About 25 members of the CU community have come away from a lecture about the issue of immigration in the U.S.
The lecture, “Immigration and the Practical Majority?” took place at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 5 in the British Studies room in Norlin Library. It was presented by the Center for the Humanities and the Arts (CHA) and the Center of the American West in connection to migration, the CHA theme for 2009-2010.
Many had left shortly after the beginning of the lecture.
Michael Zimmerman, director of the Center for the Humanities and the Arts, said that migration is an important topic to have in the United States.
“Immigration has often been a contentious issue in American history,” Zimmerman said. “The current wave of migration has become a politically charged issue, one that needs to be discussed respectfully in a way that takes into account the concerns of everyone affected.”
The discourse was presented by Helen Thorpe and CU history instructor Patty Limerick, who have researched and studied immigration extensively.
The lecture was opened by Thorpe, a freelance journalist and wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who recently published a book, “Just Like Us,” about the experiences of four young Mexican women and their lives in Colorado.
The author described how she was able to follow the lives of four Mexican best friends, two of which had legal documentation to live in the United States, and two that did not.
“My husband is in politics, but I’m not really, or as little as possible,” Thorpe said, stressing her belief that immigration is an issue of humanity and not just laws and documentations.
Limerick, who works for the Center of the American West, approached the topic of migration through several different perspectives of proposals and questioning topics.
Limerick stressed the idea that history is not cyclical, and that immigration has to be regarded according to the time and context of the current situation rather than turning to solutions from history.
She suggested that Americans need to look at the situation of Mexican migration from a perspective that would be reasonable and convincing, pointing to critiques of the feasibility of deporting the possible 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, as well as the construction of the fence across the US-Mexico border, parts of which, she says, were built by illegal citizens themselves.
“We spend so much time talking about the drain on resources that immigrants pose, but that mirror is ready to come back and get us to look at ourselves,” Limerick said.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sushupta Srinidhi at Sushupta.srindhi@colorado.edu.
1 comment
Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. Immigration, both legal and illegal, are fueling this growth. I’m not talking about environmental degradation or resource depletion. I’m talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.
I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management, especially immigration policy. Our policies of encouraging high rates of immigration are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight third world countries – India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China – as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050. It’s absolutely imperative that our population be stabilized, and that’s impossible without dramatically reining in immigration, both legal and illegal.
If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”