Immigrant surge leads U.S. toward half billion people

Long Beach Press Telegram ^ | 08/30/2007 10:35:45 PM PDT | Lisa Friedman

[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.

[Travis McGee]

Uh, does anyone remember voting for this to happen, or voting for an elected representative who advocates that this come about? I don’t.

Comrade citizen, there is no plan to allow the plebes to vote for the North American Union. It is merely going to happen, by fait accompli, using the immivasion as the attack vector. This is no mere accident of history.

U.S. Constitution, Article 4 Section 4:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,

and shall protect each of them against Invasion;"

---

Invasion: \In*va"sion\, n. [L. invasio: cf. F. invasion. See Invade.] [1913 Webster]

1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.

[dforest]

Thanks for the info. I knew I read it somewhere. I certainly didn’t know the details. Interesting to say the least!

[Travis McGee]

What is your opinion about Germany? They seem to have fairly normal lives by Western standards, and yet have roughly 90 million people on a land comparable in size to California.

The greater the people per area, the greater the push for socialism. That's your goal, it's transparent.

U.S. Constitution, Article 4 Section 4:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,

and shall protect each of them against Invasion;"

---

Invasion: \In*va"sion\, n. [L. invasio: cf. F. invasion. See Invade.] [1913 Webster]

1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.

QUISLING: a synonym for traitor, someone who collaborates with the invaders of his country.

[kabar]

Because you know, those poor blacks and hispanics are all so ignorant, that’s why we need to have more whites in this country.

Since half of the country will be comprised of today's minorities by 2050 and half of children today ages 0-5 are minorities, that is our future whether we want it or not. The point is that our future will depend more and more on whether blacks and Hispanics succeed or not. If they are dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock, and comprising a much higher share of the prison population than their proportion of the general population, then as a nation, we should have some real concern about our future. Unfortunately, you can't discuss these issues rationally and unemotionally so you can develop a public policy to address these problems because you have jerks who want to make it an issue of racism.

Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve, the explosive growth of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades does not bode well for American social stability.

The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate – even more than unbounded levels of immigration – will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades.

By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by midcentury, twice the current ratio.

It's the fertility surge among unwed Hispanics that should worry policymakers. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country – over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly 1 ½ times that of black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for unmarried white women, 22 for unmarried Asian women, and 66 for unmarried black women.

Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent for whites and 15 percent for Asians. Only the percentage for blacks – 68 percent – is higher. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.

The Hispanic Challenge By Samuel P. Huntington

[CottonBall]

The assumption I get is welfare pays enough to have more children.

You got that right. It's that those of us that only had as many kids as we could afford and give enough attention to - get to pay for these kids.

[CottonBall]

The idea of over a billion Americans is considered a bad one by many here, but personally see a large American population as one of the most effective ways to keep the United States' preeminent position to the country's will (economically, culturally, and militarily) abroad as China and India rise.

The difference is that China and India have always had relatively huge populations - and are just now starting to educate them, create numerous universities, educate the majority of their students in engineering and hard sciences, and expand economically. We, on the other hand, are importing poverty and uneducated peasants who will always be taking our tax dollars. China and India will prosper while we will be in decline. We're importing more stupidity, while we're already creating enough of it in our schools.

[CottonBall]

Would you have the population wither to 100 million, or even 30 million as in Canada, or 20 million as in Australia? You'd have square miles and square miles of prime property then, but would be encouraging a takeover by a hostile, foreign power.

So, Canada is in danger of a takeover? Funny, I hadn't heard that. Or about the Aussie's as well.

Your point is ludicrous.

[gondramB]

>>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.<<

The other 363 million will be native Americans?

[huldah1776]

overpopulated? what is your criteria for overpopulation?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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.

Current Americans are 300 million....

[TypeZoNegative]

We need to get the message out that these illegal Hispanics are trying to outbreed themselves in our own country without having a racist message attached to it. They’re trying to outbreed us in our own country because they know right now, they’re a minority in this country and enough of us can vote them to be kicked out of the country for doing something that no other nation should take, which is being invaded and having our resources stolen.

[A_Former_Democrat]

We’ve got plenty of people here. We don’t need additional problems.

Time to seal the borders, folks.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I’m getting old. I’m only 48. Far from old, but I find I can’t stop thinking in that stereotypical format attributed to old men.

