[ I am so tired of only racist dregs getting covered in the media about immigration.
There are millions of non-racists who are not racist but math literate who can clearly see that we have allowed population to grow beyond the ability of fossil fuels to support all of us on the other side of peak oil. Modern agriculture uses 10 calories of fossils per calorie of human food produced using diesel tractors, natural gas based fertilizers, oil-based pesticides, diesel trucks to distribute food, electricity (67% from fossil fuels) to keep produce, fruit, meat, dairy and other products chilled, cooking food, and so on). Agriculture uses somewhere between 13 and 19% of fossil fuel energy in the United States, depending on which study you read.
Do the math: if the carrying capacity of the United States is 100 million people (David Pimentel at Cornell, Paul Erlich at Stanford), how can admitting 2 million immigrants a year (half legal, half illegal) possibly have a happy ending?
Goodbye democracy, hello horsemen of the apocalypse. There’s no way population can decline from 350 million to 100 million in 20 years without tremendous suffering and probably a feudal society when civil war, disease, and starvation have reduced population back to carrying capacity. You can be sure that food and other shortages will be blamed on our enemies by a Trump-like demagogue who will be elected President and likely start a nuclear war.
Scholars now believe that the main reason the Roman Empire fell (the western half) was the enormous number of barbarians who invaded. Well, European scholars. It is politically incorrect to blame immigrants for anything, so American historians have apparently rewritten history and ignored evidence, to the disgust of European historians.
Below Kunstler points out that climate change and other factors are likely to lead to millions of immigrants from Mexico coming into the U.S. over the coming decades (according to a story in the Boston Globe).
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity]
James Howard Kunstler. Jan 14, 2008. DISARRAY
Take a time-out from legal immigration and get serious about enforcing the laws about illegal immigration. Stop lying to ourselves and stop using semantic ruses like calling illegal immigrants “undocumented.”
Those who think immigration pressures are bad today are in for a real shock: The combination of climate change and declining Mexican oil production — both of which will strain the personal and public treasuries in Mexico — are likely to magnify the northward pressure (Webber 2010). The United States should come to terms with immigration now, before the issue gets intensified. … Sophisticated scientific models suggest that Mexico is expected to be hit hard by climate change. Drought and shifts in land use and agriculture are likely to take place. And, as climate change diminishes crop yields and places ever more pressure on limited resources, the rate of immigration to the United States will only increase. A recent paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts that the factors related to climate change will lead to millions of new immigrants from Mexico over the coming decades. But that’s just one part of the equation. We also must consider how a declining energy sector in Mexico will impact the economy. Consider Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company that produces crude, natural gas, and petroleum products. Pemex is also the government’s greatest source of income, responsible for financing 40% of the federal budget.
Webber, M. E., et al. November 26, 2010. Global warming and declining oil production will drive more Mexicans to the United States. The Boston Globe