There has been such an onslaught of bad news and immoral behavior from the current administration and covering such a range of subjects that it is hard to go deeply into any one of them. This relentless dumping of bad deeds has been a conscious strategy on the part of the MAGA government.
One of the topics not discussed enough has to do with the ICE deportations, setting up of concentration camps, and giving $45 billion in the new budget to expand ICE’s goals. The majority of the people rounded up in the US (60%) have absolutely no criminal record whatsoever.
Let us take into account what one writer has called “America’s great people shortage” resulting from the US birth rate continuing to diminish. “Colleges, companies, and cities are scrambling to bridge the gap,” and the “US Economy will get walloped by” population decrease, writes Kelli Maria Korducki in Business Insider.* “America is about to tumble off the edge of a massive demographic cliff,” she warns.
The US birth rate peaked in 2007 at 4.3 million babies born that year. It has dropped every year since. By 2024 the rate was down to 3.6 million. The 2007 babies are now turning 18 and are ready to start college or enter the workforce, but “the whole of America’s economy” is going to feel the reality of plunging birth rates. “Every year from here on out—at least for the foreseeable future—colleges will face” a smaller pool of prospective students. Companies will too when it comes to potential workers. Many colleges will close.
Worker shortages are already rising in health and agriculture. A deficit of 6 million workers will face us in 2032. This means fewer people paying into Social Security at the same time the number of retirees increases. So this affects everyone.
Population decline is not an American problem alone, especially in high-income countries. But even in India and other lower income societies, the trend is underway. Japan and South Korea are far worse off than the US.
Here is where I want to insert the reality of a price we are paying for increased rounding-up and deporting of immigrants. We can argue the immorality of these roundups, and it is true that many people who have immigrated to America have done so to escape persecution, climate change, and joblessness at home.
But what is common to many immigrants—and this is not being taken into account enough—is that they are young and of child-bearing age. Not only do they do jobs in America that others don’t want to do, such as agricultural jobs and jobs in service industries, but also they can bolster the national birth rate.
Yet our government is madly rounding them up and deporting them at record rates, and putting billions of dollars into detention facilities preparing to deport them. One gift they bring to America—among many gifts—is their willingness to bring more children into the world.
Wouldn’t that be a win-win for everyone? Are Americans shooting ourselves in the foot by deporting these people who have had the gumption and the grit to find their way to America? While welcoming them in a legal and organized fashion is to everyone’s benefit?
There is a price to pay for racism and scapegoating and denying hospitality. There is much to be gained by welcoming an essentially younger population. Everyone will benefit—from older Americans on Social Security to younger and newer citizens who can fulfill their dreams in a new land. Like so many immigrants of old did.
* Kelli Maria Korducki, “America’s Great People Shortage,” Business Insider, August 21, 2025.
See Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the World.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion.
And Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Protesting ICE and deportation raids in Chicago, 2019. Photo by Charles Edward Miller. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see the arrival of new and younger immigrants to America as a plus for the country as well as for them? If so, isn’t it time that we beefed up the judicial process at the border so that it was more efficient at weeding out bad players but also welcoming the new ones eager to raise families in the US?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
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8 thoughts on “America’s People-Shortage vs. ICE Deportation Mania”
The wind goes where it will, the winds are sacred, breath of life. The wind can help us, yet someone is “against “ the wind! Defying Nature herself.
St Michael the Archangel pray for us.
“Are Americans shooting ourselves in the foot . . .?”
So much so since the end of WWII (worldwide imperialism, political sabotage in South America, wars in the Far- and the Middle East, etc.) that even a centipede would have no feet left to speak of.
Political laxity and electoral complacency having now elected a headless and heartless government, it takes a great deal of delusion for the current administration to pretend making America great again. What is needed is nothing short of a pandemic of ethical resurrections, precisely the kind of spiritual fire that is fed by these daily meditations. However, the drench of materialism makes the likelihood of that kind of fire pretty low. Yet, let’s keep blowing on the embers . . .
YES! YES! It’s so sad for all humanitarian Americans to hear in our daily news about the round up, break up, and deportation of many immigrant families who have lived and worked peacefully for many years contributing to the wealth of our country in many ways. This authoritarian administration and its MAGA followers are so morally inhumane and ignorant of the history of America being that all our ancestors have been immigrants from other countries searching for a more just and peaceful way of life for our families. We should also be aware that our history has also been a tragic and violent one, up to the present day of being racist, greedy, and militaristic, towards the original Native Americans and later to the forced immigration of slaves from Africa to meet the greedy materialistic needs of our ‘American’ white ancestors. Mercifully, Faithfully, Justly we should all be humbled by this sad history of our ancestors on our personal and communal spiritual journeys and Human evolution, with one another and Sacred Mother Earth/Her living creatures/and graceful abundance to be shared with All…
Oh Matthew, That just makes so much sense and would make things better for so many. Common sense and making things better for all is just not a feature of the present regime. I am going to try to do my part today to combat selfishness, greed and apathy, enemies of all of us. This is my small start.
As always, today’s meditation re birth rates is spot on. I can’t help but say the obvious: it is precisely because these babies are not “white” that maga is getting rid of their parents.
I reflect here on the great purge of both Jews & Muslims from Spain in 1492. Afterwards, that country’s economy & therefore standard of living plunged. With these populations expunged, an enormous brain drain occurred; medical, scientific, agricultural engineering skills went with them.
Yes, shooting ourselves in the foot – if not a couple legs – is happening now in front of our eyes in the USA.
We could all learn from Mary Oliver’s poem “MAKING THE HOUSE READY FOR THE LORD.”
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice — it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances — but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.
As for population decline, I cannot see that as a bad thing. Our planet cannot support the number of people it has. Fewer babies being born worldwide seems to me a good thing.
I agree. Decades ago, there was a lot of concern about over population and all its societal and cultural consequences. Thanks for the beautiful poem. I think that we need to get beyond bewailing the current horrors, which clearly will continue unless there is a miracle–very unlikely. A black friend said recently that what we need is a new underground railroad to protect all those being oppressed and targeted with hate–she is extremely concerned for herself and her family as well as she has always been very active in the party that is not in the majority. We also need to strengthen our own faith and courage so that we can be of use to our neighbors, in whatever shape or form. There is no reasoning with the cult and its leader, and it will lead to destruction ultimately both to them and to us. Facts mean nothing, and the only thing real is their agenda.
What we are witnessing is ethnic cleansing. Make no mistake about this. They are blatant in actions and words The last thing they want is increasing this population.
500!! Children hidden and the attempt to deport them under the cover of darkness. In planes ready to go before they were stopped. For now.
Now Supreme Court just green lighted racial profiling for ICE.
‘ giving $45 billion in the new budget to expand ICE’s goals.’
Where is this money going?
Boston has just been targeted. My state rep informed us the money is being filtered in via the correctional institutions.
More greedy hands.
Mother of God Pray for us. 🙏