“The system is full and we can’t take you anymore…Our country is full, so turn around, and go home. That’s the way it is.’
But is it full? NOT SO!!When was the last time you traveled from New York to California, by train or by car and must have remarked the emptiness of our country?
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The nation’s most populous city, of course, is Trump’s hometown of New York, with 8.5 million residents and a population density of 28,000 people per square mile. Life in the Big Apple may not be for everyone, but countless Americans wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else. Suppose, says Abbamonte, that all Americans lived at the same population density that New Yorkers do. He did the math: At 28,000 people per square mile, the nation’s entire population would “fit comfortably in the combined area of Delaware and Maryland.” At the even greater population density of Manhattan alone — 72,000 people per square mile — “the entire population of the United States, Puerto Rico, and other US territories could reside in the tiny State of Connecticut….Too many people? In many parts of this country, the problem is exactly the opposite. Population growth in the United States is at its lowest level since the 1930s, … America isn’t overloaded with too many people; if anything, it needs a lot more of them.
The overpopulation bugaboo is a superstition. [One more of Trump’s lies.] More Americans will mean more growth, more wealth, more power, more innovation, more influence. The way to make America great again is not to turn newcomers away, but to welcome them with open arms and no resentment. For if there’s one thing America has, it is plenty of room.”
Wasn’t it Angela Merkel who wanted to open Germany’s doors to more than a million refugees, thereby defining her legacy, a landmark moment in her career. Would that there were among our own leaders just one with that kind of humanity and courage. Instead we have a slew, most of them Republicans, of self-seeking and servile flatterers of Donald Trump.
Jeff is not at alone in his analysis and recommendations. Neil Irwin and Emily Badger say much the same thing in an article from the NYTimes:
Trump Says the U.S. Is ‘Full.’ Much of the Nation Has the Opposite Problem. An aging population and a declining birthrate among our own native-born population mean a shrinking work force alone….”
Now the people we need are right here, at the Southern border, coming here by the thousands (that which frightens the white supremacist Donald Trump and his whisperer, Stephen Miller). They’re coming to us for asylum having fled for excellent reasons the lawless countries of the Northern Triangle, Hondurus, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
They say they want to come in. That they want to join us. We ought to be opening our borders and welcoming them to our country. We’ve got plenty of room for their thousands and more.
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