Fox Valley Citizens for Legal Immigration
"It's not about race; it's about what's legal." |
Fox Valley Citizens for Legal Immigration
"It's not about race; it's about what's legal." |
THE ENVIRONMENTALIST'S GUIDE TO A SENSIBLE IMMIGRATION POLICY
The Environmentalist's Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy Researcher: Jeff Gellner CHAPTER ONE: GROWING LIKE CRAZY Is It Getting A Little Crowded Here? What is happening all across our country is a result of many factors: our wasteful lifestyles and culture, our changing technologies, and, most crucially, our rapidly growing population. There are simply more of us than ever before, taking up more space and leaving our footprints on nature as never before. More and more, forests are being felled to make way for shopping centers, green meadows plowed under for new subdivisions, and quiet meandering country lanes turned into eight-lane highways. Along both coasts, the outlying exurbs of one city run seamlessly into the creeping edges of the next megalopolis. In the interior of the country, small farming towns suddenly find themselves turned into bedroom communities for big cities that, until recently, seemed light years removed both physically and spiritually. While anti-environmentalists, like the late Julian Simon, have tried to dismiss our rate of population growth as insignificant because it represents a smaller percentage of our total population than in years past, it is the actual numbers that matter. Our current population growth rate is only about 1 percent a year, but we have gotten so big that 1 percent really means something. When your net worth increases by 1 percent, it's not such a big deal, perhaps. When Bill Gates' net worth increases by 1 percent, we're talking real money. In population terms, America is entering Bill Gates territory. Rapid population growth is a worldwide phenomenon, and its devastation of the environment is being felt from the rain forests of South America, to the dried out river beds of China, to the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. We need to do whatever we can to promote family planning and conservation in every part of the world, because in a global ecosystem we are not immune to the destruction of the environment anywhere on the planet. But the fact that other parts of the world are experiencing even more intense population growth than we are is not an excuse to ignore what is happening here in the United States. In fact, rationalizing America's current population path by pointing out that the problem is worse in India or Nigeria is the ecological equivalent of arguing that two wrongs make a right. We must act responsibly and encourage others to do so as well. But we have not been acting responsibly. As everyone knows, Americans live more extravagantly and consume more resources per capita than any other people on earth. We also have the fastest growing population of any developed nation, which compounds the impact of our wasteful habits. The United States now adds close to 2.5 million people to its population every year and this growth is gaining momentum.(1) Immigration: The Engine That Drives Population Growth Immigration is, in large part, driving population growth in the U.S. "Natives of other lands who have settled here since the 1970s and their offspring account for half the population increase we have experienced in the last quarter century. And the effects of immigration will be even more dramatic in the future: by 2050, more than 80 percent of our annual growth will be attributable to immigrants who have settled here since the early 1990s."(2) Whether the resources are renewable or nonrenewable, as the U.S. population increases, the strain on all our natural resources will increase. Most Americans support environmental protection, although not necessarily at the federal level.(3) Also, the majority of Americans support reductions in immigration.(4) In fact, even some immigrants to the U.S. advocate lower immigration rates.(5) Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Ohio show an interesting trend. These states are projected to receive relatively large numbers of immigrants but not to increase greatly their total populations. The reason is that outmigration roughly equals immigration. In total, 2.2 million residents will leave these states for other states and 1.8 million immigrants will move in. These four, then, will act as conduits, providing for population increases in other states, many with lower immigration rates or natural growth rates, while increasing their own populations by approximately 2.5 million persons. The relationship between immigration and internal migration is an important one, and is discussed at greater length in Chapter Three. In the U.S., when one looks at demographic projections by state, immigration does appear to affect the population increase of states and the movement of citizens among states. The data in Table One show some of the latest census information for the 15 states projected to receive the greatest number of immigrants through the year 2025.(6) The top five immigrant states are also in the top 15 total population growth states.
