. This will have serious consequences for the region. India and Bangladesh both have increasing population pressures on their shared river, the Ganges. China with 23% of the earth's people has only 8% of the world's water. But as much of a tinderbox is the paucity of arable land on our precious planet. This is the root cause of many explosive situations around the world. Some recent examples are Haiti, Central America and Rwanda. As land is subdivided because of inheritance, farmers are no longer able to support themselves on family farms and so migrate to the cities. The scarcity of land is often a conflagration point for ethnic and tribal warfare. Moreover, landowners in certain countries are under pressure to share ownership of the land with the tenants who traditionally farmed for them. As good land gets scarcer, the common crop and grazing land owned by the whole village is disappearing, leaving more destitution. Inequity and poverty breed violence. Another factor festers. In countries such as Haiti and Somalia the depletion of forests leads to soil erosion and lack of fuel for cooking fires. Internecine strife and tribal warfare results when agrarian people are forced to move and they encroach on others' land. In the African Sahel and West Africa deforestation causes erosion, crop failure and famine. There are vast migrations of indigents, destabilizing neighbouring countries and sparking civil wars. Finally (and this example hits home to Canadians), because of overfishing, climactic changes and technological innovation in fishing methods, fish stocks are fast declining in many areas of the world. Two notable examples are the Philippines and Canada's Grand Banks. As we know in Canada, shortages of fish result in a change of lifestyle for many, much international bickering and more significantly the occasional use of gunboats to further national interests. A shortage of fish cannot help but displace a large number of gainfully employed families who have fished the seas for generations. Bitterness, economic despair and frustration follow, increasing international tensions. Shortages of this valuable foodstuff only serve to increase pressure for other sources of food in a world of already increasing demand. We now see finite limits to the vast bounty of the ocean. These finite resources of water, land, forests and fish are being consumed at an alarming rate by an ever-increasing population. The most cost-effective method of dealing with this environmental deterioration and diminution of scarce resources is to ease the population growth in developing countries. Some suggest that the level of population in the world today is not sustainable at the high levels of consumption. We may be faced with apocalyptic images of starving and emaciated people killing each other in anarchic chaos that could well reach our own borders. Even today millions of people are on the move, struggling to avoid war, famine, plagues and other catastrophes in their homelands.


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IMPACTS – WATER WARS

WATER AND OTHER RESOURCE SHORTAGES FROM OVERPOPULATION WILL KILL BILLIONS Hinrichsen & Robey, Professor, John Hopkins University, 2000 (Don & Bryant, “Population and the Environment,” Fall, http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/hinrichsen_robey.html) As the century begins, natural resources are under increasing pressure, threatening public health and development. Water shortages, soil exhaustion, loss of forests, air and water pollution, and degradation of coastlines afflict many areas. As the world's population grows, improving living standards without destroying the environment is a global challenge. Most developed economies currently consume resources much faster than they can regenerate. Most developing countries with rapid population growth face the urgent need to improve living standards. As we humans exploit nature to meet present needs, are we destroying resources needed for the future? About 3 million die from pollution each year. Environment getting worse. In the past decade in every environmental sector, conditions have either failed to improve, or they are worsening: Public health: Unclean water, along with poor sanitation, kills over 12 million people each year, most in developing countries. Air pollution kills nearly 3 million more. Heavy metals and other contaminants also cause widespread health problems. Amount of land lost to farming by degradation equals 2/3 of North America. Food supply: Will there be enough food to go around? In 64 of 105 developing countries studied by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the population has been growing faster than food supplies. Population pressures have degraded some 2 billion hectares of arable land -- an area the size of Canada and the U.S. Freshwater: The supply of freshwater is finite, but demand is soaring as population grows and use per capita rises. By 2025, when world population is projected to be 8 billion, 48 countries containing 3 billion people will face shortages. Coastlines and oceans: Half of all coastal ecosystems are pressured by high population densities and urban development. A tide of pollution is rising in the world's seas. Ocean fisheries are being overexploited, and fish catches are down. The demand for forest products exceeds sustainable consumption by 25%. Forests: Nearly half of the world's original forest cover has been lost, and each year another 16 million hectares are cut, bulldozed, or burned. Forests provide over US$400 billion to the world economy annually and are vital to maintaining healthy ecosystems. Yet, current demand for forest products may exceed the limit of sustainable consumption by 25%. OVERPOPULATION CAUSES GLOBAL WATER SHORTAGES Hinrichsen & Robey, Professor, John Hopkins University, 2000 (Don & Bryant, “Population and the Environment,” Fall, http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/hinrichsen_robey.html) Parts of Africa will experience drastic water shortages by 2025. As population and demand for natural resources continue to grow, environmental limits will become increasingly apparent.6 Water shortages are expected to affect nearly 3 billion people in 2025, with sub-Saharan Africa worst affected.2 Many countries could avoid environmental crises if they took steps now to conserve and manage supplies and demand better, while slowing population growth by providing families and individuals with information and services needed to make informed choices about reproductive health.


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IMPACTS – WATER WARS (NUCLEAR WAR)

WATER WARS GO NUCLEAR Weiner, Prof. At Princeton, The Next 100 Years p.270 1990 If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, then we may destroy ourselves with the C-bomb, the Change Bomb. And in a world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the other. Already in the Middle East, tram North Africa to the Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over dwindling water supplies and rising populations are reaching what many experts describe as a flashpoint A climate shift in that single battle-scarred nexus might trigger international tensions that will unleash some at the 60.000 nuclear warheads the world has stockpiled since Trinity.


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IMPACTS – BIODIVERSITY

A. US POPULATION GROWTH DESTROYS GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) Finally, while disappearing tropical rain forests, panda bears, and gorillas rightly worry Americans, we will have our hands full here with our own biodiversity crisis. Even at present, 371 globally rare terrestrial ecological communities are threatened in the United States. 39 In 1996, the Nature Conservancy reported that almost one-third (32 percent) of 28,000 species and an additional 11,000 subspecies and varieties of plants and animals in the United States were in some danger.40 As U.S. population doubles and resource exploitation intensifies, pressures on precarious living resources can only increase. B. THE IMPACT IS EXTINCTION Paul Warner, American University, Dept of International Politics and Foreign Policy, August, Politics and Life Sciences, 1994, p 177 Massive extinction of species is dangerous, then, because one cannot predict which species are expendable to the system as a whole. As Philip Hoose remarks, "Plants and animals cannot tell us what they mean to each other." One can never be sure which species holds up fundamental biological relationships in the planetary ecosystem. And, because removing species is an irreversible act, it may be too late to save the system after the extinction of key plants or animals. According to the U.S. National Research Council, "The ramifications of an ecological change of this magnitude [vast extinction of species] are so far reaching that no one on earth will escape them." Trifling with the "lives" of species is like playing Russian roulette, with our collective future as the stakes.


35


OVERSHOOTING THE CARRYING CAPACITY LEADS TO TOTAL ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE Ehrlich, Professor of Biological Science and Population Studies at Stanford University, 1999 (Paul R., The Scientific American, “Ethics, Evolution, and the Population-Environment Crisis”, http://www.scifac.usyd.edu.au/chast/templeton/1999templeton/1999lecture.html) But the degree to which the interests of indigenous peoples today are congruent with effective conservation policies is a matter of debate.i[48] Human history suggests something quite different, a lesson of value to those seeking overall strategies for maintaining our life-support systems. The conservation record of peoples after the agricultural revolution is, at best, somewhat mixed. Until very recently, societies generally have not paid much attention to the long-term environmental effects of their behavior, but rather have focused on the satisfaction of their immediate needs. Control by forest dwellers, peasants, nomadic herders (“ecosystem people”)ii[49] of the local resources they depend upon often leads to superior husbandry of those resources,iii[50] in comparison of today’s citizens of rich countries (“biosphere people”)iv[51] who are able to draw their resources from the entire biosphere. The latter have little or no feedback about the status of the resource stocks they are tapping, and little incentive to conserve them. They “discount by distance,”v[52] having less concern for possible depletion and degradation far away. Overall, history over the last 10,000 years has not been mainly a story of sustainable management of resources but rather one of the progressive intensification of activities to support larger populations, which in many cases led to ecological collapses. If there is a lesson for today, it is that global human society, which now dominates the ecosphere, should be very cautious about further expanding its operations. Husbandry of the ecosystems that supply society with essential services must be conscious and active, lest we risk repeating the fate of the Easter Islanders on a global scale. Their society was destroyed when they destroyed their environment, a fate they shared with many other civilizations. We need to try to understand the circumstances under which cultural evolution could lead to population stabilization and resource conservation, as well as those that would lead to overpopulation and collapse. Few understandings would have more value in ending the population-resource-environment crisis. Human history is largely one of continuous intensification of resource use, strongly controlled by immediate rather than long-term needs. Whether in subsistence or industrial economies people need to develop social constraints on resource use that make it sustainable. As the human population size shoots past the carrying capacity of Earth,vi[53] the ethical foundations of both intergroup and intergenerational equity and the intimately connected ethics of treatment of our life-support systems and their living components, are now moving to the forefront.vii[54] These will almost certainly be the great ethical issues of the future. It may not be too late for humanity to avert a vast ecological disaster and make the transition to a sustainable society, but the task will not be simple. The required actions are evident, and they all have serious ethical implications for the required shifts in the norms of societies. Population growth should be halted as soon as humanely possible and a slow decline begun to a population size that, in a century or so, is environmentally sustainable and less beset with social problems related to crowding, forced migration, and conflict over dwindling resources. A sustainable population would probably be less than 2 billion people, even after considerable improvement of today’s technological and social arrangements.viii[55] Wasteful consumption in rich nations needs to be reduced in order to allow for needed increases in poor nations. Fortunately, a reduction of consumption while increasing the quality of life is technologically feasible. For instance, John Holdren’s scenarios offer a possible path toward an equitable and efficient pattern of energy use that could close the rich-poor consumption gap and constrain environmental damage.ix[56] Those goals might be reached while temporarily supporting the substantially larger human population that is inevitable before growth can be halted. But technological feasibility is not enough. As work with my colleagues Anne Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily has indicated, our sociopolitical systems need to undergo dramatic revision in the direction of increasing equity at all levels if sustainability is to be achieved.x[57] One of the overriding reasons is that the needed cooperation to solve global environmental problems is unlikely to be achieved in a world divided into “haves” and “have nots.” This brings us back to those intergroup and intergenerational ethical issues.


36


LEVELING OFF OF GLOBAL POPULATION IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT TOTAL ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE Engelman, Director of the Population and Environment Program at Population Action International, 1999 (Robert, Foreign Policy-In Focus, Vol. 4, No. 14, “Population and Environment”, May, http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n14pop.html, (eds.) Tom Barry and Martha Honey) Changes in population size, age, and distribution affect issues ranging from food security to climate change. Population variables interact with consumption patterns, technologies, and political and economic structures to influence environmental change. This interaction helps explain why environmental conditions can deteriorate even as the growth of population slows. Despite slowing growth, world population still gains nearly 80 million people each year, parceling land, fresh water, and other finite resources among more people. A new Germany is added annually, a new Los Angeles monthly. How this increase in population size affects specific environmental problems is impossible to say precisely. Too many factors interact, and much depends on the time frame under consideration. Obviously, trends such as the loss of half of the planet’s forests, the depletion of most of its major fisheries, and the alteration of its atmosphere and climate are closely related to the fact that human population expanded from mere millions in prehistoric times to nearly 6 billion today. No policy can change the past. But addressing current population needs would head off the regrets that future generations will otherwise have about the failure of today’s generation to act. Equally importantly, the policies that address demographic trends have immediate and beneficial impacts on the lives of women and their families. It is this "win-win" strategy—slowing population growth by attending to the needs for health care, schooling, and economic opportunities—that should encourage policymakers to consider population-related policies when addressing environmental risks.Future population trends will influence the abundance and quality of such critical renewable natural resources as fresh water, fisheries, forests, cropland, and the atmosphere. An international scientific panel, for example, noted recently that Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza are home to 12 million people and yet receive only as much rainfall as Phoenix, Arizona. Sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and counterpart institutions in the region, the panel identified rapid population growth as a major concern for the region’s critically stretched supplies of renewable fresh water. Stabilizing world population tomorrow won’t by itself solve natural resource crises and other environmental problems. But without a leveling off of population, eventually environmental challenges press more urgently no matter what other measures are taken. Policymakers tend not to address such interconnected issues. One result is that there really is no U.S. policy on population and the environment, only a range of separate policies related either to international population or to specific environmental issues.


