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Quote by Gaylord Nelson

“The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become... We have to address the population issue. The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it's phony to say 'I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration.'”

Quote by Gaylord Nelson

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Gaylord Nelson
Gaylord Nelson

Former United States Senator and environmental activist, Gaylord Nelson was born on June 4, 1916, and passed away on July 3, 2005. During his tenure, he advocated for several environmental laws and founded Earth Day. more

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“As far as I know, most organizations are avoiding population issues because they're politically frightened by the charge that comes from some proponents of immigration that if you oppose the immigration policy we have now, you're a racist.. There is no way in the world we can forge a sustainable society without stabilizing the population. ... There's no practical way of stabilizing the population of the U.S. without reducing the immigration rate. When do we decide we have to do something, or do we wait until things are as bad here as they are in the countries people want to leave?”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldWayWantCountryWaitingIssuesPolicyOrganizationRatePopulationPracticalsImmigrationRacistFrightenedAvoidingReducingImmigration Policy
Author:Gaylord Nelson
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“All nations are degrading and consuming their environment to a point beyond capacity. In the past 15 years in the U.S. we have added 1300 cities with populations over 100,000. When the environment is forced to file Chapter 11, the ecology collapses. Nations recover from war but not from a failed eco-system. The status of our environment is more threatening than all wars. It is forever.”

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Author:Gaylord Nelson
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“One thing that's really interesting is not only the magnitude of the recent immigration into this country, but also its distribution and its investment in the country. About 9.3 percent of the population is now foreign-born [announced by the Census Bureau at over 10 percent a few days later]. What's really surprising is how well distributed those population groups are. Historically, we see new immigrants primarily on the coast and in a few big cities. I think the data are going to show a much wider distribution of the new population groups than we've experienced historically.”

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Author:Kenneth Prewitt
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“I've always said that the 1986 [Immigration Reform and Control] Act had a fourth leg [in addition to law enforcement, increased immigration and amnesty] to its stool which was wishful thinking. And that pattern of a four-legged stool was copied in the failed attempts to enact a second and bigger general amnesty for illegal aliens in 2006, 2007, and in the current year 2013.”

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“I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water... has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.”

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“Some think that even the ancients who lived long before the present generation, and first framed accounts of the Gods, had a similar view of nature; for they made the Oceanus and Tethys the parents of creation, and described the oath of the Gods as being by water, to which they give the name of Styx; for what is oldest is most honourable, and the most honourable thing is that by which one swears”

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Author:Mary Hunter Austin
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