Four of these states (California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois) will experience population increase even while having large migration of residents out of the state to other states. In total, these states will absorb approximately 15 million immigrants and have an outmigration of over 11 million residents to other states. All this will take place while increasing their own populations by 22.6 million persons. The U.S. Is Leading in the Race to Population Ruin Table Two: Rates of Natural Increase for European Countries and the United States
The U.S. has the fastest annual rate of population growth of the G7 industrialized nations except for Canada.(7) In the U.S. the annual growth rate was 1.00% from 1990 to 1995, the latest years for which U.N. data are available. The U.S. rate was almost double the rate of the next fastest growing country, Germany, with an annual growth rate of 0.55% during the same half-decade. The annual growth rate of Japan was a low 0.25%. (Although the use of U.N. numbers is sometimes suspect because they are supplied by member nations and not independently derived, they are the best numbers we have available to us.)(8) A comparison with the rate of natural increase (RNI) for the countries of Europe further highlights the anomalous population growth in the United States. The rate of natural increase includes all population factors except migration; note the huge difference that migration makes in our growth rate. Our RNI is .6; our growth rate is 1.0. Why Is U.S. Population Growing? Why is the U.S. population growth so rapid compared to other nations? The answer, in a word, is immigration. For any nation, population growth is a function of birth and death rates, life expectancy, and net immigration.(9) During the period of 1990-95, the U.S. had an annual increase in both natural growth and net immigration greater than any other G7 nation.(10) The U.S. had an annual natural population increase of 1.752 million persons whereas Japan, the country with the second greatest natural growth and a population base half of that of the U.S., increased its population by only 306,000 persons. Additionally, the U.S. added 850,000 net immigrants per year while Germany added the second greatest number of net immigrants with an annual increase of 580,000. (Interestingly, Japan had no immigration when calculated from the U.N. data and Germany had negative natural growth during this same time.)(11) According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the population of the U.S. in 1998 was estimated to be 270 million persons.(12) Population projections depend on natural growth rate, life expectancy, and immigration.(13) By holding natural growth rate and life expectancy assumptions constant, the Bureau of the Census has estimated the effect of immigration, by itself, on population. Holding those factors constant, the U.S. population in 2050 is projected to be anywhere from 314.1 to 438.3 million persons, depending on our level of immigration. Table Three: Population Projections Under Various Immigration Scenarios
Table Three is a compilation of the Bureau of Census population projections when natural growth rate and life expectancy are held constant (at moderate levels) and net immigration is varied from 0 to 1.37 million persons per year. A net immigration level of 820,000 persons per year is the most likely level, the Bureau of the Census estimates, given 1990 immigration laws. The large effect immigration has on population is obvious. In 2050, just a short 55 years from 1995, the U.S. population will have increased 50 percent, becoming larger by approximately 131 million persons, with 80 million (61 percent) of that increase attributable to immigration. The total population will be 393.9 million persons. Immigration's Invisible Multiplier: Offspring Immigration also has an invisible multiplier to it. Although, under present law, approximately 45 million immigrants will be added to the population between 1995 and 2050, the total increase in U.S. population due to immigration will be 80 million. Why the difference? Because present immigration also adds the future children and grandchildren of those immigrants. In the case of the U.S. (with the greatest immigration rate among the G7), the addition of those offspring will bring the size of immigration-caused population growth to 80 million. To put these values in perspective, compare them with the present population of California and New York, two of our most populous states, which had populations of approximately 30 and 18 million persons in 1990.(14) If immigration is allowed to continue at its present rate, it will add the equivalent of more than two Californias and a New York to our population by 2050. Where People Live Matters Just as it is hard to judge the forest amid all the trees, it is difficult to assess the impact of immigration without taking a broader view. It has been nearly 30 years since the onset of renewed large-scale immigration to the United States, long enough to get some perspective on the impact immigration has had on population growth. The population of the United States now stands at approximately 270 million and is growing. Demographer Leon Bouvier of Tulane University tells us that had we had zero net immigration since 1970, U.S. population would be less than 250 million. Twenty million people is a significant difference, but even more important is the difference zero net migration would have made in the direction our population is headed. Instead of a growing population, the United States would have been very close to achieving population stabilization by now. Gazing into the future can also give us some reasonable perspective. Because of our immigration policies of the last 30 years, the population of the United States will now grow to at least 314 million even if we adopt a zero net migration policy immediately. As distressing as this figure may be to environmentalists, it beats the alternative scenario of 394 million if we maintain our current immigration levels, or a much higher figure if we allow immigration levels to rise. Our population will grow over the next 50 years. Whether the increase is 45 million, or 125 million, or a still greater number, is entirely up to us and the immigration policies we adopt. Controlling population growth is a global priority, not just a domestic concern of the United States. However, even modest population growth in this country has enormous global ramifications. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society explain why America's 1 percent annual growth rate is a more serious threat to the global ecology than Third World population growth rates that can exceed 3 percent annually: "Although there is a relationship between population, economic activity, and the environment, it is not simple.