Dear HCN:
Thanks for the excellent
issue on growth in the West (HCN, 9/5/94). In his essay, Dick Lamm
fails to divulge the underlying cause of the population growth and
immigration: poverty.
It seems that Lamm
advocates closing the borders to immigration. Although our borders
are lined with 10-foot fences and armed guards and bodies of water,
thousands still flood in. Why would people risk their lives to
enter the U.S. illegally and work seasonally picking fruit or
making beds for a couple bucks an hour?
Just as
population growth should not be addressed without respect to
poverty and access to health care and liberation of women,
immigration should not be discussed without regard to U.S. policies
of neo-colonialism. In order that we may have bananas yearlong and
supply our addiction to coffee and sugar, our economic polices have
greatly contributed to the impoverishment of the Third
World.
Free trade, such as NAFTA and GATT,
greatly accelerates a situation where it becomes more profitable to
grow export crops instead of food. Cheap food-imports from the
North undercut locally produced food, further increasing dependence
upon foreign markets. Thus the campesinos abandon their land, or
are often forced off. Unable to find work in the cities, they soon
head north, becoming a new wave of GATT immigrants. You can’t plug
the faucet with one hand while turning it up with the
other.
Is Lamm the same former governor who seeks
to extract water from the sparsely inhabitated San Luis Valley at
the expense of its Hispanic residents to supply a burgeoning
metropolitan area?
Greg
Gordon
Cascade,
Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tell the whole population story.
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