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Immigrant surge leads U.S. toward half billion people
Long Beach Press Telegram ^ | 08/30/2007 10:35:45 PM PDT | Lisa Friedman

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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Mexico; News/Current Events; US: Arizona; US: California; US: Florida; US: New Mexico; US: New York; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: aliens; arizona; borders; california; census; crimaliens; florida; identitytheft; illegalimmigration; immigrantlist; immigration; invasion; mexico; newmexico; newyork; populationcontrol; texas
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To: rob777
too few workers supporting too few retirees. An immigration surge is one answer

And government will steal what those immigrant workers pay into social security too.

Sisyphean/Ponzi solution.

41 posted on 09/02/2007 11:27:29 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
And the United States is not overpopulated, at least from a food point of view.

Sure, you can get all the insecticide laden corn syrup from chemically fertilzed corn you could ever want.

42 posted on 09/02/2007 11:29:07 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Age of Reason
You mention Japan in your response, but not Germany.

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.

43 posted on 09/02/2007 11:29:43 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
Also, the United States has about twice the land area of the EU

Sure--we have so much land that every citizen can easily afford a few dozen acres overlooking the Atlantic or Pacific ocean.

Why, there's so much prime real estate in America, they're practically giving it away for free!

44 posted on 09/02/2007 11:31:18 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
What is your opinion about Germany?

You mean the country that periodically goes crazy looking for more lebensraum?

45 posted on 09/02/2007 11:33:22 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

And most important: a meaningless amount of seacoast.


46 posted on 09/02/2007 11:34:23 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: 3AngelaD
See that you've commented on Germany.

Germans don't appear to live cheek-to-jowl. Granted, haven't visited there. However, pictures of many of their towns and cities seem to be either on the level of the United States' own towns and cities, or actually somewhat smaller--though not as small as some of those single digit populated villages in the mountain states.

Anyway, onto Europe again, they seem to have a decent balance of people to land, even more so since many European cities don't have particularly tall skyscrapers, many Europeans own their own homes (though many do rent 'flats,' you would have a point there).

47 posted on 09/02/2007 11:35:14 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: Alberta's Child

You can live in landlocked, monotonous, boring flyover country if you want.

Count me out.

Apparently most other people prefer the coasts, too.

Fly over the coasts why don’t you?


48 posted on 09/02/2007 11:35:46 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: 3AngelaD; Jedi Master Pikachu

Now we are becoming the wretched refuse of our own teeming shores.


49 posted on 09/02/2007 11:39:29 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu; 3AngelaD
Anyway, onto Europe again, they seem to have a decent balance of people to land

Anything more than a handful of people in a handful of square miles, is all the people I need.

50 posted on 09/02/2007 11:41:42 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu; 3AngelaD
They seem to have fairly normal lives by Western standards

Sure, we all have so much room and resources that we recycle for the fun of sorting garbage and bundling papers.

And all those pollution regulations and fines are so entertaining.

51 posted on 09/02/2007 11:43:55 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Age of Reason
Many people can do without living near an ocean. To be fair, personally do live [relatively] close to one.

And the United States has one of the largest coastlines in the world (even excluding Alaska's).

But that coastline might not be so big if China or India (or some multi-national coalition) attack and the United States doesn't have the population to defend the nation.

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.

A large population is helpful not only economically, but also militarily. Ideally 100 million armed American citizens would be able to repel an invasion, but they'd still be weaker than 1.5 billion armed Americans.

52 posted on 09/02/2007 11:44:18 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: Alberta's Child
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.

You sound like Ben Wattenberg during the panel discussion when this report was released at the National Press Club He said the same thing.

Of course, silly anecdotal observations like that are really irrelevant. I could say the same thing flying over the Sahara desert or Antartica or even China or India for that matter. People tend to settle where there are jobs and infrastructure not in the middle of nowhere or in some uninhabitable area.

We have added 100 million people since 1970 and will add another 118 million by 2050 according to the Bureau of the Census projections. According to the CIS study, if immigration continues at current levels, the nation’s population will increase from 301 million today to 468 million in 2060 — a 167 million (56 percent) increase. Immigrants plus their descendents will account for 105 million (63 percent) of the increase. The total projected growth of 167 million is equal to the combined populations of Great Britain, France, and Spain. The 105 million from immigration by itself is equal to 13 additional New York Cities.

All of these additional people will require infrastructuure, e.g., roads, water, energy, sewage treatment plants, food, hospitals, prisons, etc. along with social programs, schools, cars, etc.

Assimilation issues aside, do we want to have a nation of half a billion? What number of people do you consider to be OVERPOPULATED?

53 posted on 09/02/2007 11:47:18 AM PDT by kabar
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Most days I wake up feeling like this guy Bill from Gangs of NY, however, on the balance who can deny it’s not a wonderful thing to see our country filled out with productive happy people. We are a thriving growing continent. Bodes well for the future. I know we were crapping our pants re demographics and the social security system some 15 years ago anticipating the huge number of adult Americans (boomers) entering retirement. That’s been somewhat abated by the economics of mass immigration. Is it causing dislocation, fear and loathing? You betcha. Is it growing the economy like a mother. You betcha.


54 posted on 09/02/2007 11:47:34 AM PDT by kinghorse
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

The vast majority of Germans live cheek-to-jowl. The elite don’t. That is what our elite is aiming for in this country, too.


55 posted on 09/02/2007 11:48:07 AM PDT by 3AngelaD (They screwed up their own countries so bad they had to leave, and now they're here screwing up ours)
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To: Age of Reason

Yup. Snort.


56 posted on 09/02/2007 11:48:50 AM PDT by 3AngelaD (They screwed up their own countries so bad they had to leave, and now they're here screwing up ours)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

The RATs love this! More votes for more socialism. It’s nearly over, folks. Hitlery will see to it that the invasion will continue and the borders opened to any and all. The Republic will then die the death.


57 posted on 09/02/2007 11:48:54 AM PDT by Paulus Invictus
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To: Age of Reason
Recycling is done over here. Recycling is not a bad thing. Germany could cut down the Black Forest, and California the forest in the northern part of the state, but why do that when you can recycle the paper? Cans a recycled, saving a lot of energy doing so. Much more electricity is used to extract aluminum from bauxite and turn the metal into a can than simply tossing a used soda can into the recycling bin and having that can be remelted and reused.

As for the pollution regulations, and the recycling, would put those down more to EUers and their global warming/climate change neo-religion than to a sign of high population density.

58 posted on 09/02/2007 11:50:27 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: Age of Reason; kabar
Out of curiosity, what would be the proper American population size, in your opinions?
59 posted on 09/02/2007 11:52:15 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

I say it means there’s a difference between eating meat and eating bodily fluids. In part of asia and africa for instance, there’s a lot more blood eating as a part of the culture. We repudiate this as barbaric. Maybe that’s the point?


60 posted on 09/02/2007 11:53:13 AM PDT by kinghorse
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