…Both developed and developing countries have contributed to environmental degradation. Developed countries, with 85 percent of the world's gross national product and 23 percent of its population, account for the majority of mineral and fossil fuel consumption."(15) The actual number of people inhabiting the planet is important to the health of the global ecology. Where on the planet they reside, however, is also important. Reading the Blueprint for an Ecologically Sound Future In 1996, the President's Council on Sustainable Development issued a report in which it laid out its blueprint for a healthy U.S. economic and ecologic future. The report listed ten interdependent goals that the Council considered essential to promoting prosperity, social equity, and environmental protection. Eighth on the list was the imperative that the U.S. "move toward stabilization of the population." “Based on current trends, efficiency in the use of all resources would have to increase by more than 50 percent over the next four or five decades just to keep pace with population growth.” The report noted that U.S. population was growing at a rate more than double that of the industrialized nations of Europe. As the United States moves towards a population nearing 400 million by mid-century, achieving our economic objectives and preserving the quality of our environment could be in peril. "Production and consumption in the United States together form the critical link between population and sustainability.…Problems arise when the number of people and the scale, composition, and pattern of their consumption and waste generation combine to have negative effects on the environment, the economy, and society," states the panel's report.(16) Given our current levels and patterns of consumption of all sorts of resources, including open space, the President's Council asserts that "even slight changes in U.S. consumption patterns or population size can have a significant impact on sustainability.…Based on current trends, efficiency in the use of all resources would have to increase by more than 50 percent over the next four or five decades just to keep pace with population growth."(17) A 50 percent improvement in the efficiency of our resource use is a formidable challenge, and there is a significant possibility that we might fall well short of that objective. But given the expansion of our population, this herculean effort will be directed entirely at preserving the status quo, not at making any meaningful reduction in our voracious consumption of resources. Unless we simultaneously reduce our per capita resource consumption and hold the line on population growth, we cannot reduce our impact on the global environment, a goal that all environmentalists believe is necessary. Even though the Council avoided the politically charged issue and did not explicitly call for reduction in immigration levels, the report did state that "addressing immigration is an important aspect of the broad question of population stabilization in this country."(18) Conclusions On both a global and national scale, limiting the growth of the U.S. population is an important environmental priority. As the most consumptive nation on earth, each addition to our population has a disproportionate impact on the global ecology. And even as the growing U.S. population siphons off an ever larger share of the world's resources for our own use, population growth is having a devastating effect on fragile ecosystems in our own country. Whether one's environmental focus is global or local, reining in U.S. population growth is a prerequisite to achieving a healthier, more sustainable environment. A prerequisite to controlling the size of our population is reducing our immigration levels. It is important to emphasize that the purpose of reducing immigration is not so that the rest of us can go on consuming resources, producing waste, and paving over open lands at the unsustainable pace we have maintained for decades. However, to believe that all we have to do is put the American public on a resource consumption diet is naive. We must also cease increasing our numbers – even if that entails dealing with difficult issues like immigration. CHAPTER TWO: CHOICE OR CONSEQUENCES What Do We Do About Population Growth? In his seminal 1948 book, Our Plundered Planet, Fairfield Osborne wrote that, "by the end of this century there may be still another half-billion people on the earth and that the world population in a hundred years may considerably exceed the three billion mark." Osborne was wrong. Global population has actually grown to twice the size in half the time that he predicted. Osborne would probably be astounded, not just by the speed with which human population has increased, but that a global population of 6 billion can be sustained, albeit with some considerable consequence to the environment. Like Thomas Robert Malthus a century and a half earlier, Osborne could not and did not anticipate advances in agricultural productivity and improvements in technology. Osborne's observations influenced later thinkers, including Paul Ehrlich and Garrett Hardin. In books like The Population Bomb and Living Within Limits, these scientists have warned in detail of the consequences of rapid population growth over time. They further suggested that as population size increased, there would be a tendency for migrations to accelerate in size and speed. And that is exactly what is happening. Sudden migrations in hotspots around the globe are now large, unpredictable, and likely to inflame local passions. News reports suggest a general movement of people from overcrowded, high-population-growth regions to less impoverished, more stable regions. These trends are likely to accelerate. The miscalculations of people like Malthus and Osborne have unfortunately given legitimacy and license to those who argue recklessly that there are no limits to sustainable population growth. Though those numbers may have been wrong, the concept is valid. There is a point (though no responsible person can say exactly where it is) at which human population will exceed the capacity of our planet. If we continue to test those limits, there will eventually be tragic consequences to pay. There is a second point that is often overlooked by the cornucopians who crow about the unwarranted gloom predicted by Malthus and Osborne. What is possible and what is desirable are not always the same. The United Nations Fund for Population and Development tells us that the world's population will reach 10 billion by 2040 and then level off. Maybe they are right, or maybe, like Osborne, they will be proven to have been wildly off-base. The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that U.S. population will be approaching the 400 million mark by that time. Developments that we cannot anticipate today may make these levels sustainable, but at what cost? The desire of Americans to preserve open space and protect the natural wonders that enrich our lives cannot be measured by statistics on crop yield per