A panel discussion addressing the topic "Should America Change its Immigration policy." Will be held on campus the evening of Friday, Dec 8. A panel consisting of 4-7 speakers (guests are still being reconfirmed at time of print) will debate this sensitive and volatile subject, sure to present an exciting learning experience to all in attendance.
Before the panel, however, the Breeze decided it would be of benefit to run interviews with some of the speakers in this and up-coming issues. The first of these was with Mark Cromer, senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization, whose article "Welcome to Crowdifornia" is also in this issue.
First of all,what is CAPS?
Californians for Population Stabilization is a 501(c) (3), membership-based, public interest organization. It is based in Santa Barbara, California.
What is it purpose?
CAPS seeks to raise public awareness to the impacts and dangers of overpopulation and to foster a constructive dialogue that will end the policies that have caused explosive population growth.
When and why was it started?
CAPS was formed in 1986 by activists and academics who wanted to focus the overpopulation issue more locally. Other prominent population groups have a more global focus. The genesis of CAPS was fueled by a desire to confront overpopulation issues here at home in California.
What is its connection to the Minute Men?
There is none. CAPS has no formal, nor informal, association with the Minute Men, nor any other border patrol or border watch group.
When did you become involved with CAPS? Why?
While I believe the cultural issues surrounding illegal and legal immigration that are now being vigorously debated are indeed very important, it was increasingly apparent to me that the larger issue of human population was getting lost in the shouting match.
At the end of the day, the massive strain on our resources isn't a result of whether they are Mexican, Dutch or Chinese immigrants, here legally or not, but rather a consequence of a staggering wave of uncontrolled immigration and pure human consumption. A California with 60 million or more people in it is not a future we can look forward to, no matter where the people come from, what language they speak, what culture they embrace.
People need to quit thinking about color for just a minute and start doing the math.
Some argue, even as America surges past 300 million people, that we can actually sustain a half-billion people in the United States. Perhaps we could, at least in the sense of meeting the most primal human needs. In that regard, Haiti, Ethiopia, Bulgaria and Somalia also can sustain their populations, albeit in a perpetual state of near misery.
We should be asking ourselves if we want America to be jammed to capacity?
As I noted in my column, I am old enough to remember what California looked like in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I don't mean the color of its people. I mean what the state looked like: the open space, the relative rural nature of suburbia in the Pomona Valley and Inland Empire. I recall the dairies in Chino, the vineyards in what was then Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda.
Life here in the Inland Empire may not have all been the shimmering oasis that I think memories tend to create through some natural process of nostalgia-indeed the slag heaps and the belching smoke stacks of Kaiser Steel in Fontana looked like something out of a Pink Floyd, post-industrial nightmare-but the balance of life was better then than it is now.
Rampant development had not yet obliterated the rolling hills of Walnut and Diamond Bar to the west, nor annihilated the beautiful sweep of fields and groves in Ontario and Cucamonga to the east. Pomona was still dotted with fading citrus groves that still had smudge pots in them and Norco and Corona were still sleepy cow towns.
To suggest that the killing off of that quality of life is somehow "progress" simply because it resulted in more jobs and increased development is utter nonsense. Mindless consumption and development is a means to what end? A dead end.
And yet our elected leadership tells us that this is the way it has to be, as if there are simply no other options or alternatives. The news media has largely failed in its most basic responsibility, which is to critically analyze what is happening and to aggressively question public officials. Instead of a thoughtful exploration of the issues surrounding human population growth and development, we are treated to Fear Factor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and a saturation of Paris Hilton shopping, partying and being "hot."
Here's a reality show I'd like to see: Paris Hilton strolling the streets of Calcutta, where the population density has spiked to more than 100,000 people per square mile. Paris can cavort like a mindless mannequin sporting her gem-encrusted cell phone in the squalor and misery of hungry people jammed together amid streams of human sewage and airborne pathogens.
