World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

As the US begins what is certain to be a very contentious immigration and refugee debate, the Pew Research Center has compiled a fact sheet on the variety of programs to be discussed and the number of people who will ultimately be affected.  Immigration has always been a difficult issue for Americans despite the clear fact that the US is in fact a “nation of immigrants”.  But the surge of nationalist and anti-global sentiment in the world will make the upcoming debate unusually political.  As the debate unfolds in Congress and the media, it is important to rely on solid information.  Most specifically, we should all remember that there is no statistical correlation between immigration and crime or terrorism.

National Geographic has published an article on how some of the world’s most important lakes are drying up.  The significance of these changes, attributable to climate change to as a yet unknown degree, has been dramatic, although not well-publicized since the process of drying up is viewed as “natural”.

“In sheer numbers those fleeing “natural” calamities have outnumbered those fleeing war and conflict for decades. Still, these figures do not include people forced to abandon their homelands because of drought or gradual environmental degradation; almost two and a half billion people live in areas where human demand for water exceeds the supply. Globally the likelihood of being uprooted from one’s home has increased 60 percent compared with 40 years ago because of the combination of rapid climate change and growing populations moving into more vulnerable areas.”

Cape Town, South Africa, is a city of over 3 million people and it is on the brink of running out of water.  But Cape Town is only the first of the world’s major cities to face such a crisis.  São Paulo, Brazil, Bangalore, India, Beijing, China, Mexico City, Cairo, Egypt, and Jakarta, Indonesia are also highly likely to suffer serious water issues in the near future.

US President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto apparently had a very difficult telephone conversation which ended with the Mexican President cancelling his planned visit to Washington, DC.  There are serious trade issues being discussed between the two countries, but the main reason for the contention was President Trump’s insistence that he would not publicly affirm “Mexico’s repeated assertion that it will not pay for the construction of the wall.”  Despite Trump’s repeated assertions during the Presidential campaign of 2016 that Mexico would pay for the construction of the wall, Mexico has always held that it would not pay for the construction of a wall that Mexico considers to be insulting and racist.  It is very difficult to understand why such an unrealistic expectation would be allowed to jeopardize one of the most important relationships to the US society and economy.