Immigration is a controversial subject that many are afraid to talk about due to Of moral concerns. Some immigrants come to another country for a better life and others may be forced to flee due to certain circumstances. Burdick’s use of metaphors helps him to explain uncertain topics such as immigration in an easier way. According to his essay, “the threat of invasive species is perhaps our most urgent economic and conservation challenge Eurasian flower’s] floral path leads straight to hell” (85).
He implied that mmigrants are detrimental to other people’s well being and they force difficult times in the United States economy. Moreover, immigrants bring corruption wherever they go and create a bad environment for natives. Based on Alan Burdick’s belief, he is against immigration and having “every species, native or alien, [wing] for limited niche space” poses a problem for everyone (85). Sometimes in your own environment there is barely enough resources to go around and to have invading species come in and make it difficult to exist is a pressing struggle.
In this essay, Charles Elton refers to Charles Darwin’s notion of survival of the fittest when he brought up the idea of competition. Burdick is not up for changing the human population in the United States because when immigrants come, they come to take over. Like an invasion, immigration is inevitable and hard to eliminate. The author expresses his views by saying ” invasions may radically alter the components of an ecosystem, perhaps to a point [where] the ecosystem becomes less valuable .. (89).
When people come into a new environment hey change the way things use to be into their own, making the environment less of what it was because it is not their own land. “Small ecosystems are more vulnerable to extinctions .. . greater risk of being eliminated by a single event” (87). This can mean that one’s land is weak and prone to invasion, while native residents flee the land. For example, Hawaii is a small island with little native species to compete against, so invasive species can easily take over that island.
Overall, Burdick compares immigration to plant and animal life so that eople can understand what he really means. Invasions are not good for the natives residents; as a result, they put stress on their fight to survive. They create destruction for those who actually live in the invaded land. The stress of competition on both invasive species and native species proves that immigration is not a positive effect on ongs land.
