Dearth of Babies

There are jobs for anyone who wants to work here in Maine but nearly every small contractor and small business person I hear from tells me they cannot find enough help. It’s true in western Maine and in the Portland area as well. South Portland’s famous Scratch Bakery recently opened a branch facility in a converted gas station down the street from our South Portland home. Called "The Toast Bar," it was packed with customers. Then, suddenly, it closed.

Why? The Portland Press Herald reported last month that the new bakery couldn’t get enough people to work there. Further out in Cape Elizabeth, a recently-built restaurant called the Bird Dog Roadhouse shut its doors for the same reason. My wife and I drove by and noticed the empty parking lot as well as a sign on the door saying:

Due to an acute ongoing staffing shortage, we’ve reluctantly hit the “pause button” here at BDR. We are not closing. We have a beautiful restaurant, a wonderful location, and fantastic guests. Our business is sound. All of our employees and vendors are paid. We are simply pausing restaurant service operations until proper staffing levels can be achieved…

The economy is booming and wages are rising, so what’s going on? Lots of things; for one, people just aren’t having babies like they used to. Last Saturday, Forbes reported CDC data showing fertility rates in the USA at a record low for 2018. Just to keep the population stable, each woman must have 2.1 children in her lifetime. In the US, however, that rate has declined to just over 1.7 and is still going down. It’s the lowest since the 1970s when Roe V Wade was enacted and abortion skyrocketed. Their headline read: “Another Record Low: Will The U.S. Fertility Rate’s Collapse Ever End?”

Not unless and until marriage rates increase, according to economist and researcher Lyman Stone. His 2018 research study called: “No Ring, No Baby: How Marriage Trends Impact Fertility” makes a solid case that married women of child-bearing age have by far the most children, but fewer and fewer young women are getting married. He cites several possible reasons including student loan debt, but also that women now are generally more educated than men, making it harder for them to find compatible mates.

The biggest factor, Stone hints, is: “Changing cultural norms and values about sex, family, and religion may have reduced the value of the marriage proposition and tightened the criteria for ‘eligibility’ for marriage.” Is he saying that young people today lack the values of their parents and grandparents? Not explicitly, but he hints strongly at it. Unless you live in a cloistered religious community and never watch television, you'll see the evidence. I’ve written several times on this subject (a sampling here) and I’m not hopeful that the trend will reverse anytime soon.

If I’m right, it would seem that the only way to avoid economic decline would be to increase immigration. It has been increasing, but most of the unskilled, nearly-illiterate, illegal variety, or of “asylum-seeking” Africans, most non-English-speaking, coming over our southern border. Unable to support themselves, they tend to be more of an economic drain than a boost. If we simply returned to pre-1965 immigration policies that required immigrants to be sponsored and ineligible for social services, and then we eliminated chain migration for relatives who were not self-supporting, our country would be much better served.

As it stands now, every 2020 Democrat running for president is pro-abortion. The last pro-life Democrat candidate was Jimmy Carter in 1976. For more than forty years now, preserving Roe V Wade seems to be the most important issue for the Democrat party. Since the Roe V Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, there have been more than a million abortions every year in the United States. That’s about 50 million Americans who were never born. If they had been allowed to live they would have had at least another 50 million children of their own. Even if Roe V Wade were repealed by Trump-appointed judges, the legality of abortion would simply revert back to the states and not be likely to decline very much.

Although most would deny it, open borders is now the Democrat’s second most important issue. Every 2020 Democrat presidential candidate claims getting rid of President Trump is their biggest goal, but then what have Trump’s priorities been? Appointing conservative (pro-life) judges and stopping illegal immigration are highest on his agenda. That’s what got him elected and if present trends continue, those issues may well propel him into another term.

Do Democrats Want Open Borders?

Our government is divided over border control and so is our country. At least a thousand people a day are apprehended at the Mexican border. Some days it’s more than three thousand. More than twenty million people live here illegally. Some claim it’s double that. Most Democrats and not a few Republicans would make them all legal if they could. Conservatives accuse them of wanting open borders. They vehemently deny that but then advocated allowing the recent caravan of “asylum seekers” from Central America (and elsewhere) to enter and await court hearings on individual cases which take years to process.

Citing a Gallup poll, The Washington Examiner claimed last month that 158 million people worldwide want to come to the United States. Democrats criticize President Trump for being too restrictive of illegal immigration, asylum seekers, refugees, and the rest but when asked how many of the millions who want to enter America should be allowed in, they dodge the question. Meanwhile, they continue to advocate for whatever migrant group is dominating the news cycle and call anyone who would seal the border “racist” and “xenophobic.”

Ellison is Vice Chairman of the Democrat Party

So, what can we conclude? That they’re against any limits? It would seem so, but for Democrats to state that openly would be political suicide. While claiming to support border security, they defend sanctuary cities and sanctuary states that harbor illegal immigrants including criminals. They want to abolish ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls a proposed border wall “immoral.” Many Americans consider support for these contradictory positions incongruous, disingenuous, and deceptive.

Portland, Maine homeless shelters are full of African “asylum seekers” who came over the Mexican border and made a beeline for Maine. The Portland Press Herald blames President Trump in a Sunday editorial last week, but should perhaps blame itself. In story after story, the paper has been extolling the “benefits” of people coming to Portland from all over the world, legally and illegally, for years. Benefits for migrants of all kinds are obvious: cash, food, housing, medical care, education, and so on.

Why are they coming to Maine? A previous PPH article states: “because the city and state are among the few that offer shelter and financial assistance to the immigrants while their asylum cases are being processed.” Mainers who pay for this chafe while the Press Herald lectures them about the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism. In the paper’s online edition, comments are disabled for most of the stories because whenever they’re enabled, hundreds of Mainers voice their frustration.

Open-borders activists calling themselves “advocates” have spread the word around the world: You don’t have to cross a desert and hop a fence or wade the Rio Grande to sneak into the United States anymore, although many still do that. If you can make it to the US/Mexican border, just say the magic words: “I need asylum” and border guards will let you in, then send you anywhere in the country you want to go, including Maine. “About three or four families from African countries such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo arrive at Portland’s Family Shelter each week after crossing the southern U.S. border, according to David MacLean, the city’s social services director,” in the Press Herald two weeks ago. MacLean is evidently in touch with “advocates” in Texas who send them north.

Much of liberal media portray legal and illegal migrants as oppressed, impoverished, desperate, starving, or otherwise deserving of taxpayer assistance. Many conservative outlets point out criminal and terrorist elements masquerading as refugees and playing on America’s heartstrings. A similar media duality exists across Europe and the result is political turmoil on both continents.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans watch reports of healthy-looking, fairly well-dressed crowds of people who don’t look desperate at all. They’re not starving; many are overweight and carry cell phones. Are the millions coming northward on both sides of the Atlantic really “refugees” and “asylum seekers?” Some probably are. Most probably aren’t. They’re simply seeking better jobs and welfare benefits.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans have been watching all this for years. In 2010, I flew down to our Mexican border to see for myself. After observing the chaos on our side of the fence for five days and talking to border patrol guards, I came away convinced that we need much stronger border security than the flimsy bits of wall that any reasonably fit person could easily scale. I wrote about all that here and here.

More recently I’ve watched video of Africans in overloaded boats heading to Italy and Spain and wasn’t surprised when Italians elected a government promising to turn those boats back. Last spring I spent a few days in Barcelona and visited ports in Italy and France. At every port, I saw hundreds of African men aggressively hawking cheap trinkets to tourists all day long. The same was true at the inland city of Florence, Italy. They were everywhere.

Immigration will likely remain the most divisive issue in the western world through 2019.