- While attending a conference in Denver, Colorado, I noticed
dozens of beggars on the streets. They stood at intersections carrying
cardboard signs that read, "Homeless, anything will help, God bless."
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- As I walked out of the Colorado Convention
Center, one man, wrapped in rags, curled himself around a steam vent on
the sidewalk. A cardboard box served as a pillow. Cement served as his
mattress. Along Colfax Avenue, hundreds of homeless begged for food or
money. They slept in huddled misery under the loading docks and in doorways.
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- The poor will always be with us; just more of them!
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- The National Coalition for the Homeless, www.nationalhomeless.org reported
3.5 million homeless people struggled for survival in the streets of America
in 2006. Of that number, 1.35 million consist of homeless children. Reports
show 13 million American children suffer daily from malnutrition and hunger
in America. A shocking 37 million Americans live below the poverty line,
which is 12.7 percent of our population.
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- Educational experts estimate over 42 million
people in America suffer functional illiteracy. They cannot read, write
or perform simple math. They offer no skills other than the labor of their
hands.
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- Twenty million illegal aliens residing in America
make up the largest high school dropout population in the history of the
nation.
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- Over half of all black and Hispanic babies
originate from unmarried mothers that lack high school diplomas. Fifty
to 70 percent of blacks and Hispanics do not graduate from high school.
Thirty percent of whites do not graduate from high school.
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- In the last century, Mexico grew from 50 to
104 million people. Current demographic figures show Mexico growing to
153 million by mid century. Since 85 percent of all immigration into the
United States originates from Mexico, we face a striking dilemma.
- Can we incorporate a massive and growing illiterate
population? How will we contend with the next added 100 million Americans
featuring scant educational skills? How will we deal with millions of
babies from their ranks? If we cannot educate half of current American
minorities, how will we educate this massive overload of humanity?
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- If Mexico cannot maintain a successful society
with 114 million people today, how do you suppose they will sustain their
country with 50 million more?
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- To give you a harsh view of our future, I offer
an eye-witness account from my bicycle seat traveling through Mexico.
On the outskirts of Mexico City with 22 million people, in excess of two
million people live in cardboard shacks. They squat for their morning
constitutional with their chickens. They live in abject misery, filth,
disease and hopelessness.
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- Guess what? They're moving to America. Millions of
them!
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- Third world slums began appearing along our borders from
Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California in the 80s. Called "Colonias,"
which in Spanish means "new neighborhoods," they feature shacks,
no sewers, no streets, no running water, no electricity, toilet facilities
or waste pickup.
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- The New York Times, March 3, 1988, "Along
the US Border, a Third World is Reborn," reported, "Colonias
are rusted trailers and shacks nailed together from tar paper and packing
pallets without indoor toiletswith mounds of uncollected trash that attract
ratsthe lack of sanitation has polluted the ground water to the point where
many residents drink their own wastethe colonias feature third world levels
of hepatitis, dysentery, diarrhea, skin rashes, cholera and tuberculosisthey
are contaminated, explosive, fecal, filthy, illegal, miserable, polluted,
powder kegs, putrid, shocking, sick, stench filled, suffering and wrenching."
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- Since their appearance in the early 80s, according
to the Times, the 1988 population totaled 185,000; the 1995 population
exceeded 500,000; the 2005 population exceeded 1.5 million. At the current
rate of growth, the New York Times predicted those human misery settlements
would reach 20 million by 2021.
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- While filming colonias in Texas, I haven't
been as sickened to my stomach since my travels in Asia or countries like
Haiti. It's worse than any description the New York Times or I could give
you. Colonias represent human misery at its disturbing worst levels.
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- These slums represent a health hazard of unprecedented
dimensions. Given enough time, large areas of southern California will
resemble the outskirts of Mexico City. Two decades of denial continues
the expansion of American colonias.
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- We cannot import millions of desperately poor,
illiterate and hard working people from third world countries and think
they will become functioning, positive aspects in a first world country.
France, Holland and England's failed immigration policies offer proof.
Ours fails, too!
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- What about our working poor? How about degraded
educational opportunities for our children? According to columnist Dottie
Lamm, 68 percent of a African-American children are raised by single mothers.
The illiterate and poor beget more illiterate and poor-all on taxpayer
dollars. What civilization can maintain that disparity?
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- As we choke on millions of people from other
countries, they displace our working poor as immigrants depress wages.
Our educational systems sink in academic excellence, creating millions
of added poor.
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- As it stands today, millions of Americans can't
pay for heating and electricity bills. They rely on donations by other
Americans to cover those bills. At some point, as this new poor class
expands into millions upon millions-something else will fail. What is
that? Our ability to deal with it or solve it!
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- Anyone with an ounce of common sense or economic
intelligence knows that prices in the coming years will rise as oil becomes
more expensive. This translates into diesel that drives trains that bring
coal to the electrical plants. Thus energy at every level will become more
expensive. The caveat enters the picture as these millions of poor cannot
and will not be able to command higher wages.
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- The American Dream degrades into the American Nightmare
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- On the world stage, 57 million people died in 2010.
According to Time Magazine, eight million adults starved to death. Of
the total number of deaths, 10.5 million children under the age of 12 years
old died from starvation and related diseases. Somalia's predicament will
be much worse in 2011.
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- To bring it into sharper focus, current world
population at 6.9 billion will hit between 9.2 and 10.2 billion at mid
century. That's 78 million people added annually; 1.0 billion added every
13 years. They multiply so fast, they cannot be educated. However, they
flood into first world countries.
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- No one, I repeat, no world leader addresses
this "human dilemma." The Catholic Church won't allow or talk
about life-enabling birth control-though avoiding birth control accelerating
poverty. Church leaders of all the major religions deny any problem.
It's almost as if, in the 21st century, they prefer remaining in the
1st century. But, via their actions, millions of adults and children
starve to death annually.
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- "Can you think of any problem in any area of human
endeavor on any scale, from the microscopic to global, whose long-term
solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further
increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
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- Dr. Albert Bartlett
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- We better deal with it: today! To continue
on our current path proves as inept as the captain of the Titanic. If
you look at Somalia and the probability of 800,000 starving to death, it
will look like a grade-school picnic in 2011 compared to the end of the
century when Africa grows from its current 1.0 billion to the projected
3.1 billion.
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- We just sent Somalia $100 million in food aid.
If we feed them, they will multiply their numbers into greater catastrophes
in the future. How can we think any of this will be a fairy-tale ending?
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