Immigration, population and the environment
by The Weeden Foundation
The United States has been described as the world's most overpopulated country because we are the only one with massive population, massive growth and massive per-capita consumption.
No doubt, it is critical our society lower drastically the average American ecological footprint of 24 acres per person (a level far exceeding our nation's resources). But if the United States adds yet another 100 million residents during the next few decades as projected, any gains in reducing per-capita consumption - or promoting smart growth, or better managing water resources - are likely to be negated.
A stable U.S. population does not by itself improve environmental protection, but it does make it much easier to attain environmental goals.
America's ballooning population, unique in the developed world, is driven by historically high immigration numbers which, combined with recent immigrants' higher fertility rates, is responsible for 70-80 percent of the approximately 3 million people added to the population annually. (U.S. Census Bureau).
While native-born fertility has been at or below replacement level since the early 1970s, immigration numbers have more than quadrupled even without considering illegal immigration.
If they had remained at the pre-1970 historical average, the U.S. population would be peaking in the next 15 years at approximately 250 million. Whereas, under the guest-worker bill passed by the Senate last year, the number of legal, permanent immigrants would double to more than two million per year, putting the United States on track to reach a population of 500 million by around 2050 and of one billion by 2100.
The framers of the Immigration Act of 1965 - which jump-started today's mass immigration - never intended to increase legal immigration levels, let alone quadruple them. Since then, in a climate of political inertia, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbies have been primary drivers for bolstering immigration numbers, with a stated goal of increasing overall growth and consumption and a less open one of holding down wages.
Thus, higher consumption is not simply an inadvertent after effect of today's immigration policy; it is largely its intention.
Prescriptions for reaching a population-environment balance need not be anti-immigrant. The United States can still accept immigrants, just not at the current rate. A sustainable immigration policy would match immigration with emigration, at a level of about 250,000 people a year.
That figure represents the country historical average - 1776-1976 - and the average level of immigration from World War II to Earth Day One - 1945-70.
As a result of significantly lower future numbers, most labor economists believe, individual immigrants in this country would be better off in terms of higher wages/benefits/availability of jobs and education, and face less resistance from the communities they enter.
What the country really needs is a population policy, guided not by special interests or nostalgia, but by critical thinking and analysis. The policy should also include efforts to reduce significantly the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States (which are the highest in the developed world).
It is time for the environmental establishment and the political elite to take off their blinders regarding U.S. population growth and take the lead in forging a more sustainable demographic future for our country. Our human health and welfare, and the fate of wild nature, depend upon our tackling root causes, not merely symptoms, of environmental problems.
The Weeden Foundation of New York City has paid for population-environment initiatives, domestically and internationally, for more than 20 years. Column distributed by minutemanmedia.org.
