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Winning the Battle, Losing the War
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12339 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1987 |
2,345 Words |
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Patrick Burns
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In the 100 years since the Statue of Liberty was dedicated, the United States and the world have undergone dramatic changes. In 1886, U.S. army troops were fighting Geronimo, the Alaska Gold Rush had not yet begun, world population was just over one billion, and it took more than a month to sail across the Atlantic. Today, the American West is struggling with serious water shortages, we face a trillion-dollar deficit, world population has churned past the five billion mark, and the Atlantic can be spanned in less than four hours.
On November 6th, just days after the real 100th anniversary of Lady Liberty's dedication on Bedloe's Island, New York, President Reagan signed into law the Simpson-Rodino immigration reform bill, the most significant revision of U.S. immigration law in 22 years.
Unlike "the Lady's" dedication 100 years ago, the signing of the Simpson-Rodino bill was not celebrated with fireworks, cannon blasts, and pounding brass bands. It was a quiet, almost private, ceremony at the White House, attended by only a handful of Congressmen and Senators.
One reason for sobriety was pessimism that the bill would work at all. Though the legislative battle had been won, many immigration experts continued to express skepticisms that the "war" could be won in the field. Most important of all, Congress has yet to appropriate the millions of dollars necessary to enforce employer sanctions or draft needed technical amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Profound skepticism also exists as to whether the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is capable of adequately fulfilling its mandate to legalize millions of illegal immigrants while enforcing the employer-sanctions provisions of the bill.
The big picture
America's immigration dilemma is one fragment of a much larger picture: the pace of world demographic change. It is here that any discussion of U.S. immigration policy should begin.
In 1830, the population of the world was just one billion, and had risen to only two billion one hundred years later. By 1960, the population of the world had ticked past three billion and by 1975 there were four billion people in the world. Earlier this year, world population passed the five billion mark and is projected to exceed 7.7 billion by 2030, just 44 years from now.
The challenge ahead for the developing world is staggering. Latin America, with an economy one fifth the size of the United States, will have to create twice as many jobs as the United States now averages just to maintain current rates of unemployment. Africa, hard-pressed to feed a current population of 583 million, will have to feed 1.4 billion by the year 2020.
Mexico alone is adding over two million people a year to its population, and nearly one million people a year to its labor force. In absolute numbers, Mexico's annual population increase exceeds the natural increase of the United States, though the United States has three times Mexico's population and an economy 20 times larger.
With the full knowledge that there are over 800 million hungry and unemployed people in the world today, we must ask ourselves: How many immigrants can we take, whom should we take, and how should we enforce the law? Without a doubt, the answers to these questions will shape our nation for generations to come.
The United States currently accepts
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