A world without Women

This is a cautionary tale that mirrors my post from Albert Mohler about father absence in the UK. East Germany has had greater out-migration of women than men since the collapse of the Wall. The cause: women are better educated than men and better able to take advantage of the economic opportunities elsewhere. Yet another unanticipated consequence of Soviet-style feminism.
The result: not only are there now fewer women, there are also fewer chidlren. And the impact on the men who remain behind is scary:

In those regions where the economic problems are largest, a new, male-dominated underclass has developed, the members of which are excluded from participation in large parts of the society," the study finds. "Many of them have no job, no education and no partner. It is exactly these difficult conditions that make it more difficult to slow the negative demographic trend or even to reverse it.The study comes on the heels of a report that right-wing violence rose in Germany in 2006, with many of the neo-Nazi-related incidents occurring in Eastern Germany. Additionally, the neo-Nazi party NPD has seen increasing success at the polls in Eastern German states. In state elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the NPD captured fully 7.3 percent of the vote, meaning that the right wingers now hold seats in three German state parliaments, all of them in former East Germany.

The study recommends a greater focus on educating the region's young men, but admits that solving the problem is a difficult challenge. After all, there is no one to turn to for advice: nowhere in Europe is the disappearance of women as severe as it is in Eastern Germany.

"The lack of women in former East Germany has no equal anywhere in Europe," the study says. "Even Polar regions in northern Sweden and Finland, where young women have for years been leaving in droves, don't come close to the problem in Eastern Germany."

Women don't need men. Women leave. Without the moderating influence of women, and the maturing influence of fatherhood, young men do not grow up. The break-down of the conjugal relationship has far-reaching unintended consequences.

Comment on Immigration

Here is one of my favorite responses to my immigration article:

Thank you for your essay. You have it right. I helped adjudicate applicants for the 1986 amnesty, lived and worked in Latin America many years, have been many times across the border, and speak fluent Spanish. I don't want another amnesty. I just want Washington to enforce our laws. PLEASE!

Winning on Immigration

My latest Townhall article is here. The premise of the article is that the Rule of Law is the winning platform. So, I wrote it, as if I were the winning candidate for president:

My Fellow Americans,

By the time I am sworn in as President, the current Congress will have passed “comprehensive immigration reform, ” because the elites of America have decided that’s what we need. But the ordinary citizens of the United States want and deserve the rule of law. The advocates of reform insist on rushing a debate on a bill so detailed that it requires one thousand pages. At this time, it is not humanly possible to know what immigration law will look like when I take the oath of office as the head of the Executive Branch of these United States. I want you, the citizens of the United States, to know what I intend to do once in office.

Iintend to enforce the immigration law, whatever it turns out to be. Count on it. There will be no more turning a blind eye to infractions by employers, workers, document forgers or criminals. We wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today, if previous Presidents and their executive branches had made serious attempts to enforce the law. The problems would have been exposed and possibly corrected, much sooner. If Congress presents the country with another impossible to enforce immigration code, we shall find it out sooner, rather than later. For I intend to attempt to enforce every bit of it to the maximum extent legally permissible.

I'm getting messages saying, "If you run for President, I'll vote for you."

Calderon Off to a Good Start

New President of Mexico Calderon spent yesterday at the US Mexican border greeting Mexicans returning home for Christmas. His message was two-fold: first, a pledge to create jobs in Mexico:

“The generation of well-paid jobs is the only long-lasting solution to the migration problem,” Calderón said before greeting immigrants in cars packed with Christmas gifts.

Calderón, who took office Dec. 1, pledged to fight corruption to make Mexico more attractive to foreign investors.

“We need to ensure that more investment crosses the border into Mexico rather than Mexican labor heading to the United States,” the new president said.

About 1.2 million Mexicans are expected to come home for the holidays this year.

This has been my message as well. I've stated at an Acton Institute conference for Mexican bishops and in print, many times: there can be no lasting solution to the immigration problem, without doing something to improve the Mexican economy.
The other interesting detail in this article is the scale of the Christmas migration: an estimated 1.2 million people will return to Mexico for Christmas from the US this year. I have been aware of this phenomenon since we lived in Santa Rosa CA, north of San Francisco. Santa Rosa has a substantial agricultural community, part of the Wine Country. My daughter's elementary school was probably 75% Mexican. The place cleared out at Christmas time. The school simply accepted as a fact of life that most of the kids would be gone for a month around Christmas time. Bear in mind, that many of them were making a 12 hour drive to their homelands in Mexico.

This is what I addressed in my National Catholic Register article, Give Us Your Hearts. Many, many Mexicans keep their bodies in America but their hearts in Mexico. It would be better for all of us for them to be able to be integrated: let one place or the other be truly home.

By the way, Calderon's second message was: Merry Christmas! (They're allowed to say that in Mexico!)