Posted on 09/02/2007 10:38:37 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON - Immigrants and their children will account for more than half the country's population growth over the coming half-century, according to a study released Thursday.
The examination of new census figures by the Center for Immigration Studies found U.S. population levels, currently around 300 million, will shoot up to 468 million by 2060. California alone could be home to more than 60 million.
Immigrants - both legal and illegal - as well as their descendants are expected to make up about 105 million, or 63 percent, of the national increase.
"It's important to understand where we're headed in population size and why. The why is largely, but not exclusively, immigration," said Steven Camarota, author of the report.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a D.C.-based think tank, openly advocates immigration restrictions. While demographers across the ideological spectrum verified the group's numbers, opinions vary on what they mean for America's future.
William A.V. Clark, a geography professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, called 468 million "a really huge number, and it's being driven by immigration, there's no doubt about that."
Neither politicians nor city planners are preparing for or even discussing immigration's impact on population growth, he said.
Meanwhile, the impact in California, which is home to about 10 million foreign-born, will be particularly acute.
"If you think the 405 is bad now, it won't be moving unless they put a double-decker bus on it," Clark said.
"This is like the elephant in the bathtub," he said. "We're not building the infrastructure for the population we have now, much less this kind of growth."
But Jeff Passell, spokesman for the Pew Hispanic Center, which also is preparing population projections based on immigration, noted that without newcomers the U.S. could not have a growing labor force.
Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning at USC, agreed.
Myers studies aging trends and called immigration part of the solution to the graying of America.
He noted that the ratio of senior citizens to working-age people will go up 30 percent in the next decade and spike another 30 percent after that.
"That is the central policy question America has to solve, and we have to solve it now," he said. Because foreigners who come to the U.S. tend to be young, he said, immigration can reduce the aging problem by about a quarter.
Myers also cast doubts on the study, noting that the analysis hinges on the assumption that fertility and immigration rates will both remain high.
Currently, the nation sustains an immigration rate of about 1.2 million annually, according to the study. Researchers based their projections partly on the past five decades, during which there has been a net immigration increase.
Exactly. This is being reported breathlessly in the MSM, but who (in their right mind) really thinks this is a good thing? Oh, wait, the Business community who wants to manufacture consumers and pay rock bottom wages.
California can have 60 million people. Germany--roughly the same size--has about 90 million while still having plenty of rural regions.
In other words, a race to the bottom.
A vote for Clinton....Gore ......was a vote for this....
Really? Obviously you don’t commute to work.
We have to start deporting the illegals immediately. Secondly, change the immigration laws. Everyone that wishes to come to the United States must learn English. They must swear off federal welfare, prove that they can support themselves and their family.
A country that kills off more than a million of its own people every year and then allows a million Mexicans to swim across our southern border every year doesn't need "immigration reform" -- it needs a collective psychiatric examination.
Of course it was. But I don’t remember that plank in their platforms, do you?
It is not too late to return to the pre-insanity levels of 1965.
It's shocking to realize how ignorant people can be, too -- especially those who fly from one city to another and think they've actually traveled around the country.
I just finished driving 2,500+ miles across the United States on a work/vacation trip. There are about a thousand adjectives I could use to describe this country -- but OVERPOPULATED sure as hell ain't one of them.
One of the biggest problems facing just about all developing countries, including the U.S., is the comming demographic decline that will result in too few workers supporting too few retirees. An immigration surge is one answer, provided it is accompanied by welfare reform.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-08-29sm.html
>>Both studies found that immigrants used government services at a greater rate than native-born residents did. The New Jersey study found, for instance, that the typical immigrant family received about $4,044 annually in government services, about 11 percent higher than the average native-born family. At the same time, immigrant households paid about 8 percent less in taxes. The net result was that “the average native household generated an annual fiscal surplus of $232” to government, while “the typical foreign household was a net burden of $1,484.” The gap was even wider in California, where immigrant households produced a net deficit of $3,463 each, because so much of that state’s recent immigration had been in the form of low-wage, low-skill workers.
Though the study did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, it did break down foreign-born households by the regions of the world from which they had come. In both states, the study found the steepest deficit in Latin American households, which in New Jersey consumed 26 percent more in government expenditures than the average native-born family, but paid 38 percent less in taxes. By contrast, immigrant households in New Jersey that hailed from Europe or Canada actually consumed, on average, less in government services than the typical native-born family, and paid nearly as much in taxes. <<
Sure, we can live like Japan.
Where you can rent a hotel "room" that is a 6 x 3 x 4 foot hole in the wall (like those places where they inter coffins above ground),--
And literally get stuffed into commuter trains by professional platform stuffers,--
And knock someone into the gutter while walking to work, without so much as saying, "excuse me," and then having that person turn out to be your 11 A.M. business meeting--both treating each other there with the greatest courtesy, and no mention of the earlier incident.
You wanna live like that and more?
I sure don't.
Neither do I want to be crowded out of the coast to live in flyover country.
A neighborhood without a nearby ocean is a miserable place.
And our coasts are already almost all overcrowded, over-regulated stinkholes thanks to overpopulation.
| Both China and India have about 4 times the population of the United States (the American population is closer to number 4, Indonesia). And the United States is not overpopulated, at least from a food point of view. China and India each produce enough food to feed their populations, and the United States produces even more than them. In terms of open land--could be because from an urban area, but--there seems to be enormous tracts of scarcely populated land out there, especially in non-coastal states. Also, the United States has about twice the land area of the EU while the EU has a population nearing 500 million (494 million), though the EU is not yet a country. Do you consider the EU overpopulated? (Many would agree with you that China and India are, hence not asking about them). |
The problem is not too few workers.
The problem is government stole the money.
No matter--I am not far from retirement.
If I can't afford it, I won't retire.
I can always work or starve.
Some places are easier to commute to, as are some commuting hours.
Surely the prof has come across really, really huge numbers much huger than this.
But do we want to live like the Japanese, crammed into tiny houses and minuscule apartments? Or the Germans? Cheek-to-jowl. Didn’t people leave those countries to come here and live the way Americans live? Why should we sacrifice the way we live to cram in millions more of them? If they want to live like that, they can stay at home. See my tagline.
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