acre, or how many miles we will be able to squeeze out of a gallon of gasoline. Whether they belong to "environmental" organizations like the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society, most Americans share the preference of formal environmentalists to preserve the quality of life that can only be saved by limiting population growth. It is pointless for environmentalists to engage in esoteric discussions about sustainability, because sustainability is a moving target. Malthus and Osborne are wrong in 1999. In 1798 and 1948, when they penned their predictions, they were correct. Our current global population of 6 billion people could not have been sustained at the time that Malthus or Osborne were writing. The United States has introduced immigration-related population growth rates fairly unrivaled in any other industrialized nation. The desire of people to live in a country that is less crowded is not something that can be argued against with scientific data, or with assurances that technology will be developed to make an ever-increasing population possible. Environmentalism, at its core, is an expression of preferences – preference for open space over shopping malls, pristine beaches over waterfront condominiums, nature over development. These are not only valid preferences, they are the preferences of the vast majority of Americans. Because U.S. population growth is the single most important factor fueling the sorts of changes that Americans clearly do not want (namely, development-induced sprawl, congestion, and wanton destruction of the environment), the factors that are causing the population to explode must be addressed. Fertility and immigration are not only the two most important factors affecting population growth rates, they are inextricably linked. As difficult as these issues are to confront (because they reflect people's most basic aspirations and personal choices), they cannot be avoided. The question is how to handle these sensitive issues in a caring and responsible way. U.S. Population Growth: It Really Is Our Choice Stabilizing the size of our population is a preference that most Americans embrace. Whether Americans get the population future they want is really up to us. That is what makes dealing with U.S. population and immigration issues so thorny: We actually can do something about it! The ultimate size of the U.S. population will be determined by the choices we make, and with that comes the responsibility to make those choices. In some ways, it is much more comforting to get involved in global population matters and attend international conferences on the issue, because our ability to affect the outcome is small, and consequently, so is our responsibility. There are three factors that will determine the future population growth of the United States: life expectancy, fertility, and net immigration. It is both moral and desirable to maximize the first factor, life expectancy. The remaining two factors are much more a function of personal and societal choices that we are free to make (or not to make). Since the end of the baby boom era in the mid-1960s, Americans have individually and collectively made the decision to limit the number of children they have. The fertility level among Americans who can trace their ancestry here before 1970 is roughly at replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Though the desire to achieve a stable population size is not the only reason for this phenomenon, and perhaps not even the primary reason, it is empirically true that Americans have made reproductive choices that, absent immigration, would lead to population stabilization. It is the third factor, immigration, that has been driving population growth in the United States for the past 30 years. Unlike extended life expectancy, this factor is not one that most Americans consider desirable. And, unlike the personal decisions most Americans have made in lowering our fertility levels, the dramatic increase in immigration has been a result of external forces and narrow domestic interests, rather than a reflection of the national will. Immigration is not only the largest contributor to U.S. population growth, it is also the most controllable, which makes it another of those troublesome double-edged swords. The good news is that we could, by legislative action, dramatically cool this engine of population growth. The bad news is that taking such action comes with enormous responsibility that we may not be entirely comfortable with. But if we are not prepared to accept this responsibility, we also lose the right to complain about the consequences. No one who advocates dramatic reductions in immigration can avoid taking responsibility for the inevitable consequences of getting what they ask for. Successfully ending the era of mass immigration means that millions of decent, hard-working men and women all over the world may not get the opportunity to fulfill their desires to move to the United States. The alternative, of course, is to continue to allow unprecedented immigration, and allow the dramatic growth in our population to overwhelm our environment and our resources and, perhaps, create irreparable social divisions. That outcome, too, is one we will have to take responsibility for. Even the most committed immigration reform advocates acknowledge that there is a downside to what we espouse. There is, unfortunately, no ideal course of action – only better and worse ones. For people who believe that protection of the environment is a responsibility we owe to future generations, then the course that minimizes U.S. population growth is the best one available. Stabilizing our population unavoidably means limiting immigration. Doing this will not absolve us of our responsibilities to offer economic, development, and family planning assistance to people in other parts of the world, or to curb our rapacious appetite for scarce resources. However important these actions might be, they are not a substitute for slowing our own population growth. The U.S. Census Bureau has projected the nation's population under a variety of different levels of net immigration. These four projections tell us how our immigration present translates into our population future. The four projections show our population future under:
To determine what the appropriate level of immigration is to lead to the environmentally sound goal of a stabilized level of population, we need to first examine these four projections. The Skyrocketing U.S. Population
Table to Chart One: Population Projections (High, Middle, and Low), in Millions