You know... Kids today are lazy and immoral. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. You know the stereotype.

I would love nothing more than to look toward America’s future with hope and see out best days ahead. But I can’t. I just can’t. I look ahead and I see so little reason for hope, which makes me furious and makes me pray that I have it all completely wrong.

This article talks of a more crowded, more congested USA. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to cherish free space and the intimacy and privacy and solitude that comes with low density. Yet the politicians have insured that that future cities will be much more crowded and expensive than today’s crowded and expensive stress-inducing cities. And I look ahead and I’m sad that I see a much worse America for future generations of children and grandchildren.

I look ahead and see balkanization and fracturing of people into tribes of whites and blacks and asians and hispanics, co-existing but not really participating in one American community, nationwide or locally.

I look ahead and see more communism and more government control and less freedom and less privacy.

I could go on for hours about this, but I had to get it off my chest.

I really wish I could sit here and write that I see America transitioning to a better future with more privacy, more personal responsibility, and more freedom and I wonder if I have an old man’s blinders on, seeing the world going to hell in a handbasket, or if I am accurately seeing a bleaker American future, like watching the 1st days of the fall of Rome.

Hell, look at personal property alone. Look back a hundred years, maybe more. A man’s land and his horse and his guns were his own. He could work his land and use his horse and employ his guns as he saw fit, as long as he didn’t damage another man.

Sure, we own our own homes, once the mortgage is paid. We own the title. But stop paying property taxes and you lose your home, so it is not really your own property. If you build on your land without the proper permits, you go to jail. If you want to cut down a historic oak on your land, you will be prosecuted for committing a crime. If the environmental Nazis find a wetland or endangered species on your land, they control what you can and cannot do, and if you violate their demands, you are a criminal and will go to jail. The government can now even take away your land for uses other than strictly public uses. We no longer have private property in our homes because there are so many conditions placed on that property or you can lose it or go to jail.

And that is not all. If you shoot a criminal who breaks into your home, you can be sued by the criminal. If a kid jumps in your backyard pool and drowns, you can be sued by the parents of the kid who trespassed in your yard. This is insanity.

Your car is the same way. Where once you owned a horse, now the government claims that driving is not a right, but a privilege. If you commit a crime like drunk driving, you can have your car taken away and sold without just compensation, as required by the 5th amendment. You cannot change the motor or emission system or use leaded gas or use tires too wide or you are a criminal. At any time you can lose your driver’s license for any number of reasons, rendering you car — your personal private property — useless to use on the roads your fuel tax dollars helped pay for.

Guns are similar. Handguns are now registered and the government can take them away any time they decide they want to. This isn’t common yet, but just you wait and see.

These are but 3 examples in only 1 area — the destruction of personal property rights in modern America. And I could go on and on in any number of categories regarding our losses of freedom and privacy and control over our own lives and our own children.

I won’t write a book here but as an example of how I could go on all night, think about all of the control parents are now deprived of over their children. Young girls can get abortions without their parents being notified, and therefore never even knowing their daughters were pregnant. Homosexual education is promoted in schools without ever notifying parents this will occur. They are teaching Islam in schools now, again without notifying parents.

So I won’t go on and on. But I look ahead to America’s future and I want to scream or cry. We keep voting and writing letters and it goes nowhere. Freedom is trampled year after year, election after election, decade after decade, generation after generation. It doesn’t stop.

I’m livid that I can’t look at an optimistic future. I’m horrified. I’m furious. And it makes me feel like an old man just seeing bleakness and seeing America going to hell in a hand-basket, but that is how I feel.

I wish America was moving toward more individual freedom and privacy and I could bask in the feeling of optimism and hope. I don’t want to be this bitter or mad all the time.

And then I read an article like this and see an even more bleak future, a balkanized nation around a tower of Babel where crowds shove at each other and nobody knows or helps one another. I just want to scream. I want to kill somebody.

I am only 48 years old and my country is gone. My America is gone. They are destroying my country before my very eyes and they are doing it on purpose. They have learned absolutely nothing from the Nazi concentration camps and from Stalin’s purge. Nothing. And the same type of well-intentioned idiots who supported Hitler with great idealism and hope and who supported the Red Communists with such ironclad idealism and hope, are doing it again here.

