Saturday, Jan. 05, 2008 - 1:13 p.m.

Teaching a pig to dance

I copied this from my xanga journal cuz I'm still pondering this article.

Thoughts on Immigration in America

I found some interesting facts in a Smithsonian article about the US and our immigrant culture. The whole article was very interesting, "300 and Counting"but several factoids stood out especially since our area is very affected by the legal and illegal immigrant question, and feelings are hot on both sides.

Global shrinkage is happening all over the world, but especially in places where the standard of living is rising. This subject was one part of my last Geography course and was very interesting. Newly developing countries had large death rates, and low population growth and as circumstances improved, those figures would switch over to high birth rate and low death rate along with older people. Right now, most of Europe is not replacing itself population-wise due to better living, and Russia is shrinking fast because of worse living, ie. poor health care, alcoholism, and other negative conditions. Even Catholic and oriental areas where population was figured to rise is falling instead. Those factors are not proving true in the US. We are growing 1% a year.

According to the article, one of the reasons is that the US accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents that the rest of the world combined (!) but those folks tend to have more children than established residents. At least until their descendants attain affluence and education when the birthrate drops below replacement levels. What an interesting thing to learn! The US still opens her arms wide to the people of the world who are 'yearning to be free'.

Not only that, but we are pleased when companies like Intel, eBay, and Google composed of immigrants flourish. As the article states, "this country has a long and distinguished record of taking illiterate peasants from every desert, tundra and bog and turning them into overfed suburbanites in three generations or less. Second, new immigrants usually do not marry outside their ethnic group; their adult children do, with some contoversy, and their adult grandchildren can't remember what the fuss was all about".

This is the deal America offers immigrants: work, pay taxes, learn English, send your kids to school and stay out of trouble with the law, and we'll pretty much leave you alone. That also makes us a young country of only 35 as a median age. Now wonder our culture is constantly changing.

While that makes us feel good about living in a young, healthy country, we do have big problems because of those facts. To hold everyone being added, we have to build one new Chicago a year. Only 4% of all our land is urbanized and 5% developed. We are a land of lots of empty spaces, but the popular spots are filling fast. Sunny California and Florida, desert Phoenix and Las Vegas, and the coasts are developing fast.

The best quote from the magazine is this one. "in our search for new utopias, we don't merely pave over paradise, we massively annoy the planet." Just like teaching a pig to dance.

EE's devotional

newAutumn Leaves

previous - next