Article View: dc.general
Article #6349Just another thing to consider as you vote.
From: klaatu
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 00:00
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 00:00
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11121 bytes
And yes, this does have something to do with regions outside of the Nation's Capital Metroplex. In yet another blatant and self serving plug, and soundly-backed by the US Census Bureau, as if I were not always backed solidly by one or another Government source (from which I _always_ get my information) - I write (and am, as always, right): Dateline 23 October 1996: Washington, DC. _Demographic Trends Predict Washington to be Predominantly Immigrant by 2020_ Local citizens, despairing of any real possibilities of change in the city run by Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry's democratic political machine, are fleeing to the suburbs and beyond. While the Edge Cities of the region continue to grow and continue to largely reflect the demographics of the nation as a whole, Washington DC experiences an ongoing hemorrhage of affluent and middle-class American-born citizens. While Maryland is expected to expand the population base by some 300,000 in the next three-four years, and in the same time Virginia's population base will expand by some 400,000, the District of Columbia is expected to suffer a total loss of population amounting to roughly 30,000. In a city with a present base population of a mere half-million, this is a startling decline. But this is only the larger picture, and a raw statistical abstract which ignores, on the face of it, less noticable yet politically much more important trends. Note that the Census estimates and predictions are mostly addressing direct demographic data in terms of _overall_ population change, and are not directly summarizing the homeostatics of the system which yield the overall-change numbers. As people move out of the District of Columbia and the immediate environs, others will of course move in. When one examines such factors as ethnicity, former nationality and so forth, one sees that those who are moving out are largely the upper- and middle-income revenue-generating high- and mid-level management and public-service-management types, along with their families. The population that is expected to replace them will be increasingly foreign-born small-business entrepreneurs with taxable incomes on the lower end of the scale, who will however tend to increase the size of the City's coffers with their proceeds of their sales taxes. In the 1980's, most of the newcomers to Washington and environs were American-born, professional, relocating from other states. Despite the vast and (presently unreferenced, undergoing daily revision) and well-remarked population flight of the upper-classes from the City leading - the Exodus Factor - Washington continues to welcome new arrivals. Most of these new arrivals will becoming not from other states, but from (originally) other countries, with the secondary yet eventually much-larger wave of new arrivals "coming by stork" - the American children of foreign parents, almost certainly following the traditional and well-known pattern of high first-generation fecundity and per-capita reproductive rate. Still, raising a population through births is a process which has a great deal of temporal inertia - the population-base is not expected to return to 1990 levels until around 2020. Rober Manning, an American University sociologist, is reported by the _Washington Post_ as saying (paraphrase) that the immigrants who will move to the District-proper would be more likely in need of help and public-sector support than would be those who move to the suburbs. (end paraphrase) Very high property values in the suburbs would tend to restrict the vast majority of newly-resident suburban immigrants to the professional classes. The rapidly-plummetting property values in the District will tend to lower rents, and this will will attract the lower-paid, less-educated classes of immigrants and with the revision of "welfare as we know it" (and its requirements in many cases that former recipients move to 'where the work is'), also will increasingly attract greater numbers of poorer American-born citizens. Also, the word is evidently out that the Washington Metro area welcomes immigrants, according to demographer Ken Billingsley of the Northern Virginia Planning District Commission, as reported by the _Post_. Hostility towards immigrants is an established fact of life in many parts of the larger America, with California leading the forefront of popular movements to greatly restrict future immigration, particularly illegal immigration. ------------ and now for pure editorialising. ------------------------ America has always been a country of immigrants. As a nation, we have greatly benefitted from the influx of the foreign-born (although Native Americans probably tend to disagree). The Chinese built our railroads, and from oppressive regimes in Europe came such minds as Tesla, Steinmetz, and Einstein. The descendants of African slaves have made such contributions as peanut-butter and crop-rotation, the gas-mask and stop-signals, the technique for separating plasma from whole-blood, and all in all, the foreign-born and particularly their children in whom they fostered the drive to strive and to rise above, have contributed disproportionately to this country's greatness. But with the rare-but-disproportionately-good comes the global-if-trivially bad. For every Einstein there came a thousand shrilling fishwives. Californians will be quick to tell you, if