Bush’s legacy is the continuing destruction of all that Jefferson and Madison and Adams held dear. Ted Kennedy and Boxer, Feinstein and Shumer are intentionally shredding all that the founders held dear. Out entire safety net, all those controls that the founders ingrained in their wisdom, built from the sacrifice of their own blood and their own children and their own fortures, is being dismantled before my very eyes — and they are doing it on purpose because they are filled with greed and lust for power.

And they have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, all these years.

I have no hope. Think how that feels. Think how empty that feels to have no long term hope for your country.

No, I’m not going to put a bullet in my brain, though that is always an option. I enjoy my life and I have goals and desires and want fun and entertainment.

But is it any wonder that all I want is to drop out? Scratch and claw my way through every forsaken day to retirement and then just drop out. Move to the least crowded, least culturally diverse small town I can find, cross the moat, lift the drawbridge and bar the gate behind me. Enjoy my little corner of the world and fiddle while the country I love, the country that George Washington and Sam Adams tried to give me, while she burns.

Thing of how that feels. Is there anything much worse than the feeling of despair that comes from the lack of hope. You could be publicly humiliated, tortured and executed, and even that is tolerable, if that price is paid because you know your wife and children escaped to freedom and a brighter future. The suffering of pain and the anxiety of coming death is borne knowing it was for the freedom and safety of your wife and children. You have hope.

I have no hope for America. That makes me ashamed and makes me furious. And I feel very, very old.

[Age of Reason]

Recycling, for one.

[kabar]

It isn’t that simple. Illegal immigration will be easier to fix than current legal immigration policies, which are more dangerous to our long term survival.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Here is the short version of my long-winded rambling post above...

I grieve for the future kids who will never know freedom or privacy or peace or solitude, because they are crammed together in congested cities, buried in bureaucratic regulations, almost all of their income gone to government taxes, and restricted to whatever the government lets them own, do and think.

That’s what I mean when I say that I’ve lost hope. And that, I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemy.

[LibWhacker]

"It's important to understand where we're headed in population size and why. The why is largely, but not exclusively, immigration,"

Without immigration, our population would be aging (on average) and in decline. Instead, we're getting younger and the number of people is going through the roof. Is that desirable? No way! But the socialists love it. And they're winning the argument, fait accompli.

[ccmay]

White Christian immigration as opposed to brown Christian immigration?

I'd be happy with both, but that's not what we're getting. I've got family and friends in England who would love to immigrate, but the queue is so long that they would be pensioners by the time they made it here.

Nowadays, only 15% of our immigrants are from Europe. We allow more immigrants from the tiny Central American nation of El Salvador than we do from any country in Europe, or from Canada for that matter.

Why is this? Because there are politicians and bureaucrats in this country who hate America, hate white people, and depend for their livelihoods on an endless supply of poor, ignorant, dependent foreigners. They need people who will reliably vote Democrat, and clamor for the services of the armies of otherwise-unemployable social science graduates who from their unaccountable, richly overpaid government sinecures, dole out your money and mine to these undeserving, ungrateful, un-American useless eaters.

-ccm

[kabar]

Without immigration, our population would be aging (on average) and in decline. Instead, we're getting younger and the number of people is going through the roof. Is that desirable? No way! But the socialists love it. And they're winning the argument, fait accompli.

Immigration is not having much of an effect upon the age of our population. The average age of an immigrant is 29. Because of chain migration, many immigrants are aged parents and relatives.

While immigration has a very large impact on the size of the nation’s population, it has only a small effect on slowing the aging of American society.

At the current level of net immigration (1.25 million a year), 61 percent of the nation’s population will be of working age (15-66) in 2060, compared to 60 percent if net immigration were reduced to 300,000 a year.

If net immigration was doubled to 2.5 million a year it would raise the working-age share of the population by one additional percentage point, to 62 percent, by 2060. But at that level of immigration, the U.S. population would reach 573 million, double its size in the 2000 Census.

FYI: Our current total fertility rate is 2.09 children per female or just at replacement level. Even if we stopped all immigration, legal and illegal, the US population would increase 62 million by 2060.

[HardStarboard]

>>>Really? Obviously you don’t commute to work.<<<

If the population continues to explode, it could lessen you commute; there will be enough people living near your place of work that will do the work for you.

[/sarcasm]