37

IMPACTS – URBAN SPRAWL BAD

US POPULATION GROWTH DESTROYS PRIME US FARMLAND – ERODING US FOOD EXPORTS Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) A continually growing population will also worsen urban sprawl. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in the 1990s an average of three million acres per year of rural land was developed.37 If this rate continues to 2100, the United States will convert an additional 300 million acres of rural countryside. That's 470,000 square miles paved or otherwise built-up, equivalent to 57 percent of the land area of the 24 states east of the Mississippi River. To avoid this outcome through so-called "Smart Growth" initiatives and regional planning would mean drastically raising the density of existing built-up areas, as well as embracing mass transit whole-heartedly to avoid stifling traffic congestion. Overall, one effect of the projected population growth will be to increase government regulation's role in American society. The combination of relentless development and land degradation will reduce America's productive agricultural land base even as the demands on that same land base from a growing population increase. If current rates continue to 2100, the nation will lose more than 300 million of its remaining 375 million acres of cropland, or 82 percent of it, even as the U.S. population grows from 275 million to 571 million. These trends have led some scientists to conclude that some day America may no longer enjoy a food surplus for export to the world. Cornell University agricultural and food scientists David and Marcia Pimentel and Mario Giampietro of the Istituto Nazionale della Nutrizione in Rome have argued that the United States could cease to export food by 2025.38 IMMIGRATION CAUSES URBAN SPRAWL AND DEGRADATION OF US FARMLAND Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, August 2003 (“The Impact of Immigration on US Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/sactestimony701.html) Sprawl and Congestion. If we accept the admittedly low projections discussed above, which indicate immigration will add 76 million people to the population over the next 50 years, it means that we will have to build something like 30 million more housing units than would otherwise have been necessary, assuming the current average household size. This must have some implications for worsening the problems of sprawl, congestion, and loss of open spaces, even if one makes optimistic assumptions about successful urban planning and "smart growth." A nation simply cannot add nearly 80 million people to the population and not have to develop a great deal of undeveloped land. Can we quantify the role that population growth plays in causing land to become built up, which is a basic definition of sprawl? It turns out that we can. At its simplest level, there are only two possible reasons for an increase in developed land. Either each person is taking up more land, there are more people, or some combination of the two. It's the same with any natural resource. For example, if one wants to know why the United States consumes more oil annually now than it did 20 years ago, it is either because there are more Americans or because each of us is using more oil, or some combination of the two. In the case of sprawl, the natural resource being consumed is land. If one compares the increase in developed land in the nation's 100 largest urbanized areas between 1970 and 1990, it turns out that the causes of sprawl are split right down the middle between population growth and increases in per-person land consumption. Of course, this is not true in every city, but overall, population growth and increases in per-person land consumption contributed to sprawl in equal proportions.5 While we cannot say with absolute certainty that population growth will continue to cause more and more land to be developed, both past experience and common sense strongly suggest that population growth of this kind has important implications for the preservation of farm land, open space, and the overall quality of life in many areas of the country.


38


RAPID URBAN EXPANSION WILL ERODE US SOIL CAPACITY AND CONSUME THE BEST AGRICULTURAL LANDS – THIS DRASTICALLY RAISES FOOD PRICES AND HURTS GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY Marc Imhoff & Ian Lawrence, Biospheric Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, & Professor, Bowie State University, Deparment of Natural Science and Math, 2003 ( “Assessing the Impact of Urban Sprawl on Soil Resources in the United States Using Nighttime City Lights Satellite Images and Digital Soil Maps,” http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/chap3.html) While the overall agricultural potential of the United States may not be seriously diminished at present, if the trend is allowed to continue, the country may soon experience a decline in agricultural production. Currently, there is less and less reliance on local agricultural products in the United States. Many grocery stores are stocked mainly with produce generated in a few primary agricultural zones in the United States and abroad. As the local soils are converted to nonagricultural uses, those localities will be even more reliant on their access to national or international markets. As such they will be vulnerable to changes in those markets and will be in direct competition with a very broad and, in some cases, wealthy customer base for the products. If the need arises to revitalize local agriculture to support growing populations nearby, only the poorer soils will be available for use. These soils will require more fertilizer and other inputs since more limiting factors will have to be overcome to make the soil produce a crop. The need to farm poorer soils will tend to increase the cost of production and the price of food. An example of this potential can be found in the state of Pennsylvania. Traditionally rich in farmlands, university experts estimate that Pennsylvania is losing 1% of its prime agricultural land to development each year, according to recent estimates (G.W. Petersen, Pennsylvania State University, personal communication). If the trend continues, in 100 years there will be no more prime agricultural land in the entire state. At that time, the human population will be much larger, suggesting that Pennsylvania will become increasingly dependent on outside agricultural resources. In a future world of large human populations, where will those critically needed soil resources be found? Many countries are all depending upon the surplus production of the United States and other productive regions of the world to help carry their growing populations through the next 50 years. However, the United States, too, is depending on its current surplus capacity to feed its growing population. In fact, the U.S. agricultural production capability as it is now may be overcommitted by a factor of three by 2050 since a large percentage of the world's population expects that the surplus production will be available to them. Given this possibility, it would be prudent to protect the best agricultural soils from development. Not only should the best soils be protected, but it is vitally important that the farmland conservation effort take place at the local level and not simply at the national level. Consideration should be made for sustainable development at the local level, so that there is not the forced reliance of local populations on the interstate transportation systems that consume huge amounts of fossil fuels and are deteriorating under heavy use. While more detailed local analyses are needed to shed light on how each region of the country will be affected by the loss of soil resources, one certain outcome is that depletion of productive soil will bring with it a dependence on more distant resources and require ever higher yields per remaining acre on poorer soils. Another concern brought out by this study is the potential loss of certain soil types or unique soil units to urbanization. Our results indicate that four soil types, as classified in the UNFAO system in the United States, may be in danger of disappearing under urban/suburban structures. Is the loss of "soil diversity" meaningful in a biological or economic sense? The study of soil biodiversity is a relatively new field, yet recent studies indicate that great diversity may exist in soils, with their unique physical structure, environment, and history of formation (Huston 1993). The loss of soil types may therefore represent loss of whole biological communities unique to that soil type. The conservation of soil diversity may bring into question the wisdom of converting to agriculture soils that have not previously been cultivated. Agriculture seriously disrupts the soil by changing its chemistry, structure, and ecological dynamics. Many of the soils that have already undergone agricultural transformation are in locations that (for the most part) limit soil loss to erosion and other adverse impacts (even so, soil erosion is an increasingly severe problem). As stable soils become unavailable to agriculture through conversion to urban/suburban infrastructure, soils less suited for cultivation may be used for farming. Farming such marginal soils could increase erosion resulting in the destruction of many soils, right down to the bedrock or parent material. This process has already occurred in many parts of the world such as the Caribbean Islands (Haiti) and areas in South and Central America, Asia, and Africa (Ehrlich 1997). Our research demonstrates the use of nighttime images of the Earth, from the DMSP/OLS sensor, to measure the extent of urbanization and assess its impact on soil resources. Results show that urban development follows soil resources and that, in general, the best soils are being converted to nonagricultural uses by urban sprawl. In addition, some distinct soil types, with their unique physical structure and history of formation, may be in danger of elimination, likely resulting in a substantial loss of below ground and above ground biodiversity. The conservation of soil diversity is only now being discussed in scientific circles. With the increasing global demands on agricultural production, protection of the best agricultural soils emerges as an important priority, especially when considered from the viewpoint of future generations. The paramount importance of soil resources suggests a need for a global assessment of urban sprawl and its effect on soil productivity. This assessment should include not only impacts on the soil resource but a more robust analysis of potential loss of global agricultural productivity. Such an analysis, using soil- and climate-based production models, will help develop forecasts for management, planning, and climate change research. Given the very real possibility of temporal and spatial displacement of climatic regimes under global change scenarios, it is critical that any future work include not only basic soil fertility characteristics but a realistic assessment of the impacts of climate change on agricultural systems.


39


URBAN SPRAWL DESTROYS AMERICA’S MOST PRODUCTIVE FARMLAND American Farmland Trust 2003 (“Farming on the Edge,” http://www.farmland.org/farmingontheedge/) Each year you have to drive a little farther out to find it. Slowed by traffic, through tangled intersections, past rows of houses that seem to have sprouted from the field, finally, you can see the bountiful farmland. It wasn't always like this. But for the past two decades we've paved over our farmland for roads, houses and malls. Wasteful land use puts America's farmland at risk, especially our most fertile and productive—our most valuable—farmland. We're needlessly wasting one of the world's most important resources. Less than one-fifth of U.S. land is high quality and we are losing this finest land to development at an accelerating rate. U.S. agricultural land provides the nation—and the world—with an unparalleled abundance of food. But farmland means much more than food. Well-managed farmland shelters wildlife, supplies scenic open space, and helps filter impurities from our air and water. These working lands keep our taxes down and maintain the legacy of our agricultural heritage. It makes no sense to develop our best land. Instead, we have a responsibility to protect this most valuable resource for future generations. URBAN SPRAWL DEPLETES THE BEST US AGRICULTURAL SOILS – THE RESULT IS LOSS OF GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY Imhoff & Lawrence, Biospheric Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, & Professor, Bowie State University, Deparment of Natural Science and Math, 2003 (Marc, “Assessing the Impact of Urban Sprawl on Soil Resources in the United States Using Nighttime City Lights Satellite Images and Digital Soil Maps,” http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/chap3.html) Abstract. Nighttime satellite images of the Earth showing city lights were merged with census data and a digital soils map in an effort to estimate the extent of developed land in the United States and the impact of development on soil resources. The urban areas defined by "city lights" had mean population densities of 1,033 persons/km2 and 427 housing units/km2 (4.13 persons and 1.7 households/acre). Urban areas accounted for 2.7% of the surface area in the United States, an area approximately equal to the state of Minnesota or one-half the size of California. A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization soils map of the United States was overlaid on the nighttime "city lights" image to determine which soil types are most impacted by development. The more limiting factors a soil has, the more difficult or expensive it is to farm; consequently a soil fertility classification system based on physical factors that limit agricultural production was used to rank soils. Results for the United States show that the residential, commercial, and industrial development, known as "urban sprawl," appears to be following soil resources, with the better agricultural soils being the most affected. Some unique soil types appear to be on the verge of being entirely covered by urban sprawl. The conversion of good agricultural soils to nonagricultural use may have long-term ramifications for sustainable development at the local, regional, and global levels. Introduction The postagricultural growth of human populations, combined with technological advancement, has led to the widespread transformation of natural ecosystems into those dominated and heavily managed by human beings. The potential impact of this process on Earth's biological and geochemical systems is a current subject of debate, and concerns range from those dealing with biosphere-atmosphere interactions and global climate change (Kates et al. 1990) to the preservation of biodiversity, sustainable development, economics, and agricultural productivity (Vitousek et al. 1986; Ehrlich and Wilson 1991; Raven 1991; Ehrlich et al. 1995). The conversion of natural systems to agricultural production has been the primary basis for the successful growth of human populations for the last 9,000 years (Kates et al. 1990). The conflict between urban and agricultural land use, however, is only now becoming a subject of controversy. The transformation of productive agricultural land to urban use under burgeoning populations has become a contentious element in debates over sustainable development and food security (Ehrlich 1989; Daily and Ehrlich 1992; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1992). As more land is converted to urban uses, the question arises as to whether this trend represents a systematic reduction in our ability to produce food by placing our infrastructure on the most productive soil resources. A disturbing consequence of this urbanization process is a growing dependence on ever greater yields per unit area (on soils that remain) or a reliance on more distant soil resources and agricultural production. Given present demographic trends, it is important that issues of agricultural versus urban land use be resolved. An increasing number of regional populations may be at risk of food shortages in the future as a result of sociopolitical and economic instability (e.g., war, economic depression, social upheaval, etc.) with their consequent effects on global food supplies. While the reality of some agricultural land loss is accepted, both the magnitude and the potential effect are hotly debated. Central to much of the debate is the difficulty in acquiring accurate measurements of the area of urban land use, monitoring changes in urban land use, and assessing the impact of these changes on agricultural land area or production in a way that can be used in rational, cost-beneficial analyses (Parsons 1977; Meyers and Simon 1994).