Chart One shows the U.S. Census Bureau's projections of the population under the high, middle, and low immigration scenarios. Clearly, none of these options – the high immigration, middle immigration, and low immigration scenarios – leads to a stabilized population within the foreseeable future. Casting Our Net Immigration Level The scenarios (high net, middle net, low net, zero net) correspond to varying levels of net immigration. Net immigration is the actual number of immigrants added to the population each year – regardless of whether they come legally or illegally and after taking into consideration the fact that many immigrants become emigrants each year, usually to return to their homelands. Because of emigration and illegal emigration, net immigration is not going to be the same as the level of legal immigration. Net immigration is the number of migrants (legal and illegal) entering the country minus the number of emigrants leaving the country. By taking those factors into account, Table Four correlates each scenario with a level of legal immigration. Table Four: Breakdown of Net Immigration Levels
Thus, annual legal immigration corresponds with population projections as below: Table Five: Legal Immigration Levels Corresponding with Each Population Projection
Present immigration policy is producing a level of legal immigration (900,000 or more) that corresponds most closely with the middle series. It is, in fact, roughly one quarter of the way between the middle and the high series. In other words, we are on a path leading to a U.S population in 2050 that will be 50 to 60 percent larger than it is now. An Even Keel Through Population Stabilization Chart Two shows the U.S. Census Bureau projection from 2000 to 2050 if the United States were to receive zero net immigration (that is, if the number of people entering the country permanently every year equaled the number of people leaving permanently). What level of immigration constitutes zero net immigration? Because the annual number of emigrants from the United States is uncertain, it is difficult to be precise. The annual emigration figure used by the U.S. Census Bureau in its projection is 220,000. So, for our purposes, the annual level of immigration that corresponds to zero net immigration (and its resultant population projection) is 220,000 immigrants a year (legal and illegal). As Chart Two shows, the zero net immigration projection has the U.S. population fairly well stabilized at under 320 million by the year 2050
Choosing a Population Future A reduction in immigration would not be a dramatic departure from tradition; it is the present high level of immigration that is a dramatic departure from tradition. Since the best thing for the U.S. environment is to minimize humanity's impact by limiting population expansion, the zero net immigration option is obviously best: an annual level of legal immigration of 180,000 (or less). This is a roughly 80 percent reduction in immigration from what the Census Bureau projects as the expected average level in the future: 820,000. While such a substantial reduction might seem startling to some environmentalists, a bit of context clarifies the level. A reduction in immigration would not be a dramatic departure from tradition; it is the present high level of immigration that is a dramatic departure from tradition. In fact, a 180,000 level is more in line with immigration tradition. Recent high levels of immigration have arisen only after the law was changed in 1965 in such a way as to generate higher numbers. For the fifty years before that, average annual legal immigration to the United States was approximately 220,000. In other words, had we not so severely altered the laws in 1965, generating high levels of immigration, we would already be far along the path of stabilizing our population and limiting our damage to the environment. Immigration policy has been controversial for environmental organizations to handle. It raises difficult moral questions and challenging issues pertaining to national self-definition. The emotional nature of the debate was apparent in 1998 when the Sierra Club voted on a member-generated ballot measure that would have reinstated the club's traditional view that immigration levels should be set below levels that would fuel U.S. population growth.(19) The measure was proposed in response to a Sierra Club Board decision several years earlier to adopt a position of neutrality on the immigration question. The debate leading up to the vote pitted the club leadership against leading environmental scholars like Edward O. Wilson, Lester Brown, Gaylord Nelson, and others, as well as the membership rank and file. The Board of Directors sought to defeat the measure by arguing that regardless of the impact immigration and U.S. population growth may have on the environment, the political costs to the club of supporting reduced immigration would be too high. In the end, the measure lost 60-40 percent, but the contentious nature of the debate suggested that immigration policy will always be a tough issue for environmental groups to handle. Many committed environmentalists are unsure how to approach the immigration question. Common reactions include:
These are common sentiments, and understandable ones. But in many cases, they represent "first blush" reactions, not the final conclusions one would reach in a frank policy analysis. Over the years, many immigration reform advocates have struggled with these questions and reached some very thoughtful and honest conclusions. 1. We need to stabilize the population size. Four sources worth consulting for thoughtful answers to these questions are Living Within Limits, by Garrett Hardin (Oxford, 1992); Crowding Out the Future: U.S. Population, Immigration and Pressures on America's Natural Resources (FAIR 1993); a videotape presentation by Roy Howard Beck entitled Immigration by the Numbers, available through FAIR or the Social Contract Press at (616) 347-1171; and a report by Mark Nowak, Immigration and U.S. Population, available from Negative Population Growth (202) 667-8950, www.npg.org. There is a rough consensus that population stabilization is in the national interest, and a consensus that the country needs a population policy. "If we do not stabilize our population, progress on every other environmental front will be undone by the steady unchecked growth in human numbers," says the Audubon Society.(20) Immigration levels need to fit within that population policy. Without a return to more traditional levels of immigration – about 200,000 a year – U.S. population size will grow indefinitely. 2. Chain migration is to blame. Because of changes made to the immigration laws in 1965, the Congress unintentionally set off "chain migration" at a time when worldwide population growth is unprecedented. Keep in mind that today's immigration levels are NOT consistent with our immigration traditions. Today's numbers are far in excess of the averages over 200 years of migration. A traditional level is closer to 200,000 a year, not 1.2 million. 