This is the gold standard of immigration comment, as it offers a thorough and factual analysis of the problem and also identifies specific remedies required for its solution.
Executive Summary
Mass immigration, whether through established or extra-legal channels, has by default become the nation’s de facto population policy. In 2005, new immigrants (legal and illegal) plus births to immigrants accounted for about 2.3 million people – more than 60 percent of America’s average annual population growth at the time. In 2008, studies projected that immigration (legal, illegal, and the children of immigrants) would be responsible for 82 percent of U.S. population growth between 2005 and 2050. And in 2013, the Census Bureau projected that by mid-century, international migration would become the principle driver of America’s population growth – a first since at least 1850.
While Washington debates the immigrants’ skills, status and provenance, their environmental impact is the same: immigrants and their children become part of the population base that intensifies the nation’s depletion of resources and environmental stress. Washington has from time to time looked at the environmental effects of mass immigration in hearings and special commissions, but has given them no weight in their ultimate immigration choices. In 2013, as in 2006, Congress and the President were considering so-called “reform” legislation – laws that potentially would double annual immigration rates. Most of Washington’s consideration of the population effects has been not the environmental risks, but of the supposedly beneficial potential for boosting economic growth.
Current immigration numbers are excessive, if the U.S. is ever to reduce its population to an environmentally-sustainable size. NPG believes that this goal can only be met if illegal immigration is reduced to near zero, and legal immigration is reduced by four-fifths – to about 200,000 yearly. Such reductions cannot be realized without serious changes: immediate enforcement of existing immigration laws, mandatory E-Verify for all employers, elimination of “anchor baby” policies, and deep cuts in family chain migration. Importation of family members, both immediate and more distant, accounts for nearly two-thirds of all legal entries. The proposed 200,000 allotted visas would satisfy core national labor interests in rare and essential skills, as well as humanitarian relief.
The U.S. has accepted nearly 80 million documented immigrants since 1820. Without guilt, our nation can now be generous to the world in new ways: by slowing our profligate consumption and waste dumping, by remaining a major food exporter, and by curbing our intense competition for world energy supplies.