40

IMPACTS – URBAN SPRAWL BAD (FAMINE IMPACTS)

FAMINE IMPACT – BILLIONS OF DEATHS AND COLLAPSE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY Brown, World Watch Institute, 1997 (Lester, “Rising Grain Prices May Disrupt Global Economic Progress,” August 16, http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/1997/08/16/) Rising grain prices may be the first global economic indicator to tell us that we are on an economic and demographic path that is environmentally unsustainable, reports a new Worldwatch Institute policy paper The Agricultural Link: How Environmental Deterioration Could Disrupt Economic Progress. "The deterioration of the earth's ecosystem is slowing growth in world food production during the nineties and ushering in an era of scarcity," says Worldwatch Institute president, Lester R. Brown, author of the report. "After a half century of falling grain prices, the 39 percent rise in the world price of wheat over the last three years may signal a new era of rising grain prices." For the world's affluent, who spend a small share of their income for food, even a doubling of world grain prices would not have a major immediate effect. But for the 1.3 billion in the world who live on a dollar a day or less, such a rise could be life-threatening. Heads of households unable to buy enough food for their families would hold their governments responsible and would likely take to the streets. The resulting political instability in Third World cities could affect the earnings of multinational corporations, the performance of stock markets, the earnings of pension funds, and the stability of the international monetary system. In short, it could disrupt economic progress. During the nineties, food security has deteriorated. Even though all the U.S. cropland idled under commodity programs has been returned to production, world grain carryover stocks have dropped to the lowest level on record. If the world is unable to rebuild depleted stocks, the next poor harvest could bring a dramatic rise in grain prices, one that could impoverish more people than any event in history. THESE FAMINES WILL CAUSE GLOBAL INSTABILITY, WAR, AND BILLIONS OF DEATHS – THREATENING EXTINCTION Winnail, Ph.D., M.P.H, 1996 (Douglas S., “On the Horizon: Famine,” September/October, http://www.kurtsaxon.com/foods004.htm) What is seldom stated is that optimistic forecasts for increasing grain production are based on critical long-term assumptions that include normal (average) weather. Yet in recent years this has definitely not been the case. Severe and unusual weather conditions have suddenly appeared around the globe. Some of the worst droughts, heat waves, heavy rains and flooding on record have reduced harvests in China, Spain, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Canada--major grain growing regions of the world--by 40 to 50 percent. As a result grain prices are the highest on record. Worldwatch Institute's president, Lester Brown, writes, "No other economic indicator is more politically sensitive that rising food prices.... Food prices spiraling out of control could trigger not only economic instability but widespread political upheavals"-- even wars. The chaotic weather conditions we have been experiencing appear to be related to global warming caused by the release of pollutants into the earth's atmosphere. A recent article entitled "Heading for Apocalypse?" suggests the effects of global warming--and its side effects of increasingly severe droughts, floods and storms--could be catastrophic, especially for agriculture. The unpredictable shifts in temperature and rainfall will pose an increased risk of hunger and famine for many of the world's poor. With world food stores dwindling, grain production leveling off and a string of bad harvests around the world, the next couple of years will be critical. Agricultural experts suggest it will take two bumper crops in a row to bring supplies back up to normal. However, poor harvests in 1996 and 1997 could create severe food shortages and push millions over the edge. Is it possible we are only one or two harvests away from a global disaster? Is there any significance to what is happening today? Where is it all leading? What does the future hold? The clear implication is that things will get worse before they get better. Wars, famine and disease will affect the lives of billions of people! Although famines have occurred at various times in the past, the new famines will happen during a time of unprecedented global stress--times that have no parallel in recorded history--at a time when the total destruction of humanity would be possible! Is it merely a coincidence that we are seeing a growing menace of famine on a global scale at a time when the world is facing the threat of a resurgence of new and old epidemic diseases, and the demands of an exploding population? These are pushing the world's resources to its limits! The world has never before faced such an ominous series of potential global crises at the same time! However, droughts and shrinking grain stores are not the only threats to world food supplies. According to the U.N.'s studies, all 17 major fishing areas in the world have either reached or exceeded their natural limits. In fact, nine of these areas are in serious decline. The realization that we may be facing a shortage of food from both oceanic and land-based sources is a troubling one . It's troubling because seafood--the world's leading source of animal protein--could be depleted quite rapidly. In the early 1970s, the Peruvian anchovy catch--the largest in the world--collapsed from 12 million tons to 2 million in just three years from overfishing. If this happens on a global scale, we will be in deep trouble. This precarious situation is also without historical precedent!


41

IMPACTS – THE “DIE BACK”

POPULATION CONTROL IS INEVITABLE – ITS ONLY A QUESTION OF WHETHER WE VOLUNTARILY CUT BACK OR NATURAL FORCES CAUSE MASSIVE, DISASTEROUS DIE-BACKS Pimental, Professor of Ag Economics, Cornell University, 1999 (David, “Will Limits of the Earth’s Resources Control Human Numbers,” http://www.dieoff.org/page174.htm) The current world population is about 6 billion. Based on the present growth rate of 1.5% per year, the population is projected to double in approximately 46 years (PRB, 1996). Because population growth can not continue indefinitely, society can either voluntarily control its numbers or let natural forces such as disease, malnutrition, and other disasters limit human numbers (Pimentel et al., 1994a; Bartlett, 1997-98). Increasing human numbers, especially in urban areas, and increasing food, water, air, and soil pollution by pathogenic organisms and chemicals, are causing a rapid increase in the prevalence of disease and number of human deaths (WHO, 1992, 1995; Murray and Lopez, 1996; Pimentel et al., 1998a). Currently, food shortages are critical, with more than 3 billion humans malnourished worldwide -- the largest number and proportion ever (FAO, 1992a, b; Neisheim, 1993; McMichael, 1993; Maberly, 1994; Bouis, 1995; WHO, 1995; WHO 1996). An estimated 40,000 children die each day due to malnutrition and other diseases (WHO, 1992). The planet's numerous environmental problems emphasize the urgent need to evaluate the available environmental resources and how they relate to the requirements of a rapidly growing human population (Hardin, 1993; Cohen, 1995). In this article we assess the carrying capacity of the Earth's natural resources, and suggest that humans should voluntarily limit their population growth, rather than letting natural forces control their numbers for them. (Pimentel et al., 1994a; Bartlett, 1997-98). In addition, we suggest appropriate policies and technologies that would improve the standard of living and quality of life worldwide.

POPULATION OVERSHOOT MAKES THE DIE-BACK WORSE AND ERODES THE LONG-TERM CARRYING CAPACITY Daly, Population Studies, 1994 (Gretchen, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) This commentary, given at the First World Optimum Population Congress (convened in London, U.K., 1993) is a contribution to that necessary dialogue. What follows is a brief statement of our joint personal views of the criteria by which an optimum should be determined (in no particular order). 1. An optimum population size is not the same as the maximum number of people that could be packed onto Earth at one time. The maximum would have to be housed and nurtured by methods analogous to those used to raise bakery chickens, and the process would inevitably reduce the planet's longterm carrying capacity. Many more human beings could exist if a sustainable population were maintained for thousands to millions of years than if the present population overshoot were further amplified and much of Earth's capacity to support future generations were quickly consumed. Thus, an optimum size is a function of the desired quality of life and the resultant per-capita impacts of attaining that lifestyle on the planet's life support systems. 2. An optimum population size should be small enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone (e.g., Ehrlich et al., 1993), even in the face of an inequitable distribution of wealth and resources and the uncertainty regarding rates of longterm, sustainable resource extraction and environmental impacts. We agree with Nathan Keyfitz (1991): "If we have one point of empirically backed knowledge, it is that bad policies are widespread and persistent. Social science has to take account of them." The grossly inequitable distribution of wealth and basic resources prevailing today is highly destabilizing and disruptive. While it is in nearly everyone's selfish best interest to narrow the rich-poor gap, we are skeptical that the incentives driving social and economic inequalities can ever be fully overcome. We therefore think a global optimum should be determined with humanity's characteristic selfishness and myopia in mind. A further downward adjustment in the optimum should be made to insure both against natural and human-induced declines in the sustainable flow of resources from the environment into the economy and against increases in anthropogenic flows of wastes, broadly defined, in the opposite direction.


42

IMPACT – DISEASE

IMMIGRANTS HARBORING DEADLY DISEASES INTO U.S., CLOSING THE BOARDER IS THE ONLY WAY TO SOLVE WorldNetDaily, online news source, 2005 Illegal Immigrants Pose Major Heath Threat, WorldNetDaily, http://www.alipac.us/article459.html Madeleine Pelner Cosman, author of a report in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, is particularly concerned with increases in multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis, chagas disease, dengue fever, polio, hepatitis A, B, and C, she told Lou Dobbs on CNN last night. "Certain diseases that we thought we had vanquished years ago are coming back, and other diseases that we've never seen or rarely seen in America, because they've always been the diseases of poverty and the third world, are coming in now," she said. As WorldNetDaily reported last month, even leprosy is suddenly on the radar of health officials. Cosman recommends closing the border to all illegal traffic, rescinding the citizenship of "anchor babies," those born in the U.S. to parents of illegals, and making the aiding and abetting of illegals a crime and an end to all future amnesty programs. IMMIGRATION ALLOWS FOR NEW DISEASES TO RAVAGE AMERICA, NOW IS KEY TIME TO SOLVE Frosty Wooldridge, magazine writer at Michigan State University, 2003 Illegal Aliens Spreading Diseases Across USA, http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_illegal_aliens_spreading_diseases.html If you travel into the Third World such as Mexico, Central and South America, you will notice that while visiting a bathroom there is a box for used toilet paper in the corner and no soap or paper towels at the lavatory. The sewage systems can not handle toilet paper so it is a habit to throw it in the box provided which is open to flies and cockroaches. Additionally, for most Third World people, washing hands is non existent. Today, in California, Florida, Georgia and spreading to other states across the nation, recent arrivals are so accustomed to throwing their used toilet paper into boxes, they throw it into trash cans. Whether they work at the counter or chopping tomatoes, they often do not wash their hands. Thousands carry head lice, leprosy, tuberculosis and hepatitis A, B, and C. Annually, an estimated 800,000 illegal aliens cross America's southern borders while avoiding a health screening. They are not stopped or vaccinated for a host of diseases they're bringing into America. Who is at risk? Everyone, but especially our school children when they come in contact with in-excess of three million illegal alien school children daily. What can those three million kids unknowingly transfer to our kids? Tuberculosis, five years ago, was almost non-existent in the USA. Last week, a school in Sebewaing, Michigan reported 30 children and four teachers had tested positive for tuberculosis infections. Michigan supports a large Latin illegal alien population that migrated from Mexico. In the past four years, 16,000 cases of multi drug resistant (MDR) TB, which was formerly endemic ONLY to Mexico, crossed over the borders inside the bodies of illegal aliens. These adults and their children have spread out across the country to work in fast foods and harvesting. Another outbreak occurred in Austin, Minnesota where eight police officers tested positive for tuberculosis. A similar outbreak occurred in Portland, Maine last week with 28 testing positive for tuberculosis. On November 6, 2003, at a local restaurant chain, Chi-Chi's in Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, unscreened employees 'served' up plates of infectious hepatitis A to their patrons. Over 3,000 had to receive the painful gammaglobulin shots while two Americans died. Health officials reported, "Workers may have contaminated food by failure to follow basic hygiene in cleaning hands after using the bathroom." The employees were not health screened by the restaurant chain. Another distressing disease, leprosy, long feared from Biblical times, totaled 900 cases in the USA in the past 40 years. In the past three years, according to a report from the NY Times in February, 2003, leprosy has infected over 7,000 people in the United States. It was brought in by illegal immigrants from India, Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean. Leprosy spreads by infected illegal aliens working in fast food, dish washing and hotels. Chagas Disease is brought directly from Mexico and Latin America where it has infected over 18,000,000 people. The T-Cruzi protozoan destroys heart tissue and other organs. "One can contract it by eating uncooked food contaminated with infective feces of the Vinchuca Bug. It crosses over the border in the bodies of an average of 2,200 illegal aliens daily. Whether it's dengue fever, now in Florida, Hemmorhagic Fever coming up from Texas border towns or E-coli intestinal parasites arriving with illegal aliens from Mexico daily, every American citizen is under a form of 'Bio Terrorism'. Tom Ridge of Homeland Security presents Americans with color coded 'alert' levels from Al Queda, but what he doesn't protect us from is a mounting invasion from an 'unarmed army' of disease carrying illegals who are becoming just as deadly as 9/11.


43

IMPACT – DISEASE

IMMIGRATION POICLIES ALLOW FOR UNCHECKED SPREAD OF DISEASE Frosty Wooldridge, magazine writer at Michigan State University, 2003 Disease Creeps In Along With Illegals, Rocky Mountain News, http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_disease_creeps_in_along_with_illegals_2003.html Across the country this week, hundreds of bus loads of illegal immigrants are bringing a message to Washington DC that they want better treatment and instant citizenship. What they don't mention is their reckless disregard for legally immigrating into the USA has created a growing health care crisis in America. They demand their rights, but they disregarded our rights by illegally crossing into our country without being health screened. It's what they are carrying that we don't want. There is another ticking bomb crossing our borders daily by the thousands--entirely unregulated, unscreened and untracked in our nation. Their numbers average two per minute and over 800,000 annually, according the Center For Immigration Studies in Washington, DC. SARS and West Nile virus make big news, but other diseases are creeping into the heartland unnoticed. In the past 40 years, the US incidents of leprosy stood at 900 recorded cases. Today because of massive immigration from Third World countries, we have more than 7,000 people suffering with leprosy, "And those are the ones we know about," said Dr. John Levis, physician at Bellevue Hospital's Hansen's Disease Clinic in New York. "There are probably many, many more and they are spreading." Most of those infected in the United States are immigrants from global leprosy hot spots, places: Mexico, Brazil, India and the Caribbean. But, in the past six years, Levis and his colleagues have proved that a few of his patients — including a 73-year-old man from Queens who had never been out of the country and an elderly Jewish man from Westchester County, New York — have contracted leprosy in the United States. Leprosy's symptoms--bumpy rashes, skin indentations and loss of feeling in hands and feet. As a result, The disease is now officially endemic to the Northeastern United States for the first time ever. Another bug riding in the bodies of newcomers to America is tuberculosis. In a recent article from 'THE PATIENT PREDATOR', Dr. Reichman of New Jersey TB Clinic, "In the 1990s, cases among foreign born Americans rose from 29 percent to 41.6 percent. Anti biotic resistant strains from Mexico have migrated to Texas. Since three years ago, 16,000 new cases of TB were discovered in the United States. Half were foreign born. Strains of TB once found only in Mexico have migrated to border states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. It will move north as illegal aliens work in restaurants as cooks, dishwashers and food handlers. We sit on the edge of a potential catastrophe." Disease is another crisis 'sneaking' across our borders in the form of unrestricted illegal immigration. Once it's inside our country, it's our problem and we will be forced to pay for it. If American political leaders okay the matricula consular card, give them drivers licenses and assist illegal immigration by not enforcing our Homeland Security laws.


