Ruminations of an Expatriate

Travel Reports and Iconoflatulence
Strive For The Ideal, But Deal With What's Real
Jump to Comments

Monday, January 14th, 2008...10:36 am


Immigration

One of the chief factors motivating the immigration of folks from less economically developed countries to more developed nations,  conveniently ignored by the  anti-immigrant crowd, such as the ever frothing Lou Dobbs, is “first world” economic predation.

The From Xico blog reminds us that USA taxpayer agricultural subsidies to agricultural conglomerates enable them to undersell indigenous subsistence farmers in their home lands, thus driving them off their land in search of other sources of income.  Many move to cities in their home country’s, others immigrate in response to market demands for labor in other lands.

Then there is this International Herald Tribune article reporting on the  scouring, by a “vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere…”,  of traditional African fishing grounds, upon which locals have relied for their subsistence.  With the fish gone, there has been an increase in African immigration to Europe.

The “mean rapacity”, as Adam Smith put it, of the practitioners of  unrestrained capitalism leaves no room for concern with the plight of the victims of those practices, nor for the sustainability of such practices.

Leave a Reply