The New York Amsterdam News ran an article attacking FAIR’s report on the chronic water shortages emerging across the United States. The headline was “FAIR’s Extreme Madness.” Our insanity, in the view of Felicia Persaud who penned the article, is that we brought attention to the reality that U.S. population growth driven by mass immigration has negated the tremendous gains in water conservation made over the last thirty years. Ms. Persaud seems to think that since “immigrants have made a significant contribution economically to the United States” that limits don’t matter and that environmental considerations concern only the lunatic fringe.
There is an ongoing and lively debate about how “significant” the economic contributions of immigrants are, but that is beside the point. We cannot continue to grow by almost three million people every year, overwhelmingly due to immigration, and not run up against the limits of our national resources. We have long passed the point where we are using water faster than it can be replenished naturally. The key now is to not reach the point of no return, where a supply of clean water is something that can not be made available to all Americans.
Take New York City, for example, where the average age of city water pipes is 76 years and raw sewage is regularly released into surrounding waterways. Where are the billions of dollars going to come from to repair the city’s water and sewer infrastructure? I doubt Mayor Bloomberg’s soda tax is going to cover it. Ms. Persaud’s article perfectly illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the ever-more-immigration crowd. FAIR asks questions about how this will affect America’s future. Ms. Persaud labels any discussion of population growth “laughable.” Wherein doth the madness lie?
FAIR was unsurprisingly not contacted for comment before the article was published, but you may do so on the paper’s website.