44

IMPACTS – DISEASE

UNCHECKED DISEASE CAUSES HUMAN EXTINCTION South China Morning Post, 1-4-1996 (Dr. Ben Abraham “called "one of the 100 greatest minds in history" by super-IQ society Mensa” and owner of “Toronto-based biotechnology company, Structured Biologicals Inc” according to same article) Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years - theoretically, it could happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.


45

IMPACTS – ECONOMY

OVERPOPULATION SPEEDS UP THE OIL PEAK – COLLAPSING THE ECONOMY Abernathy, Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, 1996 (Virginia, “Population Politcs: The Choices that Shape Our Future,” http://www.dieoff.org/page58.htm) Energy security is in far greater jeopardy from our population growth than from denying access to the few remaining pools of oil in the northern hemisphere. Indeed, population growth in the United States drives the increasing use of energy: From 1970 to 1990-while per capita use hardly budged-total energy consumption increased by 24 percent. John Holdren (1991) states that 93 percent of the increase in the United States' use of energy in this twenty-year period can be traced to population growth. With population growth, planning for energy security means taking aim at a moving target. The next several decades will not likely experience just a gradual exhaustion of oil as the primary energy source. Rather, the supply of oil likely will be periodically disrupted owing to its increasingly narrow geographic distribution into the single dominant area of occurrencethe Middle East. We can be substantially confident that new, large occurrences of oil, such as would be necessary to alter the proportional contribution of the Middle East to world petroleum, are not likely to be found; certainly, no such occurrences have been found in the several recent decades of intense worldwide petroleum exploration. AND, OVERPOPULATION UNDERMINES HIGH STANDARDS OF LIVING AND GROWTH Hinrichsen & Robey, Professor, John Hopkins University, 2000 (Don & Bryant, “Population and the Environment,” Fall, http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/hinrichsen_robey.html) Conclusion: We risk destroying our standard of living if we don't control population growth. Conclusion If every country made a commitment to population stabilization and resource conservation, the world would be better able to meet the challenges of sustainable development. Practicing sustainable development requires a combination of wise public investment, effective natural resource management, cleaner agricultural and industrial technologies, less pollution, and slower population growth. Worries about a "population bomb" may have lessened as fertility rates have fallen, but the world's population is projected to continue expanding until the middle of the century. Just when it stabilizes and thus the level at which it stabilizes will have a powerful effect on living standards and the global environment. As population size continues to reach levels never before experienced, and per capita consumption rises, the environment hangs in the balance.


46

IMPACTS – US ECONOMY / GHG REDUCTIONS

GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTIONS ARE INEVITABLE – IMMIGRATION GROWTH CAUSES SUCH EFFORTS TO BE MORE DRASTIC AND WILL CRUSH THE US ECONOMY Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, November 28, 1997 (“Reducing Greenhouse Gases: The Vital Immigration Angle,” The San Diego Union Tribune, http://www.cis.org/articles/1997/sac11-28-97.html) President Clinton recently indicated that at the upcoming summit on global warming in Kyoto, Japan, he will propose reducing U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2012, with further reductions in the future. As many commentators have already pointed out, this will likely mean some real sacrifices on the part of Americans, as we endure higher energy taxes, turn down our air conditioners and drive our cars less. What has not been made clear to the American people, however, is that the amount of sacrifice Americans will have to endure depends heavily on our immigration policy. While a direct link between the emission of greenhouse gases and immigration policy may seem improbable at first, the connection is actually straightforward. At present, immigration is running at records levels, with 1.2 million legal and illegal immigrants entering each year. Moreover, immigrants tend to have more children than natives. As a result, immigration causes the U.S. population to grow rapidly. The latest Census Bureau projections indicate that in the next 50 years, if the current level of immigration continues, there will be 80 million to 90 million more people living in the United States than there would have been with moderate immigration of 250,000 a year. Since any treaty we sign to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will limit total U.S. emissions, not per-person emissions, a larger population will require each individual to cut back more in order to keep total output at 1990 levels. It is not anti-immigrant to acknowledge this simple mathematical fact. To see how this works, consider the following: if the United States agrees to limit its emission of greenhouse gases to 1.6 billion metric tons annually (the 1990 level), then the average American can produce no more than 5.3 tons of greenhouse gases if our population is 298 million in 2025, as it would be with moderate levels of immigration. However, if the U.S. population grows to 335 million in 2025, as it is projected to do if current immigration trends continue, then per-person emissions will have to be cut back to 4.7 tons per year. Thus, in the next two decades, because of high immigration, each American will have to cut back 12 percent more on his production of greenhouse gases than would otherwise have been necessary. Of course, other factors beside population size determine total U.S. output of greenhouse gases. New technologies and conservation efforts, for example, can reduce per-person emissions. However, the issue before us is how much pain do we want to endure as we purchase costly new technologies, turn down our heaters in winter and pay more for gasoline. The simple fact is high immigration will make any effort to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases more costly for the average American. Not only does this situation have important implications for the standard of living in the United States, it may also adversely affect the competitiveness of U.S. industry.


47

IMPACTS – CLIMATE CHANGE

A. IMMIGRATION UNDERMINES US EFFORTS TO CONTROL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) Our primary economic competitors do not have to deal with rapid population growth as they seek to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases. Japan's population, for example, is projected to grow from 125 today to only 126 million in 2025, and Germany's population is projected to actually shrink from 82 million today to 79 million in 2025. In fact, the United States is virtually the only major industrialized country that faces the task of cutting emissions while also dealing with rapid population growth. It is also worth noting that because most immigrants come from developing countries, immigration has the effect of transferring population from the less-polluting parts of the world to the more-polluting parts of the world. Thus, even if the highest priority is placed on reducing the emission of greenhouse gases worldwide, immigration is still counterproductive. If not this year, then at some point in the near future the United States will undoubtedly sign a treaty to limit its output of greenhouse gases. In considering such a treaty, the American people need to understand what the current level of immigration means in terms of higher taxes on fossil fuels and other painful measures necessary to comply with whatever international commitments we make to deal with global warming. B. GLOBAL WARMING WILL MAKE THE EARTH EXPLODE Dr. Tom J. Chalko, PhD, 30 October 2004, NU Journal, www.nujournal.net/core.pdf One of the well-established paradigms of nuclear science is that the ”half-life”, or ”decay constant” of any given isotope is nearly independent of extra-nuclear considerations [7]. It means, that the rate of decay and hence the rate of produced heat practically does not depend on factors such as temperature, pressure, electrical potential and other environmental conditions around the decaying isotope. According to our knowledge today, the rate of decay can only be accelerated significantly by delivering enough energy directly to atomic nuclei. For example this can be accomplished by disturbing atomic nuclei with sufficiently fast moving neutrons. The best known example of such an acceleration of the nuclear decay is the so-called ”chain reaction”. A chain reaction occurs when sufficiently many atoms that decay naturally by ejecting neutrons are brought sufficiently close together so that neutrons produced by a nucleus of one atom can stimulate disintegration of other atomic nuclei nearby. The minimum number of such atoms that can sustain such a process is defined by the so-called3.3 As you know, a chain reaction leads to a quick release of significant amounts of energy in a process that we call an atomic explosion. From the above it becomes obvious that the Earth’s interior, as any nuclear fission reactor, will continue tore lease heat whether it is sufficiently cooled from the outside or not. It is very important to note that in a nuclear reactor heat is generated in the entire volume of the nuclear fuel, but cooling can occur only at the surface. The temperature inside the reactor’s core depends on the amount of cooling. The better the cooling - the lower temperatures inside the reactor core. When the cooling is reduced - temperatures inside the nuclear reactor rise. See Appendix 1 for details. The cooling of the reactor called Earth is determined and controlled by the atmosphere. It is well known today that burning fossil fuels on a large scale produces large amounts of gasses that make the atmosphere ”trap” progressively more solar heat. This increased capacity of the atmosphere to hold more of the solar heat is called today the ”greenhouse effect”. Any reduction of the cooling capacity of the atmosphere causes a corresponding increase of the interior temperatures. Appendix 1 clearly demonstrates that the tiniest reduction in the cooling capacity of a spherical reactor, when sustained for a sufficiently long time, causes extreme temperature increases at the center of the reactor. How much can we possibly overheat the inner core reactor? Even if we do overheat it a little, it is likely to generate exactly the same amount of heat. The interior of our planet will just get warmer. So, perhaps there is nothing to worry about? Perhaps. There is however one particular condition of the reactor that deserves special consideration. It is the meltdown condition. When there is a meltdown in a nuclear reactor such a Chernobyl, there is no nuclear explosion, even though the amount of nuclear fuel is significant. The reason for it is simple. The nuclear fuel that is used in a typical reactor contains only about 2% of unstable isotopes that undergo spontaneous fission. These isotopes are too far from one another in the fuel to sustain a chain reaction. When the meltdown occurs, the molten nuclear material ”sinks” into the ground and becomes dispersed. Dispersion of the overheated material provides more surface area for its cooling and eventually some thermal equilibrium is reached. The area remains hot and highly radio active, but there is no danger of a nuclear explosion. In order to create conditions for a chain reaction and make an atomic bomb, the nuclear fuel needs to be ”enriched”. In essence, such an ”enrichment” process utilizes the fact that different isotopes have different specific weights so that they can be separated by weight and hence concentrated. When there is a ”meltdown” in the inner core of a planet - it is likely to occur at the hottest point - in the center of the core. From there - there is nowhere to ”sink” and nowhere to ”disperse”. The molten nuclear fuel just remains molten. We do not know what the exact composition of the solid inner core is in its very center, but just from the fact that it has been decaying for millions of years we can establish with considerable certainty that it should be quite a complex mixture of isotopes, even if we do not yet know any of these isotopes. When a mixture of isotopes becomes and remains molten, conditions arise for stratification of individual isotopes by their weight due to centrifugal motion of the planetary core. In essence, this process is very similar to the process that is used to ”enrich” a nuclear fuel in centrifugal equipment in order to make an atomic bomb. If the molten volume of the inner core is large enough for a sufficient amount of time - the continuing stratification of isotopes will eventually lead to some of them achieving a ”critical mass”. When this occurs -the nuclear energy that was scheduled to be released over many millions of years may get released very quickly. A chain reaction will result in a gigantic atomic explosion


48

IMPACTS – TERRORISM

IMMIGRATION CAUSES TERRORISM Mark Krikorian, Director, Center for Immigration Studies, Spring, 2004 (“Keeping Terror Out: Immigration Policy and Asymmetirc Warfare,” National Interest, http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/mskoped050104.html) 9/11 was not the only terrorist plot to benefit from lax enforcement of ordinary immigration controls—every major Al-Qaeda attack or conspiracy in the United States has involved at least one terrorist who violated immigration law. Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, for example, who was part of the plot to bomb the Brooklyn subway, was actually caught three times by the Border Patrol trying to sneak in from Canada. The third time the Canadians would not take him back. What did we do? Because of a lack of detention space, he was simply released into the country and told to show up for his deportation hearing. After all, with so many millions of illegal aliens here already, how much harm could one more do? Another example is Mohammed Salameh, who rented the truck in the first World Trade Center bombing. He should never have been granted a visa in the first place. When he applied for a tourist visa he was young, single, and had no income and, in the event, did indeed end up remaining illegally. And when his application for a green card under the 1986 illegal-alien amnesty was rejected, there was (and remains today) no way to detain and remove rejected green-card applicants, so he simply remained living and working in the United States, none the worse for wear. The same was true of Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who murdered two people at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002—he was a visa overstayer whose asylum claim was rejected. Yet with no mechanism to remove him, he remained and, with his wife, continued to apply for the visa lottery until she won and procured green cards for both of them. Ordinary immigration enforcement actually has kept out several terrorists that we know of. A vigilant inspector in Washington State stopped Ahmed Ressam because of nervous behavior, and a search of his car uncovered a trunk full of explosives, apparently intended for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport. Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the candidates for the label of “20th hijacker,” was rejected four times for a visa, not because of concerns about terrorism but rather, according to a U.S. embassy source, “for the most ordinary of reasons, the same reasons most people are refused.” That is, he was thought likely to overstay his visa and become an illegal alien. And Mohamed Al-Qahtani, another one of the “20th hijacker” candidates, was turned away by an airport inspector in Orlando because he had no return ticket and no hotel reservations, and he refused to identify the friend who was supposed to help him on his trip. Prior to the growth of militant Islam, the only foreign threat to our population and territory in recent history has been the specter of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. To continue that analogy, since the terrorists are themselves the weapons, immigration control is to asymmetric warfare what missile defense is to strategic warfare. There are other weapons we must use against an enemy employing asymmetric means—more effective international coordination, improved intelligence gathering and distribution, special military operations—but in the end, the lack of effective immigration control leaves us naked in the face of the enemy. This lack of defensive capability may have made sense with regard to the strategic nuclear threat under the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, but it makes no sense with regard to the asymmetric threats we face today and in the future. Unfortunately, our immigration response to the wake-up call delivered by the 9/11 attacks has been piecemeal and poorly coordinated. Specific initiatives that should have been set in motion years ago have finally begun to be enacted, but there is an ad hoc feel to our response, a sense that bureaucrats in the Justice and Homeland Security departments are searching for ways to tighten up immigration controls that will not alienate one or another of a bevy of special interest groups.


