Problems of immigration are rooted in overpopulation

Pope Francis is gone now, moved on from his brief but touching visit to the Mexican border, where he said Mass for two nations: Mexico and the United States. Many hearts continue to beat anew with his modern-age papal messages, but one of those messages also continues to disturb many who ardently love this pope.

This message was, of course, the pontiff's claim that the Republican front-runner for president, The Donald, was "not Christian" in his stand on limiting immigration, especially in his much-touted plan to build a large wall to control America's borders by keeping others out.

"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian," Pope Francis stated clearly (no second thoughts there!) during a news conference on his flight back to Rome. "We must see if he said things in that way, and in this I give the benefit of the doubt."

Donald Trump stopped running for a moment to note that he was NOT amused, noting that, "For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful!" The candidate, a major player in the never-hold-back-when-you-can-insult-someone-and-win game, couldn't leave it at that; he went on to suggest that the pope had been "manipulated" by the Mexican government, whatever that means.

But the real story lies somewhere else and now can be told:

If the pope were serious about fences and Christianity, for instance, he would have to excommunicate half the Republican Party; overthrow the governments of Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary and others in the European Union; give all heck to non-Christians like the Israelis, who have constructed an enormous wall against the Palestinians; and Arabs who are building walls against ISIS and others of the world's many unwanteds.

In fact, His Eminence, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, would have to think again about his longtime sympathy for all and any immigrants, anywhere, anyplace, any why. Today, 244 million men and women - 3.3 percent of the world's population - are living outside their country of origin or, in plainer parlance, living as stateless persons.

One of the greatest questions of our era - and one that will haunt our world far into the misty future - is what to do with these people.

On one side is the pope's answer: unquestioned acceptance into one's society and human family, regardless of what it means for one's own country and culture. On the other side are the realists, the more traditional analysts who believe that it is the nation-state that keeps our world ordered and safe - or did - and that not every human being is as capable as others to keep nation-state democracies healthy and working.

This system is not one freely granted by God. It developed in Europe slowly over time, from a post-Roman Empire era when tribal groups predominated and small duchies and kingdoms vied with one another for power, until 1648. In that year, the famous Peace of Westphalia was agreed to, meaning that the national goals of states and then nation-states became predominant.

This implicitly meant that people made stateless by conflict or choice, or by religious preference or religious persecution, could not be members of an already empowered state except by petitioning the state for membership. That is why we have controlled, legalized immigration.

Yet today, this common-sensical approach to that crucial, yet bewildering, question of who belongs is under attack everywhere - from the southern border of the U.S. to the farthest borders of Europe. And if those borders do not hold, one can foresee a future of chaos and conflict.

For many, perhaps most, of these new refugees are not trying to migrate the traditional, legal way. There are so many of them now that they are, instead, demanding inclusion in the societies of nation-states like Germany, England and Sweden where they have no cultural ties or historical background at all. This was made most devilishly clear last New Year's Eve in Cologne, when more than a thousand immigrants rioted, raping and assaulting women and causing a situation the police said they had "never seen before."

Yet the pope thinks the good people of these cities should simply accept everyone? While, at the same time, still rejecting one crucial partial answer to the tsunamis of human beings overflowing into other countries: birth control?

For in the end, it is overpopulation that is feeding vicious conflicts from Rwanda to Syria, that is underlying environmental disasters and that is pushing the mass movements of people we see daily and which will now multiply with spring coming.

Donald Trump may be a Christian or he may not be, but in the end he, his religion and his "big, tall fence" are surely not the moral or practical solutions of our immigration problems.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

© 2016, Universal