I turned 18 in 1972. It was during the Vietnam War and I couldn’t wait to vote for George McGovern, the anti-war candidate. I just graduated high school and had little knowledge of the overpopulation issue back when the country had just over 209 million people in it. Now in 2023, with a state of the union measured in rhetoric more than reality, our population has hit 333 million and it still growing. All of those additional people need resources which cannot and have not kept up with demand for limited resources. Water scarcity in the parched Southwest is already a daunting issue.
SOTU, the State of the Union, our Union, is first and foremost overpopulated and that is behind our failure to bring about a better world and a brighter future for the next generation. Our population got a huge increase after World War II due to higher birth rates and I am a part of that baby boom generation. But the increase we are experiencing now is from the kind of mass immigration that is so unsustainable many mayors are crying for help. While we focus on what to properly call the now majority of people coming in without papers or vetting, the problem remains at the heart of our continuing decay in the state of our union.
I can think of no political job more challenging than that of a being a mayor of a major US city. While many mayors of big cities take home six figure salaries, those who take their responsibilities seriously work hard for their paycheck. They are responsible for keeping their citizens safe, addressing crime, homelessness, traffic, jobs and all issues surrounding quality of life. I think they would all agree, at least behind closed doors, that adding more people to their jurisdiction will always create more problems than it solves.
We need a dialogue that both recognizes the deeply entrenched international problems causing desperate people to pour in across our borders and that continuing to let them in is creating disastrous results within our borders. Allowing a non-stop flow of new residents to our already overcrowded cities is its own kind of cruelty. We claim in our rhetoric, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, to be about fairness and caring for the downtrodden. That makes for a good soundbite, but a horrible reality.
It is cruel to the working class, who live in underserved neighborhoods, many of them minorities. To try to divide our limited resources further to accommodate newcomers is a slap in the face particularly to African Americans still struggling for their fair shake of American generosity. This is best illustrated in the fine book by Roy Beck, “The Back of the Hiring Line”, A 200-year history of Immigration Surges, Employer bias and the Depression of Black Wealth.” (2021).
It is cruel to ask our working class to accommodate more people into their already overtaxed neighborhoods. The kindness in our political rhetoric must match the reality on the streets. There’s nothing like the social injustice of offering kindness to those from foreign lands at the expense of our own citizens.
It's expensive to our budgets and costly to American workers to keep trying to accommodate the demand put on city budgets by the increasing flow of mass immigration. According to an article by Erin Dwinell of the Heritage Foundation last September, the costs are real and steep. Dwinell is quoted as saying, "Last year, Philadelphia elected to budget $300,000 to publicly fund immigration attorneys for aliens facing deportation.” “The New York City Council budgeted $16.6 million the same year for the same purpose.” “Local taxpayers there should expect actual costs to exceed those budgets, as the numbers of illegal aliens, cases and appeals continue to rise." These are only two of many examples. No city in America has an inexhaustible budget. No city has inexhaustible natural resources, yet our immigration policies currently reflect a premise of limitlessness.
Hanging out a no vacancy sign is an act of tough love and a much-needed relief for the way cities are becoming overwhelmed with immigrants. What city could possibly absorb 900 desperate migrants a day without creating chaos both to residents and to the migrants themselves? Certainly not El Paso Texas where a state of emergency has recently been declared. Shipping migrants to northern cities has been criticized as a political ploy, but it does demonstrate that this is a problem that is not just a border issue and needs immediate attention before our already ailing cities collapse under the weight of the demands of from millions of newcomers.
Mayors and the 'social justice' people who vote them in, want to be seen as caring by providing “free” services for an indefinite number of migrants. Any given city’s capacity for services is certainly not being decided by those already feeling burdened by the crush of people already living there and those working hard to provide housing for the homeless. It is a lawbreaking move that makes for good rhetoric for those who have been deluded into thinking that our economic pot is endless, and our open space and fresh water will be available forever.
No amount of government hand-outs can increase space, decrease traffic, or increase the quality of life for those who are here already paying taxes and already needing government help. The only government action that can help our country continue to do serve its citizenry, is to do what we can to take our foot off the population growth pedal in ways that are already available to us.
How ironic that winner of the ’72 election, President Nixon, was more concerned about overpopulation than the president is today. He even created the 'Commission on Population Growth and the American Future'. That future is now and must be addressed with a new story of sustainable border enforcement if our rhetoric of caring for America is to ever match our reality.
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