49

IMPACTS – LINEARITY

EACH US LIVE LINEARLY DEGRADES THE EARTHS CARRYING CAPACITY – US POPULATION GROWTH CAUSES Ehrlich, Professors of Population Studies and Biology at Stanford, 1994 (Paul, Proceeding from the International Conference on Population and Development: Cairo, “Too Many Rich People”, September, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) Concern about population problems among citizens of rich countries generally focuses on rapid population growth in most poor nations. But the impact of humanity on Earth's life support systems is not just determined by the number of people alive on the planet. It also depends on how those people behave. When this is considered, an entirely different picture emerges: the main population problem is in wealthy countries. There are, in fact, too many rich people. The amount of resources each person consumes, and the damage done by the technologies used to supply them, need to be taken as much into account as the size of the population. In theory, the three factors should be multiplied together to obtain an accurate measurement of the impact on the planet*. Unhappily, Governments do not keep statistics that allow the consumption and technology factors to be readily measured—so scientists substitute per capita energy consumption to give a measure of the effect each person has on the environment. USING AND CONSUMING In traditional societies—more or less in balance with their environments—that damage may be self-repairing. Wood cut for fires or structures regrows, soaking up the carbon dioxide produced when it was burned. Water extracted from streams is replaced by rainfall. Soils in fields are regenerated with the help of crop residues and animal manures. Wastes are broken down and reconverted into nutrients by the decomposer organisms of natural ecosystems. At the other end of the spectrum, paving over fields and forests with concrete and asphalt, mining the coal and iron necessary for steel production with all its associated land degradation, and building and operating automobiles, trains and aeroplanes that spew pollutants into the atmosphere, are all energy-intensive processes. So are drilling for and transporting oil and gas, producing plastics, manufacturing chemicals (from DDT and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers to chlorofluorocarbons and laundry detergents) and building power plants and dams. Industrialized agriculture uses enormous amounts of energy—for ploughing, planting, fertilizing and controlling weeds and insect pests and for harvesting, processing, shipping, packing, storing and selling foods. So does industrialized forestry for timber and paper production. PAYING THE PRICE Incidents such as Chernobyl and oil spills are among the environmental prices paid for mobilizing commercial energy—and soil erosion, desertification, acid rain, global warming, destruction of the ozone layer and the toxification of the entire planet are among the costs of using it. In all, humanity's high-energy activities amount to a large-scale attack on the integrity of Earth's ecosystems and the critical services they provide. These include control of the mix of gases in the atmosphere (and thus of the climate); running of the hydrologic cycle which brings us dependable flows of fresh water; generation and maintenance of fertile soils; disposal of wastes; recycling of the nutrients essential to agriculture and forestry; control of the vast majority of potential crop pests; pollination of many crops; provision of food from the sea; and maintenance of a vast genetic library from which humanity has already withdrawn the very basis of civilization in the form of crops and domestic animals. THE RELATIVE IMPACT The average rich-nation citizen used 7.4 kilowatts (kW) of energy in 1990—a continuous flow of energy equivalent to that powering 74 100-watt lightbulbs. The average citizen of a poor nation, by contrast, used only 1 kW. There were 1.2 billion people in the rich nations, so their total environmental impact, as measured by energy use, was 1.2 billion x 7.4 kW, or 8.9 terawatts (TW)—8.9 trillion watts. Some 4.1 billion people lived in poor nations in 1990, hence their total impact (at 1 kW a head) was 4.1 TW. The relatively small population of rich people therefore accounts for roughly two-thirds of global environmental destruction, as measured by energy use. From this perspective, the most important population problem is overpopulation in the industrialized nations. The United States poses the most serious threat of all to human life support systems. It has a gigantic population, the third largest on Earth, more than a quarter of a billion people. Americans are superconsumers, and use inefficient technologies to feed their appetites. Each, on average, uses 11 kW of energy, twice as much as the average Japanese, more than three times as much as the average Spaniard, and over 100 times as much as an average Bangladeshi. Clearly, achieving an average family size of 1.5 children in the United States (which would still be larger than the 1.3 child average in Spain) would benefit the world much more than a similar success in Bangladesh.


50

IMPACTS – 5 YEAR TIMEFRAME!

UNCHECKED IMMIGRATION CAUSES CRUNCH WITHIN FIVE YEARS Frosty Wooldridge, magazine writer at Michigan State University, 2003 Too Many People - Too Few Solutions, Denver Post, http://www.frostywooldridge.com/overpop/overpop.html An average of 8,200 people are added to our country every day via annual net gains in US births at 1.0 million and immigration at 2.3 million--legal, illegal and their births. Soon past the mid-century, those 200 million more Americans will be struggling for dwindling resources, water, food and a diminishing quality of life. In a western state like Colorado or Arizona, a drought in 2050 will become a DISASTER along with many other consequences. When one state suffers such a monumental crisis, all other states will be affected in time. For graphic examples, one need only look at India and China. In a recent speech, Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, said, "In my country, 4 million people are born in the streets, live in the streets and die in the streets-never having used a toilet or shower." If massive population is so good, why is India so poor? Even more sobering is China's plight at 1.3 billion and growing at 12 million per year. Overpopulation will become the 'plague of the 21st century'. Where is America headed? Do we want such a legacy for our own children? According to 60 Minutes, we have one million homeless children struggling in our inner cities today. Why can't we take care of their needs even today? What will be the fate of another 200 million people who create homeless children? How many is too many and when will Americans address itself to that fact? Who possesses the courage to step up to the reality of overpopulation/consumption/pollution in America-in the long term? At this time, no one. Politicians scurry like cockroaches at the mention of population stabilization. Corporations demand larger markets as if nonrenewable resources will appear out of thin air. They sacrifice the future of our children. Wake up! We're like a runaway freight train with no brakes headed toward a rock wall. By failing to act now, what kinds of consequences will we as a nation face when we hit 1/2 billion people? States like Colorado will add 100% more people to their already drought prone state. That's 100% more cars, etc. In the US with 200 million more people, that's 77% more traffic, 77% added planes in the air, 77% increased pollution, 77% faster uses of already such limited resources as gasoline. For example: we're paving over 3000 acres of land each day for homes, roads, and malls. With each new added American, 12.6 acres of wilderness is plowed up to support that person. In the next 10 years, according to the National Academy of Sciences, 2,500 plants and animals will become extinct in the USA because of habitat destruction via population growth. Why aren't we addressing the moral and biological consequences of such horrific extinction rates? When you add global warming, ocean fisheries collapsing, acid rain, ozone destruction, drought, contaminated water supplies, poisoning and sterilization of the soils by insecticides and fertilizers--we're building unimaginable consequences. How serious is our problem? Upon receiving the Sanger Award for Human Rights in 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King said, "Unlike the plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases, which we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution, but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of billions of people who are its victims." Fifty year go, Bangladesh, India and China ignored their accelerating populations. Their problems are so gargantuan, they can't solve them and simply suffer. Today, America's leaders are following the same steps. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, we're allowing the immigration of more than 2.3 million people annually from countries that refuse to offer family planning. Since the American female has a fertility rate of 2.03 children, it's not Americans causing the rising population tide. We need immigration reform and reduction to less than 175,000 people annually before population momentum forces us to an added 200 million Americans and an unsustainable society. If we don't tame this 'immigration monster' within the next five years, it will grow past our ability to manage it. Once the numbers are here, we will be saddled with Balkanization conflicts, over 100 foreign languages, accelerating diseases, cultural conflict and severe limits to our freedoms as the numbers grow out of control.


51

IMPACT – TURNS THE CASE

OUR IMPACT TURNS THE CASE – IMMIGRATION CAUSES A CRACKDOWN ON AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, August 2003 (“The Impact of Immigration on US Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/sactestimony701.html) Size and Scope of Government. As the population grows, the role of government, by necessity, has to grow with it. It is no accident that cities have many more regulations on everything from parking to trash collection than do rural areas. In sparsely populated states like Wyoming, the state legislature meets in regular session only every other year, while California's is the most active in the country. As population size and density grow and people come into greater contact and conflict with one another, the need for government to regulate social interactions almost always increases. By increasing the size of the U.S. population, immigration policy may unavoidably require more and more regulations on the daily lives of Americans.


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ANSWER TO: TECHNOLOGY SOLVES

NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARTIFICIALLY INFLATE THE CARRYING CAPACITY – IT COVERS DISTIGUISES OTHER LIMITATIONS ON POPULATION GROWTH – CAUSING A MISCALCULATED POPULATION OVERSHOOT Abernathy, Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, 1994 (Virginia, “Optomism and Overpopulation,” 9/1 http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/optimism.htm) Miscalculation about the cause of the population explosion has led to irrelevant and even counterproductive strategies for helping the Third World to balance its population size and its resources. In the late 1940s and the heady decades that followed, trade, independence movements, populist revolutions, foreign aid, and new technology made people in all walks of life believe in abundance and an end to the natural limits imposed by the environments with which they were familiar. Now it is a step forward for industrial nations, their wealth much diminished, to be retrenching and targeting aid more narrowly. Their remaining wealth must not be squandered on arming opposing factions, reckless foreign assistance, or support for international migrations that rob and ultimately enrage — to the point of violence and possibly civil war — resident populations. This retrenchment saddens many, but the former liberality did a disservice to every country targeted for development. With a new, informed understanding of human responses, certain kinds of aid remain appropriate: microloans that foster grassroots enterprise, where success is substantially related to effort; and assistance with family-planning services, not because contraception is a solution in and of itself but because modern contraception is a humane way of achieving small family size when small family size is desired. This modest agenda remains within the means of industrialized countries even as they look to the needs of the growing ranks of their own poor. And it does not mislead and unintentionally harm intended beneficiaries. The idea that economic development is the key to curbing world population growth rests on assumptions and assertions that have influenced international aid policy for some fifty years. These assumptions do not stand up to historical or anthropological scrutiny, however, and the policies they have spawned have contributed to runaway population growth. The human capacity for adaptive response evolved in face-to-face interactions. Humanity’ s strong suit is quick response to environmental cues — a response more likely to be appropriate when the relevant environment is immediate and local. The mind’s horizon is here and now. Our ancestors evolved and had to succeed in small groups that moved around relatively small territories. They had to succeed one day at a time — or not be anyone’s ancestors. So, unsurprisingly, signals that come from the local environment are powerfully motivating. Let the globalists step aside. One-world solutions do not work. Local solutions will. Everywhere people act in accord with their perception of their best interests. People are adept at interpreting local signs to find the next move needed. In many countries and communities today, where social, economic, and environmental conditions are indubitably worsening, the demand for modern contraception is rising, marriage and sexual initiation are delayed, and family size is contracting. Individuals responding with low fertility to signs of limits are the local solution. One prays that the hucksters of inappropriate development do not mess this up. SLOWING POPULATION GROWTH IS THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE RENEWABLES EFFECTIVE Abernathy, Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, 1996 (Virginia, “Population Politcs: The Choices that Shape Our Future,” http://www.dieoff.org/page58.htm) Now for the bad news. Depletion of soil, water, and fuel at a much faster rate than any of these can be replenished suggests that the carrying capacity of the United States already has been exceeded. David and Marcia Pimentel (1991) of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, take these three factors into account to estimate that, at a standard of living only slightly lower than is enjoyed today, the sustainable population size for the United States is less than half its present number. Beyond this, we abuse the carrying capacity and should expect sudden shocks that will massively drive down the standard of living. The Pimentels embrace the desirability and potential for a transition to clean, renewable energy sources as substitute for most uses of oil. The very breadth of their approach leads to their addressing all present and potential energy sources. They find: Evaluating land, energy, and water, the Pimentels conclude that the United States is rapidly depleting its nonrenewable or very slowly renewable resources and overwhelming the capacity of the environment to neutralize wastes. The present level of resource use is probably unsustainable in even the minimal, physical sense. If population increase and the present per capita use of resources persist, a crash becomes likely. The Pimentels do, however, offer two alternate scenarios. Either one of them is stable and sustainable. They differ only in population size and standard of living. Both scenarios envision the United States moving to a solar-energy-based economy, that is, to total replacement of our current fossil-fuel energy dependence. Solar energy is a renewable, steady stream, so it meets a key criterion for sustainability. From renewable sources alone, however, only one-fifth to one-half of the present level of energy use would be available. To maintain a standard of living only slightly lower than we enjoy today, population size would need to decline to about 100 million people.


