Jim Catano [“Too Fruitful,” Sept. 30, City Weekly] makes the old Leftist argument about too many people (the enlightened don’t have babies—just the poor and brown people) and the Right just doesn’t like their language, culture and “way of life” threatened by all those brown people. Both points of view are simplistic and wrong.
My question to Mr. Catano: At what point in U.S. history should we have stopped immigration? With the Italians and other southern Europeans? Those are the groups who provoked strict quotas and the requirement to have a visa prior to landing in the USA.
His argument that immigration lets poorer countries off the hook is equally dubious. To date in world history, I can only think of two countries who have not “sent out,” at some point, large numbers of their citizens. Those would be the USA and Australia. I used to think Canada was in that category, too, but didn’t realize that over 2 million French Canadians poured over the border to the Northeast in the late 1800s.
And, does Mr. Catano, although a good Leftist, really believe that a person’s freedom of mobility should be limited? Last I checked, that is a basic human right and one of the first to be suppressed under totalitarian regimes.
My advice is for him to think a bit more about this issue before he decides to limit immigration to his very narrow categories.
Jeff Allred
Salt Lake City
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