When the Census Bureau released its new population projections last
month, most of the media focused on the country's changing racial
composition. But this was almost certainly not the most important
finding. The projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135
million in just 42 years -- a 44 percent increase. Such growth would
have profound implications for our environment and quality of life.
Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy --
immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections
would be much lower. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we
want to be a much more densely settled country?
Native-born Americans have only about two children on average, which
makes for a roughly stable population over time. But with an estimated
1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the country each
year, and about 900,000 births to these immigrants each year,
immigration directly and indirectly accounts for at least three-fourths
of U.S. population growth.
An increase of 135 million people by 2050 is equivalent to the
entire populations of Mexico and Canada moving here. Assuming the same
ratio of population to infrastructure that exists today, the United
States would need to build and pay for 36,000 schools. We would need to
develop enough land to accommodate 52 million new housing units, along
with places for the people who lived in them to shop and work. We would
also have to construct enough roads to handle 106 million more vehicles.
Of course, our country can "fit" more people. But such a dramatic
increase would affect many issues about which Americans are concerned,
including the environment, traffic, congestion, sprawl and the loss of
open spaces. Technology and planning could help manage this situation,
but there is no way they could offset all of the impact of 135 million
more people. This massive increase also would have implications for the
size and scope of government; more densely settled societies almost
always are more heavily regulated societies.
Another important finding in the census projections is that, even
with record levels of immigration for the next four decades, the U.S.
population will still grow significantly older. Immigration makes our
society only slightly younger than it would otherwise be. (Consider
that, on average, the overall fertility rate in the United States is
about 2.1 children per woman. If immigrants are excluded from the data,
it's still about 2.0 children per woman. This compares with 1.4
children in Western Europe. Immigration makes for a much more densely
settled country; it does not make for a much younger country.) As the
Census Bureau stated in its 2000 projections, immigration is a "highly
inefficient" means for addressing the problem of an aging society in
the long run. The new projections show the same thing.
Some people think that immigration creates large economic benefits.
But the economic research is pretty clear: While immigration does
significantly increase economic activity in the receiving society,
almost all of that increased activity go to the immigrants themselves
in the form of wages and benefits. The gain to natives is tiny. When
the National Research Council, which is part of the National Academy of
Sciences, examined this question, it concluded that the benefits for
native-born Americans were equal to only about one- or two-tenths of 1
percent of their income. The two economists who did the work for the
council described the effect as "minuscule."
Moreover, this tiny economic benefit was entirely erased by the
fiscal drain immigrant households imposed on taxpayers. Perhaps worst
of all, the researchers found that to generate this small gain,
immigration reduced the wages of the least educated and poorest
There is no question that immigrants benefit by coming here. But it
is difficult to argue that immigration is a well-targeted way to lift
up the world's poor. Many immigrants to the United States were not poor
in their home countries. More important, although immigration causes an
enormous increase in the overall U.S. population, it still represents
an infinitesimal fraction of the world's low-income population. We can
do more to help poor people in developing countries through trade
policies and development assistance.
The United States may well decide to continue to allow the
settlement of 1.5 million immigrants (legal and illegal) each year. But
legal immigration is a federal program like any other and could be
reduced below the 1 million currently allowed to enter annually.
Greater resources could also be devoted to reducing illegal
immigration. It's important to understand that the new projections show
us one possible future. We must decide as a country if this is the
future we want.