
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 19, 1993                   TAG: 9309040343
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MIGRATIONS

A RECENT State of the World Population report, released by the United Nations, warns that pressures created by huge waves of migrations could become ``the human crisis of our age.''

But the crisis is already here. In Yugoslavia, in Germany, in Africa, in the United States. All over the world.

r= As they have for centuries, desperate people are trying to reach richer countries or big cities, in hopes of improving their lives. There is nothing new in this: America was built this way.

What's different, now, is that the vast frontiers which once beckoned energetic immigrants are disappearing, and so is the world's capacity to support more humans.

Every three years, enough people are added to the Earth to equal the U.S. population, and the vast majority are born in nations least able to provide adequate shelter, food, health care, education or the means to make a living.

The pressures pushing the swelling tide of migrations will only increase, and the world is simply unprepared to handle it.

This is not a crisis of some long-distant future age. It is a crisis of this age. It grows bigger by the day.

by CNB