53

ANSWER TO: TECHNOLOGY SOLVES

WITHOUT LOWERING FERTILITY RATES – DEATH CHECKS ARE THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE AND WILL WIPE OUT BILLIONS – RESOURCES AND TECHNOLOGY CANNOT SAVE US International Society of Ecological Economics 1996 (“Gigadeath,” http://dieoff.org/page13.htm) If humans can't control the explosive population growth in the coming century, disease and starvation will do it, Cornell University ecologists have concluded from an analysis of Earth's dwindling resources. A grim future—without enough arable land, water and energy to grow food for 12 billion people—is all but inevitable and all too soon, a worried David Pimentel today (Feb. 9) told an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) session on "How Many People Can the Earth Support?" "Environmentally sound agricultural technologies will not be sufficient to ensure adequate food supplies for future generations unless the growth of human population is simultaneously curtailed," the Cornell professor of ecology said, speaking for researchers who produced the report, "Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment." The "optimum population" that the Earth can support with a comfortable standard of living is less than 2 billion, including fewer than 200 million people in the United States, the Cornell scientist noted. But if the world population reaches 12 billion, as it is predicted to in 50 years, as many as 3 billion people will be malnourished and vulnerable to disease, the Cornell analysis of resources determined. The planet's agricultural future—with declining productivity of cropland—can be seen in China today, Pimentel suggested. China now has only 0.08 hectare (ha) of cropland per capita, compared to the worldwide average of 0.27 ha per capita and the 0.5 ha per capita considered minimal for the diverse diet currently available to residents of the United States and Europe. Nearly one-third of the world's cropland has been abandoned during the past 40 years because erosion makes it unproductive, he said. Competition for dwindling supplies of clean water is intensifying, too, the Cornell ecologists concluded. Agricultural production consumes more fresh water than any other human activity—about 87 percent—and 40 percent of the world's people live in regions that directly compete for water that is being consumed faster than it is replenished. Further, water shortages exacerbate disease problems, the ecologists' analysis pointed out. About 90 percent of the diseases in developing countries result from a lack of clean water. Worldwide, about 4 billion cases of disease are contracted from water each year and approximately 6 million people die from water-borne disease, Pimentel said. "When people are sick with diarrhea, malaria or other serious disease, anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of their food intake is lost to stress of the disease," he said. Prices of fossil fuels will rise as the world's supplies are depleted. While the United States can afford to import more petroleum when its reserves are exhausted in the next 15 to 20 years, developing countries cannot, Pimentel said. "Already, the high price of imported fossil fuel makes it difficult, if not impossible, for poor farmers to power irrigation and provide for fertilizers and pesticides," he said. The analysis was conducted by Pimentel, professor of entomology and of ecology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell; Xuewen Huang, a visiting scholar in the agriculture college; Ana Cordova, a graduate student in the agriculture college; and Marcia Pimentel, a researcher in Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences. The ecologists pointed to two alarming trends: At the same time that world population is growing geometrically, the per capita availability of grains, which make up 80 percent of the world's food, has been declining for the past 15 years. Food exports from the few countries that now have resources to produce surpluses will cease when every morsel is needed to feed their growing populations, the ecologists predicted. That will cause economic discomfort for the United States, which counts on food exports to help its balance of payments. But the real pain will wrack nations that can't grow enough, Pimentel said. "When global biological and physical limits to domestic food production are reached, food importation will no longer be a viable option for any country," he said. "At that point, food importation for the rich can only be sustained by starvation of the powerless poor."


54

ANSWER TO: MORALITY / RACISM / YOU ARE DEAD ON THE INSIDE

OVERPOPULATION IS IMMORAL BECAUSE IT MAXIMIZES THE NUMBER OF LIVES AT THE COST OF MASSIVE HUMAN SUFFERING Ehrlich, Professor of Biological Science and Population Studies at Stanford University, 1999 (Paul R., The Scientific American, “Ethics, Evolution, and the Population-Environment Crisis”, http://www.scifac.usyd.edu.au/chast/templeton/1999templeton/1999lecture.html) Exactly how large the universe of caring should be has evolved through time and still is a matter of substantial dispute within western culture and is an ever more serious topic of debate as humanity struggles to come to grips with the worsening human predicament.xi[28] How much should be done by Englishmen to alleviate hunger in poor African countries? Should American troops be risked to save the lives of Moslems threatened with genocide in the Balkans? How much should we care about conserving resources or maintaining environmental quality for the next generation? One environmental area in which the size of the universe of caring has been an issue is foreign aid related to birth control. The ethical issues involve consideration of the long-term results of steps taken by rich countries to lower death rates in poor nations by supplying disease and hunger-fighting technologies, without simultaneously taking steps designed to lower birth rates. It is just a recent round of an old ethical debate about what are the ethical obligations of the rich toward the poor. Would assistance in lowering death rates without parallel assistance to lower birth rates be immoral, since population growth will, sooner or later, lead to enormous suffering? Furthermore, by sending aid to overpopulated areas, might not one damp out the signals that tell people in those areas that they have exceeded the carrying capacity of their homelands? Ecologist Garrett Hardin has thought long and hard about that ethical issue and others related to population growth, environmental deterioration, international migration, foreign aid, within-generation equity and intergenerational equity. xii[29] Hardin tries to consider the long-term consequences, especially environmental consequences, of human activities, and in the process generally has come down on the side of what one might call “ecological tough love.” A characteristic passage from his work on “Lifeboat Ethics” expresses this: “We are all descendents of thieves, and the world’s resources are inequitably distributed, but we must begin the journey to tomorrow from the point where we are today. We cannot remake the past. We cannot, without violent disorder and suffering, give land and resources back to the “original” owners – who are dead anyway. “We cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among all present peoples, so long as people reproduce at different rates, because to do so would guarantee that our grandchildren – everyone’s grandchildren – would have only a ruined world to inhabit.”xiii[30 POPULATION PRESSURES EXACERBATE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, RACISM, AND INEQUALITY Daly, Population Studies, 1994 (Gretchen, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) 3. Basic human rights in the social sphere (such as freedom from racism, sexism, religious persecution, and gross economic inequity) should be secure from problems generated by the existence of too many people. Everyone should have access to education, health care, sanitary living conditions, and economic opportunities; but these fundamental rights are difficult to assure in large populations, especially rapidly growing ones. Political rights are also related to population size, although this is seldom recognized (Parsons, 1977). Democracy seems to work best when populations are small relative to resource bases; personal freedom tends to be restricted in situations of high population density and/or scarce resources.


55

ANSWER TO: JULIAN SIMON “ULTIMATE RESOURCE”

SIMON ARGUMENTS ARE CONTRARY TO 1,700 OF THE WORLDS LEADING SCIENTISTS AND A CONSORTIUM OF NATIONAL ACADEMIES Ehrlich, Professors of Population Studies and Biology at Stanford, 1994 (Paul, Proceeding from the International Conference on Population and Development: Cairo, “Too Many Rich People”, September, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) There is now a campaign of deceptive books and articles designed to persuade people that all is well on the environmental front. The basic message of this campaign is that some favorable trends show green concerns to be "doomsaying." Our basic message is that indirect trends such as those listed below are more relevant to human welfare than direct ones such as the prices of metals. Julian Simon has been a leader in this campaign. He is best known for his belief that resources are infinite (he wrote in 1980 that the theoretical limit to the amount of copper that might be available to human beings was "the total weight of the universe"!) and that population can and should grow indefinitely. He's still at it ("Earth's Doomsayers are Wrong," Chronicle, May 12), this time citing a 1986 report prepared by social scientists for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that was subsequently protested by a substantial number of Academy scientists. Somehow he missed the 1994 statement from the NAS and 57 other national academies of science worldwide that contradicted his position. He also ignored the 1993 "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," signed by some 1700 leading scientists, including over half of all living Nobel Laureates in science, which reads in part: "A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated....A new ethic is required—a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recongize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility....The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many." It is impossible to say exactly how direct measures of human well-being will be impacted by the general deterioration of Earth's life-support systems. We know, however, that deterioration makes society increasingly vulnerable to severe negative impacts. SIMON’S ARGUMENT IGNORES THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE CARRYING CAPACITY Ehrlich, Professors of Population Studies and Biology at Stanford, 1994 (Paul, Proceeding from the International Conference on Population and Development: Cairo, “Too Many Rich People”, September, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) The bet is binding on our heirs, and our winnings will go to non-profit organizations dedicated to preserving environmental quality and human well-being. Since humanity is gambling with its life-support systems, we hope to lose all parts of the bet. In fact, we will be doing everything in our power to make that happen. Sadly, the complacency and misinformation you are spreading, Mr. Simon, increases the chances we will win the bet—while all of humanity loses. We hope this wager will cause you to reconsider the risks you so blythly suggest the American public undertake by promoting the fantasy of benign indefinite growth.

SIMONS HOPE IS MISGUIDED, THE QUALITY OF LIFE CANNOT BE ALTERED Senator Gaylord Nelson, Counselor to the Wilderness Society, 1997 Environment-Population-Sustainable-Development, http://www.balance.org/asap/asapenvpopsustdev.html

The cornucopian unlimited growth school of thought, represented by the Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation and the Julian Simons of the world, are not worried about resource depletion because, they claim, science and technology will create substitutes for anything we need. Neither are they concerned about population growth because with the help of science, we can feed 10 or 20 billion or more. Maybe so, but arguing about how many people the world can feed is a meaningless exercise. The important question is what will be the quality of life if the population doubles or triples? The answer: Life on the planet will continue in some sort of condition regardless of population levels but certainly not in a condition that we would find tolerable.


56

ANSWER TO: JULIAN SIMON “ULTIMATE RESOURCE” SIMON’S IS WRONG ABOUT ABUNDANT TECHNOLOGICAL RESOURCES AND INNOVATION Daly, Population Studies, 1994 (Herman, ”A Review of: Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource”, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) Simon has argued from the premise of an "infinite" substitutability among different elements within a (finite) set to the conclusion of the infinity of the set itself. But no amount of rearrangement of divisions within a finite set can make the set infinite. His demonstration that mankind will never exhaust its resource base rests on the same logical fallacy as Zeno's demonstration that Achilles will never exhaust the distance between himself and the tortoise. Simon's argument therefore fails even if we grant his premise of infinite substitutability, which gets us rather close to alchemy. Copper is after all an element, and the transmutation of elements is more difficult than the phrase "infinite substitutability" implies! Indeed, Simon never tells us whether "infinite substitutability" means infinite substitutability at declining costs, constant costs, increasing costs, or at infinite costs! Of course Simon could simply assert that the total set of all resources is infinite, but this would be a bald assertion, not a conclusion from an argument based on substitutability, which is what he has attempted. Simon appeals to the unlimited power of technology to increase the service yielded per unit of resource as further evidence of the essentially nonfinite nature of resources. If resource productivity (ratio of service to resources) were potentially infinite, then we could maintain an ever growing value of services with an ever smaller flow of resources. If Simon truly believes this, then he should join those neomalthusians who advocate limiting the resource flow precisely in order to force technological progress into the direction of improving total resource productivity and away from the recent direction of increasing intensity of resource use. Many neomalthusians advocate this even though they believe the scope for improvement is finite. If one believes the scope for improvement in resource productivity is infinite, then all the more reason to restrict the resource flow. SIMON’S ARGUMENTS ABOUT INFINITE RESOURCE IS BASED ON FALLACIOUS REASONING Daly, Population Studies, 1994 (Herman, ”A Review of: Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource”, http://www.dieoff.org/page27.htm) Simon's demonstration that resources are infinite is, in my view, a coarse mixture of simple fallacy, omission of contrary evidence from his own expert sources and gross statistical misinterpretation. Since everything else hinges on the now exploded infinite resources proposition, we could well stop here. But there are other considerations less central to the argument of the book that beg for attention. If, Simon notwithstanding, resources are indeed finite, then the other premises of the neomalthusians remain in vigor. The entropy law tells us not only that coal is finite, but that you can't burn the same lump twice. When burned, available energy is irreversibly depleted and unavailable energy is increased along with the dissipation of materials. If nature's sources and sinks were truly infinite, the fact that the flow between them was entropic would hardly matter. But with finite sources and sinks, the entropy law greatly increases the force of scarcity.


57

ANSWER TO: ADAPTATION INCREASED POPULATION PRESSURES PREVENT ADAPTATION Homer-Dixon, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Toronto, 1991 (Thomas F., International Security, Fall, Vol. 16, No.2 “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict”, www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh1.htm, Page 76-116) I do not hypothesize that the causal links between these variables will be tight or deterministic. As anti-Malthusians have argued for nearly two centuries, numerous intervening factors--physical, technological, economic, and social--often permit great resilience, variability, and adaptability in human-environmental systems.12 I identify a number of these factors in this article; in particular, I examine whether free-market mechanisms may permit developing countries to minimize the negative impacts of environmental degradation. But I suggest that, as the human population grows and environmental damage progresses, policymakers will have less and less capacity to intervene to keep this damage from producing serious social disruption, including conflict.


58

AT: ASYLUM PROTECTIONS / HUMAN RIGHTS IMPACTS

MONEY SPENT ON MAINTAINING ASYLUM PROTECTIONS TRADESOFF WITH FOREIGN AID THAT GOES TO ALLEVIATE THE ROOT CONDITIONS THAT CAUSE MASS REFUGEE FLOWS Don Barnett, asylum and refugee immigration, March 2002 (“The Coming Conflict Over Asylum: Does America Need a New Asylum Policy?,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back102.html) According to the UNHCR, the world’s wealthiest nations spend 10 times more on maintaining their asylum systems than on funding for the UNHCR’s protection work in the developing world for the 21 million refugees in its charge. This multiplier is much greater when one includes Western nations’ costs for social services for those granted asylum. Yet the bulk of the burden for hosting the world’s large numbers of genuine refugees and asylum seekers still falls to the developing world. The West could never widen avenues of immigration enough to alter this fact without seriously undermining its ability to offer assistance in alleviating the conditions creating the flow. Like it or not, it is in terms of this trade-off that any liberalization of refugee and asylum policy must be discussed. If some "international protection regime" is to be established, it must be based upon increased attention to the hardship of those refugees in the regions where they reside, not on mass migration to the developed world. This will require dealing effectively with the "push" factors such as overpopulation, poverty, and political instability which are driving asylum seekers and refugees to American shores. Other forces are at work in asylum immigration, among them: the ongoing separation of asylum from any grounding in the national interest; the surrender of asylum policy to global agents; the total lack of risk, responsibility, or cost to promoters of liberalized asylum; and the evolution of asylum law — an accelerating process that Congress has ceded to immigration lawyers. The tragic events of September 11 may have shaken America’s famous nonchalance about immigration. There is little evidence, however, that it has yet prompted a serious examination of the forces that propel asylum immigration.


