The U.S. Dept. of State should issue special "Agricultural Intern" entry visas to famine victims

Reducing the deaths due to famine in Sub-Saharan Africa is truly a noble goal, one worthy of such intellectual and humanitarian greats as Jimmy Carter, George Soros, or Theodore Roosevelt. Assuredly, were a practical method to be suggested, good men of all classes and ideologies would do their their part to alleviate the tragedy. So it is not out of a lack of concern that I oppose my worthy opponent's plan today; indeed, I share his burden completely. It is only the sheer impracticality of his plan that causes my objection. Against his proposal: US farmers already hire 1-3 million migrant workers each year, mostly from Mexico, to provide the unskilled low-cost field labor. [1] This market seems to be full; projections for agricultural labor show that job market growing slower than the national average. [2] Were this extremely low-cost labor to become available, the only reasonable expectation is that the new agricultural interns (hereafter known as AI's) will displace the currently employed migrant laborers; with the market already full, no significant increase in the number of openings can be projected. Sub-Saharan Africa has an estimated population of 906 million. [3] In order to make any real affect on the famine situation through my opponent's plan, the vast majority of these people must be evacuated to the US under AI visas. Anything less will not prevent the death of many millions due to the famine, and would merely put off the day of reckoning for a generation, at best. Not only is this three times the current population of the United States, bringing with it the derivative problems of feeding and housing such an enormous number of new arrivals, but it is 300 times the maximum number of agricultural jobs they can possibly fill. These new immigrants would be stuck here jobless and without any knowledge of English, in the middle of one of the most severe recessions in decades. Welfare cannot stretch to accommodate that many new arrivals, and no private company will pay to feed and house hundreds of millions of unskilled workers without some return. Lacking jobs to give them, there can be no return on such an investment. Instead of preventing them from dying of famine, then, opponent's plan takes them off their farms (where they have at least a chance of supporting themselves) and turns them loose to die here of starvation. My opponent my suggest that it is only his intention to bring over a few hundred thousand, just enough for the work we have here, and not enough to swamp us. This would do virtually nothing for the Africans, as they would replace that number in just a few years. All my opponent's plan would do is provide cheap labor for a few western farmers, displacing the current migrant workers (who face famine in their home countries too, I might add) and keep a few hundred thousand people from possibly perishing by famine. It would do nothing to alleviate the current conditions in Sub - Saharan Africa, where the population is expected to grow to one billion (1,000,000,000) this year. [3] My modest proposal: One of the major causes of famine is corrupt or inept government, as attested in the Encyclopedia of Public Health: "Underlying causes, however, almost always involve misguided or deliberate public policy, repressive political systems, or natural or human-caused disaster." [4] The Sub -Saharan governments are relatively weak, however; supported by tiny, poorly quipped armies, [5] they would be relatively simple to topple and replace with US territorial governments. Assuming we leave Nigeria alone, our casualties should be improportionately small for the sheer area of land we could conquer; and once they are under our rule, we can enforce honest government and rational agricultural policies to stop the famine. These newly invigorated nations would then serve as new markets for our products, new allies in the southern hemisphere, and a source of stability for the region. Their exports can help bring the rest of Africa out of famine without our resorting to further conquest. In other words, we can save hundreds of millions of lives by conquering Sub -Saharan Africa. That would be a just war, indeed. Conclusion: Although the cause is worthy, my opponent's plan of evacuating people simply wouldn't work. My plan to change the governments would be much simpler and more effective in reducing the death toll from the African famine. I negate the resolution, and return the debate to my opponent. Good luck! Sources: [1] http://www.extension.org... [2] http://www.enotes.com... (end of first paragraph) [3] http://www.unfpa.org... [4] http://www.enotes.com... [5] http://www.strategypage.com...