3. The United States is overpopulated now. From the standpoint of environmental sustainability, the U.S. is already overpopulated. Indefinite population growth means more sprawl, infrastructure, water demand, erosion, paving roads, traffic, congestion, crowding, pollution, lost habitat, loss of biodiversity, and related stresses on the environment. We cannot meet our ecological goals for controlled and managed growth, wilderness protection, habitat protection, wetlands protection, farmland protection, clean air, pure water, and a healthy biosphere with a billion people. 4. We cannot save the world through immigration policy. Any practicable U.S. immigration policy couldn't admit more than a tiny fraction of the annual worldwide increase in global population size. Nor is the benefit of remittances that immigrants send home significant enough to justify high immigration. The most important form of foreign aid the U.S. can offer the world is to encourage technically-trained, talented people to return to, or remain in, their countries of origin. 5. The problem is not immigrants themselves, but the overall numbers of immigrants. In an avalanche, each individual snowflake, with good reason, pleads 'not guilty.' Americans should not blame immigrants for trying to better themselves and their circumstances. Most immigrants are making a rational decision to move, based on an explicit understanding that friends and employers will help them get jobs and settle. The numbers reflect our policy in setting levels of legal immigration and tolerating illegal emigration. 6. It is legitimate for Americans to have concerns about the level of immigration to the United States. Most Americans like immigrants, but recognize that our immigration policy is unsustainable and detrimental. As President Bill Clinton pointed out, "We cannot be blind to the fact that immigration of this sweep and scope can threaten our union. Around the world, we have seen what can happen when people who live on the same land put race and ethnicity before country and humanity.…Ethnic pride is a good thing. But pride in one's ethnic or racial heritage must never become an excuse to withdraw from the larger American community. It does not honor diversity – it breeds divisiveness and it will weaken America."(21) 7. Immigration harms the poor more than anyone. Far from being elitist, immigration cutbacks would most concretely benefit today's poorest American workers. Studies demonstrate conclusively that the less educated and less skilled American workers are the most directly impacted by today's high immigration. 8. It is both moral and correct to uphold national borders. For the United States, the law of self-preservation is a profoundly moral framework from which to operate. Nation-states still matter around the globe. They are the basis upon which most human-centered activity is still conducted. The United States itself, although far from perfect, still represents the most successful embodiment of the high ideals of self-determination, democracy, and impartial justice. Its continued success is of great interest and importance to most of the rest of the world. And as President Theodore Roosevelt said: "The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value."(22) If one accepts the premise that limiting immigration is justified by the moral imperative to stabilize U.S. population size, we must then establish a legislative course for carrying out this goal. The best approach is to identify several of the most important changes influencing overall numbers. Keep several key points in mind: Most immigration legislation is the product of self-interested, private political forces that seek to gain through America's immigration system. These forces include immigration lawyers and their battery of corporate clients, voluntary agencies, ethnic lobbies, and foreign governments. To counter this battalion of lobbyists, environmental organizations need to adopt specific legislative counter-balancing recommendations. The laws we have today have inadvertently set off chain migration, long backlogs with attending migration momentum, extraordinary annual numbers, and an increasing U.S. fertility rate. They persist because the agencies with the power to set immigration policy do not have accountability for its consequences. As Americans living in a democracy, we have an obligation to participate in the broad questions of "how big we get" through immigration. We have an obligation to weigh in on annual immigration numbers in the same way we might support a full range of other issues of immediate concern. Americans have a responsibility to participate in the question of how large the numbers should be. We have set general levels in the past, and by retaking control of chain migration, we can reset them again in the future. Bound By a Chain of Migration Regaining control of our immigration policy and reining-in population growth means that we must make logical, yet compassionate, decisions about whom we will admit. Virtually everyone who has examined our immigration policy, including Barbara Jordan's U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, has concluded that to restore any semblance of discipline to the system, we must end the phenomenon known as chain migration. Under the current law, immigrants are entitled to bring to this country not only their spouses and unmarried minor children, but extended relatives as well. The most problematic of these extended family immigration entitlements is the one that permits people to petition for their adult siblings. These brothers and sisters, who generally arrive with their own families, can then bring in-laws, who eventually are entitled to bring their extended families. In other words, a single immigrant who is admitted for needed job skills, or out of humanitarian concerns, or for some other reason, can become the first link in an unbreakable chain of family migration. This sort of open-ended promise is poor public policy by almost every standard of measurement. It is nepotistic; it removes control of the selection process from the American people and their elected representatives; and it is self-perpetuating and leads to dramatic population growth. Each time we admit a legal immigrant to the United States today, the queue of people who are entitled to follow grows longer, not shorter. In spite of nearly doubling the number of annual legal admissions since the start of the 1970s, the backlog of would-be immigrants who have applied to come here has grown to more than 3 million as a consequence of our policy of chain migration. While respecting other cultures that view extended family differently than our own, it is neither prudent nor possible to promise every person who chooses to settle here the right to reunite entire extended families. In the first place, it is the initial immigrant who disunites an extended family. And, in the second place, each succeeding immigrant in the chain breaks up another extended family. In perpetuating what sounds like a high-minded policy, we are chasing an objective that can never be met and triggering an environmentally destructive increase in our population.
