Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Apr 21, 2008, 05:18AM

Immigrants Have More Babies; Western Culture Threatened

Conservative commentator Mark Steyn, visiting Middlebury College, raises the spectre of immigrant hordes eroding our cultural foundation. His solution? Teach 'em our traditional values before they overpopulate us.

"[Steyn] addressed various current issues and trends, including multiculturalism, demographics and the West's decline in cultural confidence. He especially focused on the dropping birthrates in industrialized countries. Most of us are aware of the upward spiral of birthrates worldwide, and the consequent strain on the world's natural resources. What we are less aware of is the equally disturbing downward spiral of the birthrate among many countries in Europe and to a lesser degree in the United States. In Spain, for example, the birthrate has fallen below 1.3 children per couple, the level from which Steyn remarked no civilization has ever been able to recover. The population growth in industrialized countries now comes primarily from immigration. Steyn was not critical of immigration itself. Instead, he directed his criticism at the impulse - which he sees stemming from a fear of offending various proponents of multiculturalism - to bend over backward to respect and leave new immigrants alone, which often results in the total neglect of their integration into liberal democratic society.

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