they're at all reasonable and know their history and will consider it without prejudice, that they did indeed steal the place from the Spanish, who stole it from the Indians. Try reading a history of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo for some clues. Those who do not know their history risk suffering through repetitions, and as regards California and Gen. Vallejo, there's probably a teensy bit of historical Karma that needs to be adjusted. But regardless of "right or wrong", despite the fact that a great deal of the most profitable and enjoyable real-estate in the United States was baldly stolen from the hiers of Spain in the New World, the fact remains that it was stolen _successfully_. To fail to understand the lessons in this is to fail to understand the certainty of a repetition-in-reversal should we continue to allow foreign-born and possibly inimical influences in the internal affairs of our nation. We see, for instance, that foreign businesses are being allowed, unopposed, to finance the campaigns of American politicians, even those who seek the highest offices in the land, those who will set policy on immigration, who control the reins of power, who alone may direct our armed forces to stand guard in defense of the citizen. Now regardless of how this came to be, we must simplify the question and ask ourselves are we to allow this to continue? We Americans have long been rather proud of our culture. It may not be quite so artistic as some of the Mediterranean cultures, nor of such antique lineage as some of the Aisan cultures, but we do win wars just _fine_. Why then are our borders overrun? And why are so very many of the people who enter our nation heading directly for the District of Columbia and the environs, when the rest of the nation tends to make it plainly clear that they do not much care for most of these newcomers (at least not the rude, obnoxious, aggressive or criminal ones), make it plainly clear to not only the newcomers themselves but to our politicians? We've written editorials, we've gathered in thousands or more, waved our pickets, boycotted industries, and still they come and still they head to the Washington Metroplex, where there are already so many more of them waiting to welcome them, to provide housing, and assistance, and directions on where to stand in line and have the taxpayers support them while they slowly fill up the neighborhoods in a Nation's Capital which is being fled as a war-zone by the locals? Could it be _foreign campaign contributions_? Are our public servants actually winking a blind eye to a practical invasion _because they are being paid off_? And if this is so, perhaps they are being just a bit short-sighted. American University sociologist Robert Manning, cited above (quoted from the _Washington Post_) says he's concerned about the next generation, ten or twenty years from now I suppose, though Californians may be somewhat more willing to speak of this as having already come to pass - "Nobody talks about the second-generation Latinos who don't speak English and who have a high dropout-rate". While we may not be subject to any actual invasions, there's certainly a cultural invasion underway, not surprising since, after all, history does repeat itself. While pondering the eventual impact of a Nation's Capital region already 40 percent of foreign-birth (State of Maryland) becoming the homing-beacon for every immigrant in the country, one might also ponder early Texas history, and role-reversal, and the Alamo. And then ponder whether or not you want to vote for anyone who has been taking foreign money and doing a major job of foot-gragging on all attempts to reform immigration, and particularly foot-dragging on secure-document proof-of-citizenship requirements for such things as driver's-licences, firearms-permits, and voting-registration. but please do vote - it may be your last chance. -- Be kind to your | When the going gets weird the weird turn pro. neighbors even though | http://www.clark.net/pub/klaatu/ they be transgenic | Now. chock full of uninteresting links. chimerae. |-- Genesis 19:1-13 - Hebrews 13:2 -- ---- INCOMING! http://www.clark.net/pub/klaatu/incoming.html --------- "Sarah Connor?" All UseNet and BitNet postings are copyrighted.
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X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 106ed4,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gid106ed4,public X-Google-Thread: fb1cb,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gidfb1cb,public X-Google-Thread: 10675b,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gid10675b,public X-Google-Thread: 10e835,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gid10e835,public X-Google-Thread: 1073ca,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gid1073ca,public X-Google-Thread: 101049,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gid101049,public X-Google-Thread: 109097,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gid109097,public X-Google-Thread: f6cc7,b84b46632b1588bf,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf6cc7,public From: klaatu <root@earthops.org> Subject: Just another thing to consider as you vote. Date: 1996/10/23 Message-ID: <326E37F6.115D658A@earthops.org> X-Deja-AN: 191541094 content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: Earth Operations Central, 1486 Harvard Street, #5, NW Washington DC 20056 mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: dc.general,pa.general,seattle.general,ca.general,co.general,nyc.general,chi.general,houston.general,talk.politics.usa x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; Linux 2.0.0 i486)