Breaking the Chain of Migration Goal #1: Support a move from chain migration to nuclear family migration (spouse and unmarried, minor children). The only way to impose a manageable ceiling on overall immigration numbers is to:
In 1995, a prestigious Presidential-Congressional commission headed by the late Barbara Jordan studied this problem and came to an important conclusion: extended family preferences "have no credibility." Continuous extended family preferences inevitably create unmanageable backlogs, long waiting times, and rising numbers. FAIR recommends environmental groups consider moving toward a system of "packet" or "nuclear family" migration, by supporting an end to chain migration through the elimination of the brother/sister preference and the adult son/daughter preference. At a minimum, the legislative agenda of any organization committed to population stabilization in the U.S. must support the elimination of the sibling and adult offspring preferences. These are core links in the chain, and the Jordan Commission has recommended they be eliminated or at least temporarily suspended until order can be returned to the system. Goal #2: Support a program to gradually move us from one million immigrants a year down to 200,000 (including a time-out on most immigration). Chain migration has produced some structural problems that make the 200,000 number difficult to reach. There are currently over three million people in backlogs waiting to come in. We have "over-promised" what we can deliver, by granting millions of relatives – brothers, sisters, adult offspring – a future right to enter. These backlogs could take fifteen years to eliminate even if no new applications were filed. Therefore, FAIR recommends a blanket moratorium on future immigration other than legitimate refugees and spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens in order to eliminate the backlogs and, in ten years, get a fresh start. Perhaps it sounds drastic to suggest a time-out on immigration. But keep in mind that throughout most of this century, immigration levels rarely exceeded 300,000; over the past twenty-five years, Americans have been asked to accept an extraordinary level of immigration. So the question is: why not try it for five or ten years? If massive immigration is vital to the national need, that will be apparent in short order. In the meantime, to achieve a slowdown in runaway U.S. population growth, we need to try a course different from the one we are hurtling down today. Goal #3: Support a sustainable cap that can be enforced. In addition to restoring the principle of nuclear family as the priority, we also need to set an enforceable cap. Of course, setting an annual cap at 200,000 is ineffective unless it can be enforced. One can support visas for any deserving person – workers, the gifted, etc. – so long as the ground rules are (a) that the person can only bring in a spouse and unmarried, minor children, and (b) that any special, new programs be offset by corresponding reductions in other areas. In other words, we need an immigration "budget" and the discipline to live within it. How can a cap be sustained? Determine the number of immediate family visas in the current year, and deduct them from the cap. By moving toward nuclear family migration, the entire budget of immediate relative visas can be deducted in the year the primary immigrant enters. There must be discipline in the system. Right now, every time a special interest group comes to Congress demanding visas for a particular group, the policy response is just to add new visa numbers. Like a license to print money, Congress's power to "print visas" can be and is abused. There should be no new programs without corresponding reductions in other areas. The only way to counter the abuse of "special interest" programs is to set a cap that requires numerical tradeoffs so it is not exceeded. For example, if Congress wants to grant amnesty for one group, if must offset future visa numbers from that country, or from the entire next year's budget, to compensate. This is one of the biggest legislative challenges in retaking control of the overall numbers. But those concerned with population growth must take a stand opposing special immigration programs and other schemes to make it clear to legislators that visas cannot be traded for political favors or votes. Conclusions While it is true that technological advances have increased food and other resources, the critical question for our long-term survival is whether any apparent increase in America's human carrying capacity is truly permanent. Or will the associated ecological costs of population growth undermine the ability of the North American continent – the area the Audubon Society has referred to as "the most overpopulated…on Earth" – to sustain our numbers for the long term? Until we know the answer to these questions, don't we owe it to our remaining natural habitat, our precious resources, animal and plant life – as well as to our grandchildren – to rethink our immigration policy? CHAPTER THREE: SPRAWL CITY, USA Cause and Effect: Immigration and Sprawl The American Farmland Trust's list of top 20 regions endangered by sprawl:
When most Americans think of environmental degradation, they tend to notice the brown layer of smog that hangs over their city, or a fetid river or lake that can no longer be enjoyed. But perhaps the most serious environmental problem facing mankind is sprawl. As human populations increase, they spread out and interfere with ecosystems that are vital to the health and survival of the planet. Unlike air and water pollution, which can be controlled by changing what we do, environmental degradation caused by sprawl is not a consequence of what we do, but rather a result of our just being there. Because cities have tended to spring up in close proximity to agricultural areas or along the coasts to take advantage of seaports, when these population centers begin to sprawl, they encroach upon prime farmland or ecologically sensitive coastal land, or both. California's great Central Valley is one example of a vital area being overwhelmed by urban sprawl. The Central Valley is not only America's fruit and vegetable basket, but it also provides produce for export that is essential to the people who depend on the valley's abundance and vital to our own economy. According to a 1997 survey by the American Farmland Trust, the United States lost 4.3 million acres of valuable farmland between 1982 and 1992 to suburban sprawl.