A whole lot of water

I missed the day that by secret appointment everyone was supposed to blog about water. But there's sure enough water to go around:

A typhoon in the Philippines is threatening the rice crop with too much water: "The Philippines is the world's biggest rice importer and damage from the typhoon could see it buy more than had been expected for 2011, which could push up international prices."

Benin has also flooded. "Half the country is under water, and it's still raining."

Kenya, meanwhile, is predicting an upcoming drought. You have read down a ways to find the drought - most of the article is about Kenya's food marketing structure and lack of investment.

On the right to water and who has the responsibility to provide it. Pictures of water's importance in developing countries. Attempts to make crops in Mali flood-resistant.

How many want to come here?

Gallup reports that of the 700 some-odd million people who want to permanently emigrate, 165 million of them want to come to the US. That would be a group of people roughly equivalent to 53% of the current US population. Though far fewer people want to move to Singapore, they would see an even larger population increase by percent.

The top ten countries whose people want to move here are:

China - 23 million - 2% of them
India - 17 million - 1.5% of them
Nigeria - 17 million - 11% of them
Ethiopia - 10 million - 13% of them
Bangladesh - 8 million - 5% of them
Brazil - 8 million - 4% of them
Mexico - 6 million - 5.5% of them
Philippines - 6 million - 6.5% of them
Vietnam - 5 million - 6% of them
Japan - 3 million - 2% of them

We let in less than 0.6% that many.

Out of that 165 million, Wiki tells me that a record 1 million became naturalized US citizens in 2008, mostly from Mexico, India, and the Philippines. In 1890, 15 percent of the people living here were foreign-born. "By 1970 immigrants accounted for 4.7 percent of the US population, rising to 6.2 percent in 1980 and to an estimated 12.5 percent today."