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What Do Immigrants Want to Come Here For?

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William P. Homans
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I can not overstate the overwhelming importance of North America's geographical isolation from the rest of the planetary land above water. Today, rather than America being the land of opportunity to grow (and hustle), it is the place where your odds of physical survival are best.

Every day you spend in America is a better day than you spend under Saudi-dropped, American-supplied bombs in San'a, or caught in a crossfire in, say, Duterte's Philippines. Or digging out from an earthquake or hurricane in Haiti.

Here's something those who want to shut off immigration to the United States might want to think about. There have been over 40 earthquakes of 5.7 magnitude or higher on or adjacent to the island chain of Japan in the last 47 years (the study went back to 1970) each of which took at least one life.

The last major Japanese earthquake was the quake and tsunami which overwhelmed the Fukushima Daichi nuclear facility in northern Honshu. It was a 9.0, the strongest recorded in my lifetime, I believe.

That seismogeological event left that nuclear facility damaged and radioactive to the point that it can not be physically approached. It's just sitting there, a cracked egg, waiting to be completely shattered by the next major quake to hit northern Honshu.

What will America say to the hundreds of thousands, or millions, of Japanese who will flee to us when Japan is rendered unsuitable for life?

The idea that Japan-- and specifically TEPCO, the utility responsible-- has made that event rather more likely be catastrophic by refusing to allow the international community to join in immediate clean-up and rehab of the Fukushima Daichi site is another story, of course. Conservatives will, of course, make the argument that such international action would (have) compromised the sovereignty of the nation of Japan.

Besides that, to overrule TEPCO in such a case would have established a precedent that in the most extreme circumstances, private corporational sovereignty must be overruled. Conservatives would likely argue against that abridgment of the rights of capitalist corporations.

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William P. Homans Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

My name is William Perkins Homans the third, but probably more people know me as the bluesman (and artist) Watermelon Slim.

I've been in the fight against war, fascism, injustice and inhumanity for 47 years. I was at MayDay, 1971, (more...)
 

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