Immigration And Family Planning Needed Fixes That Were Not Understood Or Not Addressed!

By Donald A. Collins | 25 November 2024
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

In 1965 the US population was almost 200,000,000 and now in 2024 it is approximately 340 million.

During that interim. I have been involved in trying to provide women with family planning options so that they might have the children they wish to have or not have the children they did not wish to have.

I was also in 1965 and still am, concerned about the rising numbers of immigrants who were and are coming to the country faster than many people wished. I wrote about that subject many times as a member of the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which still to this day is trying to get legal immigration made a fair and effective formal Federal government policy.

The Trump promise to remove millions of undocumented aliens will likely further undermine what is going to be one of the most contentious and dangerous threats to our democracy in our history! Stay tuned.

Both immigration reform and family planning activities have merits. The political impact of the immigration issue was major in the 2024 election. Trump cleverly derailed a bi-partisan Senate bill before the campaign which could have helped Democrats.

While the abortion issue was considered to be a high motivating factor for women in this last election, it seems to be subordinated to both the immigration issue, and the fact that inflation had raised prices, and many of our voters –60% living paycheck to paycheck—felt things were better under Trump and that the Democratic Party had forgotten its working-class supporters.

The election of Trump was a surprise to many, but in retrospect should not have been because the issues described above were not being well articulated by the Biden ministration or in fact so far not by any administration.

For some time many concerned experts such as Fairfield Osborn’s 1948 book “Our Plundered Planet” or Paul Ehrlich’s 1969 controversial book “The Population Bomb” or Garret Harden’s “Tragedy of the Commons” or many since such as David Attenborough have been arguing for action without noting or solving the growth of human numbers around the world.

The above issues of immigration and family planning do not get frequently addressed in tandem by those who seek to solve those problems, but it is obvious that the human numbers on the planet have served as the basis for much of what we now face.

As I said in my October 2nd op ed entitled–using phasing from James Carville, It’s population growth stupid!

Obviously, people who are suffering unlivable circumstances in other countries will seek to come to countries that are perceived to be doing better such as the developed countries. That has meant that the US was prime destination for many of those who seek better living conditions. How tempting must it be to poor South Americans or any poor person to try US entry?

That means that the solutions can include making our laws clear about who can come to the United States, but it also means that decision-makers in developed countries understand that these problems will continue without their very strong intervention.

Developing countries now properly claim that the developed countries are major polluters of the environment and that we must address that problem since their populations are growing and in need of family planning assistance while we with our own population still growing yearly from our large population base even as the birth rate is low, as is true for the whole world. And getting larger from unwanted and unregulated immigration.

Thus, there is madness in the unfortunate attempts to stop women from having full reproductive rights.

However, that is not the big problem. Nor is immigration reform, although both need to be strongly addressed.

As I wrote in an opinion piece this year, the vital issue Trump will make worse by ignoring proposed growing attacks on our environment! As the recent storms and wildfire outbreaks have demonstrated and despite urgent warnings from the UN and the UN conferences attended by many world leaders their words have been profuse but their actions are not ample to save our environment! Speaking of madness!!

The continuing emphasis on growth by the big business community, which grows richer as the gap between the rich and the rest of us has never been greater; as of the first quarter of 2024, two thirds of America’s wealth was owned by 10% of us. Wikipedia says 1% of us own 38%.

Is it any wonder that our elections since Citizens United passed in 2010 allowing businesses unlimited contributions to candidates, allowed substantial influence in getting favorable outcomes for their interests by our governments have been bought by the rich. How about Elon Musk and SpaceX?

Is there a way for world leaders to acknowledge the contradiction of growth which is unsustainable and seek solutions to the problems that exist because of too many unserved human numbers are still going from present levels to even higher levels and more hostility and confusion and possible reaching the sixth extinction which experts now see is well on its way???

The question has several answers. If we can rapidly greatly reduce consumption of meat products, resort to a more plant based diet, get more cleaner energy from solar panels, or move rapidly to convert to electric vehicles, we could go a long way toward reducing present levels of fossil fuel pollution.

On January 1, 2023, Paul Ehrlich told 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley that for people to have the level of consumption of US citizens enjoy would require 5 more Planet Earths.

Thus, one issue is recognizing the problem and acting, but the real question is even if we did tomorrow we are a long way down the path that is now leading humanity to some version of the 6th Extinction so forcefully argued by Elizabeth Kolbert in her 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning book.

To President Trump and any others so unlikely to fathom, It’s population growth stupid!

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?” and “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”.

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