Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9408170003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KERMIT W. SALYER JR.
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Roanoke's entry into this world arena comes from a sordid tale of an alleged attempted rape. Sordid, but not unimportant.
The defendant is a Haitian, duly processed, and allowed entry and resettlement into the United States. But he speaks only French Creole, is likely illiterate (as are 53 percent of all Haitians), and comes from a country where anarchy, autocracy or rule by the elite has been the practice since Haiti gained independence in 1804.
Plop him down in the midst of plenty, and his is still a doubtful outcome. Where, in Roanoke, do the French Creole meet for their social functions; where can he find his compatriots? Jean Bosue is effectively a square peg in a star-shaped hole. As are many of his fellow Haitians: those already at sea and those still waiting in queue for a chance on the next unseaworthy boat.
Why are they leaving? For a chance at life in the land of Big Macs and flush toilets? Maybe. To escape political persecution? An effective ruse; those in power have persecuted since the revolution.
No, the underlying cause of the exodus is the overpopulation of an overused, tired landscape, exploited for centuries, exporting commodity crops raised by low-paid labor, while the majority goes jobless and hungry. In exchange for their sugar cane, bananas or coffee, we export back a glimpse of the good life: perhaps athletic shoes and the ubiquitous bottle of Coke. And bullets. Always bullets.
We haven't sent bullets to Cuba, but they still send us Cubans. Florida still reels from President Carter's Mariel boatlift more than a decade ago, though there was a Cuban community there to help assimilate them. But many yet languish in prison at our expense.
And Florida - which, along with Texas and California, is suing the U.S. government for reparations for past and future expenses incurred from the influx of immigrants - is the preferred destination for those few Haitians (6 percent) currently granted asylum. The rest are in limbo.
One would be hard-pressed to find any quarter of the globe that is not in or nearing Limboland. Rwanda (also exporting coffee as a cash crop) is such a place. That country, and neighboring Burundi, are two of the most fertile in Africa. They are also the most densely populated.
At its base, the butchery in that area, under the guise of ethnic warfare, is caused by too many people. They have excellent cropland, and before the bloodshed began it was sufficient for their needs. But the best was always reserved for export crops.
What they get in return for their goods (besides arms) is not clear. Certainly not the incongruous clothing: the Mickey Mouse and, God forbid, Simpsons T-shirts, seen in the news photos of the hungry, milling millions. Those must have come from our "humanitarian" aid programs - our castoffs.
But castoffs can go both ways. Mexico gets ours. Companies that have skirted U.S. pollution laws and "vamoosed" south of the border have evolved poisoned shantytowns from San Diego to Brownsville.
And, not coincidentally, spawned a mass of ill, disenfranchised people, all too willing to cross the sieve of a border for a chance at the shimmer of Utopia they can see from their side.
Since its inception, the Mexican government has simmered, and sometimes boiled over. There was a political assassination recently, and in January a peasant rebellion in the Chiapas region.
The people have no jobs; that's why they come here. They work here for a pittance to support families back home. All it would take is a major crop failure, or an armed insurrection, and the stream of illegal border crossings could become a torrent. There is nothing we could do to stop it.
None of these vignettes exists in isolation. Remember Somalia? Where once headlines bannered, all is now silence. Out of sight, out of mind. But never out of the picture. Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China: Tzhey're still there.
There are calls across the nation to stop accepting refugees, to slam shut the Golden Door. Why not? Panama just said no to the Haitians, and that was that. Panamanians know our limits, just as they know the limits of their own country and its ability to support its population.
Apparently, America does not. We have the fastest-growing population of any developed nation, and 30 percent of that growth comes from immigration, with 9 million additional immigrants expected in the next 10 years.
Many say fine. Think of the new consumers, the new markets. Think of the profit, the growth. Why, with that many new Americans, we'll be able to justify 10, maybe 20 new theme parks. Just think of it: Disney's Ellis Island!
Just think of it.
The environment-vs.-development battles taking place now in our fractious society will seem tame when compared with those of the future.
Sadly, if nothing is done to stop the population juggernaut, America may become a society of sequestered subdivisions with armed guards at the gates, gangland territories, and militant compounds. The rest, the homeless, would be left to wander between the perimeters of the petty feudal duchies that the crush of people has forced us to create.
Education is the key, and the focus of the Cairo conference - specifically, the education and empowerment of women. Third World women die early. Their bodies are simply consumed by having too many children. They have no choice.
This is life?
The door to our options is closing. We must begin now to take the necessary steps, hopefully with the Cairo conference, to get a rein on population growth. Otherwise, the sheer momentum of growth will take us through a horrendous, gritty future with 10 or 15 billion people worldwide, half a billion of them Americans.
That is a future in which none of us would wish to live.
Kermit W. Salyer Jr. is on the staff of the library at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.
by CNB