[NOTE by S. Hurlbert: In February 2008, Priscilla Huang, Policy and Programs Director for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, published a blog attacking the U.S. population stabilization movement titled, “Uncovering the Nativism of Population Politics.” It contained the usual cant, misinformation, and slander typical of the genre. Diana Hull, then president of Californians for Population Stabilization, responded with the piece below. She apparently placed it as an online comment on Huang’s blog, although the comment is no longer there. A colleague then copied Diana’s response to some of us. Originally untitled, we have given it a title suggested by Diana’s opening paragraph. Diana died on October 1, 2017. It is refreshing to still benefit from another example of her pungent and brilliant thinking and writing. Only minor edits have been made to the original.]

I say “Ho Hum” to the boredom of worn out pejoratives, like “nativist,” “racist,” and “xenophobic” and all gratuitous and basically meaningless slurs on the character of others whom the writer doesn’t know. Insults are not arguments and name-calling is an activity engaged in by three-year-olds in a sandbox, absent instruction in manners by supervising adults.

Ms. Huang, slandering your opponents is not a good option, only the last resort for those who have lost the case for open borders on its merits. So I implore you to stop telling the immigration reductionists why we think the way we do. You can’t read our minds and motives and moreover your statements are rude and presumptuous.

Of course it is also galling that America, the nation that takes in, and has accepted in the past, more immigrants than the rest of the world combined and today has the fastest population growth rate of any country save India and China, is finally agreeing, in a massive grassroots effort, that yes, we have done quite a bit of “welcoming the world,” but maybe now we should stop for a while. Perhaps indefinitely. That, Ms. Huang, is our decision to make, all of us, not just yours and that of the mass-immigration-promotion industry. And all of us get to decide about whom to admit and how many. Self-selection by border-jumping, visa-overstaying, and family/clan chain immigration must and will end. And those decisions about policy cannot be made in Mexico, India, or China, but right here in our own community, state, and nation.

Since about six billion people in the world’s high poverty areas could improve their lives by coming to the United States, how many of them should we take? How absurd it is to call that common sense question “zealotry”! No matter what our country has done in the past, further growth and overcrowding cannot go on forever. There are eras of plenty and a time for limits, and we are now, and properly so, in the process of reappraising such outdated ideas as endless growth and unending resources. This is a time for a “must change” imperative because the time it takes the world’s human population to increase by another billion people keeps getting shorter and shorter. If you are even moderately numerate, this kind of information will make your head spin. Time is running out to reverse the momentum and jettison no-longer-viable population growth policies.

Be assured that the population-reduction community will continue its advocacy of a drastic slowing of immigration in the interests of all prior immigrants and for the benefit of the citizen population. We are going to slow it down to keep our population in balance with available resources and in order to leave something of value for our descendants. Yes, the citizens of this country will continue to advance those ideas and will not be deterred by irresponsible attempts to malign the character of those who deliver this message.

Illegal immigrants are simply one part of the problem, but they’re also an arrogant challenge to our rights and disrespectful of the nation’s long-time generosity. The decision about who can enter is clearly ours to make and cannot be decided solely by exploiters of cheap labor, ethnic pressure groups, foreign governments, criminal drug syndicates, and human smugglers.

So the population stabilization movement will continue to arrive at its own informed decisions and will never be intimidated by indiscriminate name calling by unscrupulous critics who refuse to argue the issue of how many people is just too many. Please understand that we will be undeterred by reprehensible attempts at character assassination that have been shamefully pursued by an opposition without any credible arguments.

And please desist in the parroting of politically correct phrases like “social justice,” an ineffective argument with the historically literate who associate that concept more with the cruelty of the guillotine and the gulag, with its millions of dead Russians, rather than with any kind of societal benevolence.

But most of all, Ms. Huang, please stop claiming to be a reader of minds and other people’s motives and touting your ability to know our thoughts and discern our characters. You are entirely ignorant of our backgrounds, what we have accomplished in our lives, and our contributions to the welfare of our communities and country. My opinion of your comments is that you are mistaken in your views, long on insults, and short on insight. In the vernacular, you are simply “out to lunch” on the overimmigration/overpopulation connection and the disastrous effects this will have on your country and mine.

Nevertheless, I would never be as arrogant and presumptuous as to malign your motives. I am convinced your ideas are very wrong, but that doesn’t mean you are a despicable person with a hidden agenda. So before continuing your destructive approach to understanding differences with immigration reductionists, remember that gratuitous slander, not patriotism, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

To the reader of this reply to Priscilla Huang, what you are hearing from her is just one tiny branch of the national slander machine aimed at the heart of the immigration-reduction community. That machine is supported by the leftist Ford Foundation, which alone has assets of about 12 billion dollars, and there are numerous other major nonprofits connected with Ford in this effort. Other hotbeds of opposition to the immigration-reduction position are the multiple branches of the cheap-labor lobby, from big agriculture to the building-trades consortium to the high-tech sector, whose Bill Gates is one of the richest and most vociferous objectors to limits on immigration.

All of these groups, with virtually unlimited assets, are a willing and ready source of financing for those who march in the street, claiming Americans have no right to set policy in these matters because the nation rightfully belongs to them, not to us. If we don’t like it, they tell us, “go back to Plymouth Rock.” This attitude is the height of over-reaching, an outrageously ungrateful nerviness that clearly defies belief.

But the saddest spectacle of all is to realize the near universal acquiescence and collaboration of population specialists in the academic community, who claim to agree with the theory of inevitable and unstoppable U.S. growth. Yet we also know they have every right to be terrified of having ruined reputations and thwarted promotions as a result of being labeled racists or nativists. As a consequence, they seek refuge in issues of global overpopulation, rather than getting involved in this issue at home, where they have a much better chance for success.

And what will the penalty be for acquiescing to this intimidation? California will have 60 million people by 2060, and the nation will have a billion by the end of this century. Virtually all of that growth is the result of immigration and births to immigrants. Cowardice has a price. So has venality. Think about it. ■