59

AT: US LEADERSHIP / DEMOCRACY PROMOTION

LOWER POPULATION GROWTH WILL NOT HURT US LEADERSHIP Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies, April 2005 (“A Review of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It,” The Claremont Review of Books, http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/mskoped042505.html) Longman maintains that there is an effective tax on child-bearing and rearing; he spells out ways of lightening the load on parents, including exempting them from Social Security payments until their children turn 18 (the theory being that parents are already contributing to the future of society by raising children). To ensure healthier and more productive old age, he wants to hector Americans to eat less and exercise more. He also wants government to help the family reclaim its role as the center of economic activity, thus again making children economic assets rather than liabilities. Wattenberg's solution, by contrast, is unambiguously undemocratic and coercive. He argues that pro-natalist policies like Longman's have always proven ineffective, and that the magic solution is mass immigration. Unfortunately, his data refute his argument. The Census Bureau projects an increase in our population of about 140 million, including new immigrants, over the first half of this century, but "only" a 50 million increase if there were no immigration at all. How is it plausible to claim that America will be derailed, and the worldwide spread of human liberty jeopardized, if our population grows by an average of one million a year instead of three million?


60

NON-UNIQUE – OVERPOPULATION NOW

OVERPOPULATION IN THE US NOW Lindsey Grant, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population, 1994 Perspectives on Immigration: The Issue is Overpopulation, npg.org, http://www.npg.org/footnote/perspective.htm In the long run, the impact on population growth will be hthe most lasting legacy of our current immigration policies. Largely as a result of immigration, the United States now has the fastest-growing population in the developed world, while immigration-driven population growth in California rivals that of some Third World countries. Population growth comes at great cost that cannot always be measured in dollars and cents. First, we must realize that the human race is a part of the natural ecosystem of the Earth, not a privileged super-species that can transcend the laws of nature. The United States, because of its size and consumption habits, is the most destabilizing entity within Earth's fragile ecosystem. Population growth here has a far more profound impact on that ecosystem than growth elsewhere. The disturbances caused by human activities have accelerated dramatically in the past half a century. Driven by population growth and the technological explosion, these disturbances threaten not only the perpetuation of a way of life we have come to take for granted, but even the continuation of life systems as we understand them.


61

NON-UNIQUE – IMMIGRATION UP NOW

IMMIGRATION ON THE RISE Tamar Jacoby senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. July 12, 2005 (“A law that means business” LA Times) Our immigration system is out of control. We can't hold the line at the border. We can't prevent the hiring of unauthorized workers. Despite our tough rhetoric, an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants feed a vast underground economy that makes a mockery of the rule of law. OVERPOPULATION IS OCCURRING, 5 MILLION NEW IMMIGRANTS ENTER THE USA EVERY DECADE David Simcox President of Migration Demographics and Chairman of the Center's Board of Directors. March 2002 (Another 50 Years of Mass Mexican Immigration” Center for Immigration Studies) The Mexican government projects that mass immigration to the United States will continue at between -3.5 and 5 million people per decade until at least 2030. Even assuming strong economic growth and declining birth rates in Mexico, and weak demand for workers in the United States, immigration in 30 years is still projected to be nearly 400,000 people a year. Immigration will cause the Mexican-born population in the U.S. to at least double by 2030, reaching 16 to 18 million regardless of economic conditions in Mexico. Although the Mexican government report calls migration flows "inevitable," the report itself offers no evidence to support this. A HALT OF IMMIGRATION IS IMPOSSIBLE, THE PLUGGING OF BOARDERS DIVERTS IMMIGRANT FLOW ELSEWHERE Tamar Jacoby senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. July 12, 2005 (“A law that means business” LA Times) But just because everyone agrees more enforcement is necessary that doesn't mean we are on the verge of a solution. In fact, this only sets up a new battle between those who believe we can solve the immigration problem by appropriating money for enforcement only and those who see enforcement as part of a broader reform package. It's not that we don't know how to enforce the law. We do. But by itself, enforcement doesn't work. Consider our success on the border in Southern California. Over the last decade, we tripled the manpower and quintupled the budget for policing what used to be the four busiest crossing points in California and Texas. And in each case, we managed to dramatically reduce the number of migrants apprehended in each sector. The only catch: We didn't actually stop the flow. We just diverted it to other, less populated stretches of frontier — such as Arizona and New Mexico — where it will take much more personnel and technology to wrest control. But the problem goes deeper than that. The truth is that beneath the bluster we're ambivalent about enforcing immigration law because we know that if we were to succeed, it could be disastrous for U.S. businesses and the American workers who depend on them.


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NO INTERNAL LINK – IMMIGRATION NOT KEY

IMMIGRATION IS THE MAIN DETERMINATE OF US POPULATION GROWTH Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, August 2003 (“The Impact of Immigration on US Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/sactestimony701.html) Analysis of the latest data indicates that immigration policy has become the determinant factor in U.S. population growth over the last decade. More importantly, without a change in current policy, immigration will continue to drive U.S. population growth throughout the 21st century. I say "immigration policy" rather than just "immigration" because in the discussion that follows it is important to keep in mind that the level of immigration and thus its impact on population growth over the last decade and in the future, reflects policies and choices made by the federal government concerning who may be allowed into the country legally and the level of resources devoted to controlling illegal immigration. Immigration's Impact on Population Growth in the 1990s While there are different ways of thinking about immigration's impact on U.S. population growth, the demographic facts are clear. Looking at immigration's impact in the 1990s is a useful starting point because it provides a great deal of insight into the effect of immigration on population growth not only in the immediate past but also in the immediate future. When the full results of the 2000 Census are in, they will almost certainly show a total foreign-born population of between 30 and 31 million. This figure includes both legal and illegal immigrants.1 The Census will also likely show that of the 30-plus million immigrants living in the United States in 2000, between 13 and14 million arrived in the just 1990s. These numbers are extraordinary because they mean that at least 1.3 million immigrants are settling in the United States each year. To put this into historical perspective, during the last great wave of immigration 100 years ago, which itself was a break with the past, about 850,000 people entered the country each year between 1900 and 1910. There can be no doubt that we are in the midst of another great wave of immigration. The current numbers mean that about 40 percent of the nearly 33 million increase in the size of the U.S. population during the 1990s is directly attributable to the arrival of new immigrants. We know this simply by dividing 13 million (the number of new immigrants) by the total increase in the size of the U.S. population (32.7 million). If the figure is 14 million, the immigration impact is 43 percent. This is just simple division. In addition to their arrival in the United States, immigrants also cause population growth because, like all people, immigrants have children. During the 1990s, immigrant women gave birth to an estimated 6.9 million children.2 If we add together the number of births to immigrants and the number of new arrivals, then immigration during the 1990s is equal to 20 or 21 million or a little less than two-thirds of the nearly 33 million increase in the size of the U.S. population over the last 10 years. In a very real sense, immigration has become the determinant factor in U.S. population growth. IMMIGRATION WILL EXPLODE US POPULATION GROWTH Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies, August 2003 (“The Impact of Immigration on US Population Growth,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/sactestimony701.html) The Impact of Immigration on Population Growth in the Future We not only have a good idea of immigration's impact on population growth in the 1990s, we can also estimate its likely impact in the future. The most recent Census Bureau projections provide insight into the likely effect of immigration on population growth throughout this century. According to the Census Bureau’s middle-range projections, if current trends continue, the U.S. population will grow to 404 million by 2050. If there were no immigration, these same projections indicate that the U.S. population would be 328 million (76 million fewer) in 2050. This means that immigration will account for about 63 percent of U.S. population growth over the next 50 years. Put another way, immigrants who have not yet arrived, but who will come to this country between now and 2050, will add the equivalent of the combined current populations of California, Texas, and New York State, to the United States over the next 50 years. Of course, if high immigration is allowed to continue, then its impact on population growth will also continue, and the middle-range Census Bureau projections show the United States will reach a total population 571 million by 2100.3 Again, these are the Census Bureau's middle-range projections — that is, they are the most likely. While the Census Bureau does not have a crystal ball, these projections do tell us a couple of things. First, the impact of immigration is enormous, adding perhaps 200 million people to the American population by 2100.


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NO INTERNAL LINK – IMMIGRATION NOT KEY

REDUCTIONS IN IMMIGRATION ARE NOT ENOUGH TO AVOID THE CRUNCH Philip Shabecoff, Center for Immigration Studies, November 27, 1994 (“So Many People…How Will We Feed Them,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, http://www.cis.org/articles/1994/HMAreview.htm) The United States is part of a global environment, a global economy. It is folly to think that if we erect a fence around the country to keep people out, it will also keep out the greenhouse effect, toxic substances, resource scarcity, economic competition and joblessness. The authors argue, for example, that with a lower population, the American farmers would need to put fewer acres under cultivation, use less chemical pesticides and fertilizers and create less erosion. But of course, U.S. agriculture serves a global market and, as world population grows, it will have to put increased pressure on the land to meet the rising needs of the hungry around the world. U.S. jobs are not protected by restricting the number of immigrants; millions of manufacturing jobs have been exported by American corporations to low-wage workers in poor countries in recent decades. Lowering the fertility rate in the United States would be a contribution to slowing the rocketing ascent of global population. Further restrictions on immigration, however, would not reduce such growth by a single soul. In fact, the contrary argument could be made. As the authors themselves point out, for example, fertility among Hispanic immigrants drops sharply as they learn English and become acculturated. Sharply limiting immigration might keep some environmental and economic problems at bay for a time. It might serve some immediate political or social interests. But inevitably the misery and destruction created by the rising tide of people around the rest of the world would overwhelm us as well. There is no place to hide.


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POPULATION GROWTH GOOD – US ECONOMY

POPULATION GROWTH IS KEY TO THE US ECONOMY Leon Kolankiewicz, Environmental Scientist and Natural Resource Conservation Consultant, June 2000 (“Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections,” http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/back600.html) After just raising the cap on H-1B non-immigrant visas (which often serve as a means to permanent immigration) two years ago, Congress and the administration are under tremendous pressure from the high-tech industry to raise it yet again. The agribusiness lobby is also pushing hard for a guest-worker visa program. Powerful people like Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan opine that our current high immigration rates just aren't high enough to keep wages and inflation down. In general, economists and the business and political establishment believe that a growing population is indispensable for a growing economy. If domestic birth rates aren't contributing enough workers and consumers, then these two key ingredients of prosperity must be imported. In this dominant view, population stabilization means economic stagnation.


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POPULATION GROWTH GOOD – DEMOCRACY PROMOTION

POPULATION GROWTH IS KEY TO US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION AND GLOBAL LEADERSHIP Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies, April 2005 (“A Review of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It,” The Claremont Review of Books, http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/mskoped042505.html) Wattenberg also fears that the New Demography could impair America's mission, which he defines somewhat differently. Other than defending itself, our country's " job" is "to vigorously promote social, economic, and individual liberty in America and around the world." Declares Wattenberg, It's hard for me to imagine that the advance of individual and economic liberties in the world would continue without an exemplar nation that is prospering and growing. In the modern world America is that nation…. Were America on the European/Japanese track of population decline, the case for democracy would be much harder to make. When it comes to policies, Longman's recommendations are clearly intended to engineer for America his desired political culture. But he works from the common-sense proposition, often articulated by Jack Kemp, that if you tax something, you get less of it. INSERT DIAMOND 1995 (IN KOREMATSU AFF)


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POPULATION GROWTH GOOD – SOLVES CRUNCH

LARGE POPULATIONS EMPIRICALLY INVENT MORE BENEFICIAL TECHNOLOGY – SOLVING THE CRUNCH Julian L. Simon; Professor of business administration at University of Maryland 1981 (The Ultimate Resource, p. 199-200) And even a casual inspection of the historical records shows that there have been many more discoveries and a faster rate of productivity growth in the past century, say, than in previous centuries, when there were fewer people alive. True, 10,000 years ago there won’t much knowledge to build new ideas upon. But seen differently, it should have been all the easier 10,00 years ago to find important improvements, because so much still lay undiscovered. Progress surely was agonizingly slow in prehistory, however for example, whereas we develop mew materials (metal and plastic) almost every day, it was centuries or millennia between the discovery and use of, say, copper, and iron. It makes sense that if there had been a larger populations in earlier, the pace of increase in technological practice would have been faster. Population growth spurs the adaptation of existing technology as well as the invention of new technology. This has been well documented in agriculture where people turn to successively more “advanced” but more laborious methods of getting food as population density increases_ methods that were previously know but that were not used because they were not needed earlier. This scheme will describes the passage from hunting and gathering – which we now know requires extraordinarily few hours of work a week to procure a full diet – to migratory slash and burn agriculture, and thence to settled long fallow agriculture, to shot fallow agriculture, and eventually to the use of fertilizer, irrigation, and multiple cropping. Though each stage initially requires more labor than the previous one the endpoint is more efficient and productive system that requires much less labor as we see in chapters 4 and 16. This phenomenon also throws light on why the advance of civilization is not “race” between technology and population advancing independently of each other. Contrary to the Malthusian view, there is no immediate linkage between each food-increasing invention and increased production of food. Some invention – the “invention-pull” type, such as a better calendar – may be adopted as soon as they are proven successful, because they will increase production with no more labor (or will enable less labor to produce the same amount of food). But other invention – “the population push” type, such as settled agriculture or irrigated outcropping – require push in labor, and hence will not be adopted until demand from additional population warrants the adoption. The Malthusian invention-pull innovation is indeed in a sort of race between population and technology. But the adoption of the population-push inventions is not in a race at all; rather it is the sort of process discussed at length in the chapters on natural resources.