The grim reality of overpopulation and poverty would likely be too much for the poster child of Western gluttony to process, Paris would likely have to Lear Jet-it immediately to daddy's digs in the French Riviera to recover from the trauma of struggling with an actual thought about something other than herself. But it might provide the rest of the MTV's Real World generation a glimpse of where, ultimately, we are headed.
Personally, I think high school and college students today should be as upset over growth issues as they are over the war.
The war will end. But will the bulldozers ever stop?
So why did I enlist in the cause of CAPS?
Because I watched our leaders pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
What are your own or CAPS views in relation to the immigration problem?
Immigration is only an issue for CAPS in the sense that it is the key engine that is driving the massive population gains we have been experiencing, and there is no indication that it will stop, but rather every indication it will continue to grow.
How would you solve these problems?
There are no easy solutions, but the first step would be to demand our elected leadership in this state and nation actually begin to cogently discuss the issue of population.
Immigration, both legal and illegal, are fueling the massive growth rates. You can't reduce or slow the population growth without cutting back on immigration into the United States. Consequently, a "cooling off" period of several years would be advisable, where legal immigration was dramatically reduced, to say perhaps 100,000 people a year, and border controls were better enforced to reduce illegal immigration.
An open, honest and vigorous national discussion about family planning should also be undertaken. Yes, reproductive rights and freedoms are a sacred personal choice, but the consequences of having far more children than one can afford is indeed a public issue, and should be discussed, respectfully, as such.
Developers and land-use issues, as well as water rights, must also be brought to the table for discussions that are focused on finding solutions.
What is your response to detractors who call you or your organization racist?
I am not aware that anyone has called CAPS or myself a "racist" or suggested that advocating for sensible population growth is a racist position.
Of course, attempting to smear someone with the toxic allegation of racism is a favored tactic these days from those people who don't have an argument, who don't have a defendable position or a reasonable plan, so they are reduced to name-calling.
What do I think about that? I think people who indulge in that sort of sick McCarthyism are pathetic, intellectual cowards. People who shout down ideas they disagree with are actually reminiscent of the Nazi thugs who used protests, threats and ultimately violent terror to silence all who voiced ideas they found objectionable.
In your article you make a good point that the cultural issues cloud the issue of overpopulation. In pursuit of a solution to the population problem should the socio-cultural issues be ignored?
No, they are important and can't be ignored, though I suggest they should not be as hysterical as they have become in some instances. The problem is, the crucial issue of human population is what is being ignored. Completely ignored.
You also talk a great deal about our depleted natural resources. How can we stop this depletion? How could we reverse the damage. Is there some way for us to return to the way of life that you refer to as the golden past?
I don't know if we can fully reverse the damage, but I know we can do a lot to stop it. The respected CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes recently featured one of NASA's top atmospheric scientists, who has repeatedly been muzzled by the Bush Administration at the behest of corporations. During the interview, he gave the planet a decade-just 10 years-to dramatically reduce 'greenhouse' emissions before irreversible climate changes occur, with potentially devastating results to humankind.
I am journalist, a writer, not a scientist, but I don't think you need to be a scientist to look at the conditions surrounding us in Southern California today, to consider the water supplies, arable land and open space, and know that we are in deep trouble. If we don't at least begin taking steps to reverse the massive population strain on our resources now, it will sooner than later become too late.
Look at it this way: a smoker who develops lung cancer usually quits after he or she has been diagnosed, or by the time they get really sick, which is often many years after the disease took root. I think California is like a sick smoker, trying to figure out if she should quit now or not? It was such a good time at the party for all those years, puffing away without much of a worry. And now, our chest is aching, our throat is sore, and we have a creeping sense of dread of what the chest X-rays may show.
And the rest of the nation is looking at us and wondering, as they light up, if it could happen to them?
The Breeze thanks Mr. Cromer and encourages readers to catch next issue when we explore this topic with another panel speaker.
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