If a larger labor force causes a faster rate of productivity increase, on would expect to find that productivity has advanced faster and faster as population has grown. Ancient Greece and Rome have been offered as counter-examples to this line of reasoning. Therefore I plotted the numbers of great discoveries, as recorded by historians of science who have made such lists, against population size in various centuries . Figure 14-1 shows that population growth or size, or both, were associated with an increase in scientific activity, and population decline with a decrease. (Of course other factors come to bear, too, and I am exploring the matter in more detail for the whole history of Europe.)

As for the contemporary scene and better data, Solo concludes that the yearly rate of increase of productivity doubled, from 1 percent to 2 percent, between the periods of 1909-29 and 1929-49 and the populations and labor forces of the U.S. and of the developed world were larger in the latter period than in the earlier period. William Fellner found these rates of productivity increase (using two methods of calculation) 1900-1929—1.8 (or 1.5) percent; 1929-48—2.3 (or 2.0) percent; 1948-66—2.8 percent. These results are consistent with the assumptions that productivity indeed increases faster when population is larger- though of course other factors could explain part of the acceleration.


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POPULATION GROWTH GOOD – SOLVES CRUNCH

LARGE POPULATION MEANS FASTER RATES OF TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES Julian L. Simon; Professor of business administration at University of Maryland 1981 (The Ultimate Resource, P. 203) Additional evidence that more people mean a faster rate of technological advance comes from comparisons of productivity gains in carious industries. This evidence is quite compelling, in my judgement. A given industry grows faster in some countries than in other countries or than other industries in the same country. Comparisons of faster-growing and slower – growing industries show that, in the faster-growing industries, the rate of increase productivity and technological practice is highest. This indicates that faster population growth – which causes faster-growing industries – leads to faster growth of productivity. We shall examine this in more detail in the next section. But once more the caution: Our subject is the effect of population upon productivity increase in the developed world as a while . the discussion of particular countries is only a device to increase the size of the sample.


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AT: URBAN SPRAWL BAD ITS AWESOME! Julian L. Simon; Professor of business administration at University of Maryland 1981 (The Ultimate Resource, Pg. 232) Many well-intentioned people worry that population growth produces urban spral, and that highways pave over “prime farmland” and recreational land. We shall now examine these claims, which turn out to be empty slogans. First, the fomenting of the “sprawl”: As e see in figure 16-3, there are 2,3 billion acres in the US, as of 1974. All the land taken up by cities =, highways nonagricultural roads, railroads, and airports amounts to only 61 million acres – just 2.7 percent of the total. Clearly there is very little competition between agriculture on the one side and cities and roads on the other the notion that the US is being “paved over” is ridiculous, though frightening, exaggeration. How about the trends? From 1920 to 1974, land in urban and transportation uses rose from 29 million acres to 61 million acres – a change of 1.42 percent out of the 2266 million acres in the US. During those fifty four years population increased from 106 million to 211 million people. Even if this trend were to continue (population growth is clearly slowing down) there would be an almost insignificant impact on the US agriculture. Lest you have lingering doubts, here is the opening sentence from the US Dep. Of Ag.’s 1974 study Our land and water resources:” Although thousand of acres of farmland are converted annually to other uses organization, roads, wildlife and recreation- and population has risen a third in 20 years, we are in no danger of running out of farmland.” Increasingly efficient production methods are the major factor enabling to “insure our domestic food and fiber needs” and yet use less land for crops – not because land is being “taken” for other purposes, but because it is now more efficient to raise more food on fewer acres than it was in the past. But what about the fertility of the land used for human habitation and transportation? Even if the total quantity of land used by additional urban people is small, perhaps the new urban land has special agricultural qualities. When often hears this charge, as made in my own home town in 1977 city council election: V Major “is oppose to urban sprawl because “it eats up prime agricultural land.”” New cropland is created, and some old cropland goes out of use, as we have seen. The overall effect, in the judgment of the US dept of Agriculture, is the between 1967 and 1975 “the quality of cropland has been improved by shifts in land use … better land makes up a higher proportion of the remaining cropland.” The idea that cities devour “ prime land” s a particularly clear example of the failure to grasp economic principles. Let’s take the concrete (asphalt?) case of a new shopping mall on the outskirts of Champaign Urbana, Illinois. The key economic idea is that the mall land has greater value to the economy as a shopping center than it does as a farm, wonderful though this Illinois land is for growing corn and soybeans. That’s why the mall investors could pay the farmer enough to make it worthwhile for him or her to sell. A series of corn-y examples should bring out the point. If, instead of a shopping mall, the corn-and-soybean farmer sold the land to a person who would raise a new exotic crop called, say, “whornseat,” and who would sell the whornseat abroad at a high price, everyone would consider it just dandy. The land clearly would be more productive raising whornseat than corn, as shown by the higher profits the whornseat farmer would make as compared with the corn-and-soybean farmer, and as also shown by the amount that the whornseat farmer is willing to pay for the land. A shopping mall I similar to a whornseat farm. It seems different only because the mall does not use the land for agriculture. Yet economically there is no real difference between the mall and a whornseat darm.


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AT: URBAN SPRAWL BAD

Urban sprawl helps minorities Leonard C. Gilroy , urban policy analyst for the Urban Futures Program at Reason Public Policy Institute, October 26, 2001, Reason Public Policy Institute, http://www.rppi.org/opeds/102601.html Critics of urban sprawl blame suburbia for a plethora of modern societal ills, including pollution, traffic congestion, inner city poverty, even obesity. However , a recent study by Matthew Kahn at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy identifies one important benefit of sprawl: it reduces the housing consumption gap between white and black Americans. Historically, there has been a gap between black and white Americans in almost every aspect of housing consumption, including homeownership rates and average housing sizes. But this gap has been closing in recent decades. Kahn found that the black/white homeownership and housing size gaps close as a metropolitan area’s sprawl level–measured as the share of area jobs located outside of a 10-mile ring around the area’s central business district–increases. Moreover, the study found that black households living in sprawling metropolitan areas live in larger homes, are more likely to be homeowners, and are more likely to be located in the suburbs than otherwise identical black households in less sprawled areas. As an example, Khan predicted housing consumption for two identical black households: one living in a high-sprawl metropolitan area and the other living in a low-sprawl area. Assuming the households had two adults (including a 40-year old head of household), two children, and an annual household income of $35,000, Kahn found that the black household in the high-sprawl metro area consumed 0.5 more rooms and 10% more square footage, was 12% more likely to live in the suburbs, and was 9.3% more likely to own its home than its counterpart in the low-sprawl area. Kahn suggests two possible explanations for these findings. First, sprawling areas tend to have a greater supply of developable land on the urban fringe, which helps to moderate land prices and keep housing affordable. Second, inner-city housing becomes cheaper as jobs gravitate from cities out to the suburbs. In short, suburban growth provides opportunities for black households to move into newly constructed housing at the urban fringe or to move into center city or older suburban houses vacated by white households that relocate. Perhaps the study’s most important conclusion was that "[housing] affordability is likely to decrease in the presence of more antisprawl legislation." A growing body of research is providing evidence that growth controls–such as urban-growth boundaries that limit the supply of developable land and impact fees imposed on developers to recoup the costs of infrastructure and public services–can have a very real inflationary effect on housing prices and tend to decrease affordability. Advocates of anti-suburban growth management policies should stop and consider this point. Measures to limit sprawl are likely to have the unintended consequences of reducing economic opportunity for black Americans and other minorities, and slowing or reversing the socioeconomic gains they have made in recent decades. For example, an article by David Whelan in the July issue of American Demographics magazine pointed out that more blacks than ever (17 percent) hold college degrees, and that median black household income is at record levels, with 51 percent of black households earning over $50,000 annually. Concurrently, the percentage of blacks living in the suburbs has jumped from 34 percent to 39 percent between 1990 and 2000, and median black suburban household income totaled over $37,000 in 2000, almost 44 percent higher than income earned by counterpart black households in cities. Similar trends were identified for other minority groups. of the suburbs as the bastion of "white flight" émigrés. Whelan describes the black suburbanizati Looking at the bigger picture, a recent Brookings Institution study found that racial and ethnic minorities made up over 27 percent of the total suburban population in the 102 most-populated metro areas in 2000, up substantially from 19 percent in 1990. It also found that the bulk of suburban population gains in many of those metro areas could be attributed to minorities. These figures may surprise those accustomed to thinking on trend succinctly: "Like whites, affluent blacks head off to the suburbs with their good fortunes." In other words, the American Dream of homeownership, backyards, good schools, and safe communities is still alive and kicking. In fact, it’s within the reach of a more diverse body of people than ever before. Planners and policy makers should remember this as they continue to address the challenges posed by urban and suburban growth and development. In the pursuit of a new and improved American Dream, the policies advocated by the anti-sprawl movement may ultimately help to perpetuate the socioeconomic inequities that generations of Americans of all races and ethnicities have struggled to overcome.


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The harms of urban sprawl are exaggerated John Stossel, columnist for ABC news, 01/08/2005 http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=448934&005page=1 No. 2 — MYTH — Urban Sprawl Is Ruining America Suburban sprawl is evil. The unplanned growth, cookie cutter developments is gobbling up all the space and ruining America. Right? Wrong. But in town after town, civic leaders talk about going to war! They want "smart growth." They say sprawl has wrecked lives. So-called experts on TV say all sorts of nasty things about the changing suburban landscape. James Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere," said, "Most of the country really is living in these mutilated and defective environments." Kunstler and others say suburbs are despicable places. He calls them, "uniformly, low-grade miserably designed environments that make people feel bad." Even ABC News' "Nightline" ran a program called "America the Ugly." What upsets many critics most is the loss of open space. But is open space disappearing in America? No, that's a total myth. More than 95 percent of the country is still undeveloped. You see it if you cross this country. Only a small percentage is developed. Yes, in some places, like some suburbs, there are often huge traffic jams. But lots of people, while they don't like the traffic or the long commute to work, like where they live. "I like that I have a nice piece of property, and I have privacy," one woman said. Another said, "Even with all the congestion, it's a wonderful lifestyle." The anti-sprawl activists say more Americans should live the way I do. I live in an apartment, and most days I walk or ride my bike to work. But should everyone have to live the way I do? I like my lifestyle, but I chose it, voluntarily. Other people want to make different choices the critics don't call "ideal." Some of the critics want to force my lifestyle onto others by limiting where they can build. Portland, Ore., for example. It's widely hailed for its so-called smart growth plan. A central bureaucracy approves all new development. A highway marks the boundary beyond which no new homes are permitted. But of course that means the other side of the road is dense. The planners hoped the density would get people out of their cars, but it hasn't. And the price of land has skyrocketed. Portland's great if you're rich. But if you're not, you may be squeezed out. Land prices went way up after land where building is permitted was limited. That's why smart growth is dumb.I told Kunstler "smart growth" is destroying the lives of poor people, that he's basically telling low-income people who want back yards that they can't have one. "Well, you can't have everything," Kunstler said. They can't have back yards? Please! Remember, more than 95 percent of the country is undeveloped. And even places that may look like soulless subdivisions to him are places where many people want to live. They have playgrounds, parks and back yards. What the busybodies call sprawl, others call homes they can afford. Urban sprawl does not cause urban decline Randal O'Toole, senior economist with the Thoreau Institute and author, 03/01/2001, Environmental News and The Heartland Insitute, http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=9156 Brookings Institution economist Anthony Downs firmly believed that sprawl caused urban decline, including poverty and crime. So he was "very surprised" to report, in a 1999 article in Housing Policy Debate titled "Some Realities about Sprawl and Urban Decline," that a statistical analysis could find "no meaningful and significant statistical relationship between any of the specific traits of sprawl, or a sprawl index, and either measure of urban decline." Urban decline would be a problem in some areas "even if sprawl did not exist," Downs concluded. "Even compact growth [another term for smart growth] would produce the same problems." The alternative to urban sprawl will cause more harm than in the status quo Randal O'Toole, senior economist with the Thoreau Institute and author, 03/01/2001, Environmental News and The Heartland Insitute, http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=9156 Will increased population densities reduce pollution? Environmental Protection Agency and Census Bureau data show a clear relationship between air quality and population density: The densest cities and metropolitan areas have the worst air quality. Smart-growth's density prescriptions will simply increase air pollution problems. Water runoff is more complex. In general, a certain percentage of any watershed can be paved over or otherwise made "impervious" without seriously disturbing water runoff. When that percentage is exceeded, disturbances in runoff patterns can quickly become severe. The simple fact is that large-lot subdivisions pave (or make impervious) a far lower percentage of land than does high-density smart-growth.


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Population Disadvantage GDI 2005

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