(23) The cities that compose the heart of the Central Valley, Sacramento, Modesto, Stockton, Fresno, and Bakersfield, are now experiencing faster population growth than even Los Angeles County. Fresno County, in the heart of the valley, is the largest agricultural producing county in the nation today. But, the American Farmland Trust reminds us, it was only 40 years ago that the most productive agricultural county in America was Los Angeles. Urban and suburban sprawl, therefore, do more than just mar the landscape. They result in the most productive or ecologically sensitive lands in the world being paved over for roads, tract houses, and shopping malls. Moving In, Moving Out: Secondary Migration One of the common arguments put forth by opponents of reducing immigration is that much of the sprawl that threatens ecologically sensitive or agriculturally vital lands is a result of internal migration of Americans, not the influx of new immigrants. This contention appears to be borne out by studies such as the American Farmland Trust's most threatened list. Indeed, most of the areas on it are not high immigration receiving areas. Rather, they are affected by the phenomenon known as secondary migration. The intense population growth these regions are experiencing occurs as people leave crowded, aging urban areas in search of more room and fewer hassles. To some degree, this would be happening with or without immigration or population growth. The slash and burn mentality has been a normal human pattern of habitation since the beginning of time. Only now there are far more of us, and our ability to dramatically alter our surroundings is infinitely greater. It is to be expected that people would want to leave the run-down urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest for the dramatic beauty and gentle climate of Portland or Seattle, or the verdant rolling hills of Virginia's horse country. In addition, modern technology is eliminating the necessity for many people to live in, or very close to, urban areas. As telecommuting replaces actual commuting (an environmentally positive development), it has given people the freedom to move to more friendly surroundings. These developments are also, in part, responsible for the growth of exurbia, as people seek the advantages of the country, while still being close enough to enjoy the amenities of the big city. But just as there are commonly accepted "push" factors that drive international migration, demographers also recognize "push" factors as part of the phenomenon of internal migration. No doubt, the natural wonders and economic vibrancy of the Pacific Northwest or the Rocky Mountains are "pull" factors drawing Americans from other parts of the country. But, as University of Michigan demographer William H. Frey observes, the influx of large numbers of foreign immigrants into some areas of the United States has also fueled an exodus of the native population. In a 1994 article, Frey wrote that "Immigrants exert a powerful influence on the U.S., but only in a handful of states."(24) However, Frey and other demographers detect a ripple effect that has an impact on much of the rest of the nation. "As [the immigrants] moved in, large numbers of whites moved away from these areas.…A somewhat different group of states, most of which are located in the South Atlantic, Pacific and Mountain regions, are magnets for internal migrants." In subsequent studies, demographers have noted a "black flight" phenomenon as well, as American-born blacks have been leaving the old industrial cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and California, returning to the areas of the South that their grandparents left earlier in the century. Recent Census Bureau data support Frey's assertion of a direct cause-and-effect relationship between external immigration and internal migration among the established U.S. population. A January 1, 1998, article in the New York Times reported:
These facts are cited by some big city mayors, like New York's Rudolph Giuliani, as evidence that large-scale foreign immigration is necessary for their cities' survival. In reality, what they show is that the more immigrants pour into a particular area, the greater the stampede of the native-born population heading for the exits. Desparate Gamble: Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas has been America's fastest growing city for the past decade, increasing its population during the 1990s by more than 40 percent. Las Vegas also happens to be situated in the middle of an inhospitable desert. As Las Vegas has mushroomed from a small gambling mecca into a sprawling metropolitan area of more than 1 million people, it has left a giant footprint on the sensitive desert ecology and strained water resources all over the western United States. If ever there was an area where God did not intend for large numbers of people to live, it is Las Vegas, Nevada. Although Las Vegas features a significant and growing foreign-born population, the boom has been fueled largely by domestic migration. Marc Perry, a Census Bureau demographer, estimates that 80 percent of the population explosion in Las Vegas is a result of internal relocation of Americans from other parts of the United States, primarily Southern California. According to Clark County's (Nevada) Department of Comprehensive Planning, 29 percent of the new residents who settled in the county during 1993 moved there from just five counties in Southern California – Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino. All of these counties were simultaneously experiencing a high influx of immigrant newcomers.(26) No doubt some "pull" factors, especially growing economic opportunity, induced large numbers of Southern Californians to relocate in the Las Vegas region. But Frey sees "push" factors at work here as well. Frey speculates "that low-skilled and low-income whites and blacks are leaving some major cities in the face of increased competition for jobs from immigrants, or when they see economic opportunities elsewhere.…This is what happens to the native born.…They have other options. When they see increased competition, they go elsewhere."(27) Environmentalists would be hard-pressed to think of a worse metropolitan area to be our nation's fastest growing one than Las Vegas, smack in the middle of the water-starved Mojave Desert. Yet until immigration-driven population growth is slowed, or the region just runs out of water, this rapid population growth is likely to continue. The Great Wall: Portland, Oregon Unlike Las Vegas, water is not a problem for another of America's fastest growing cities, Portland, Oregon. In this jewel of the Pacific Northwest, land use and protection of the surrounding forests and rivers are the most pressing ecological concerns as the area's population explodes. Recognizing that the area's surroundings were its most precious assets, city planners took steps in the late-1970s to manage growth. The plans of two decades ago are now confronting the realities of population growth. In 1979 Portlanders drew an imaginary line in the forest beyond which they would not allow the city to expand. That line, which encompasses 364 square miles, is about to be breached. "[W]hat may be the most successful experiment in urban-growth management in America…[is] now imperiled by its own success in establishing Portland as an Eden of the West," reported the Los Angeles Times. "By the mid-1990s, its population was nearly 40,000 above the original forecasts, fueled in part by fleeing Californians."(28) Bowing to the realities of a population that is growing by 50,000 new residents a year, local authorities have been forced to approve an expansion of what is sometimes called "The Great Wall of Portland." By 2000, an additional 4,500 acres of land outside the original 1979 demarcations will be turned over to developers for the construction of residential housing and other facilities to accommodate the additional population. The line having been breached once, there is little reason to expect that it will not be expanded again and again, as the region attempts to cope with a fast-growing population. While the idea of trampling on still more of the Northwest's environment is anathema to environmentalists, the alternatives are anathema to politicians. In a conflict of interests of this type, it is not difficult to guess who will prevail. The price of holding the line on Portland's outward expansion as the population continues to grow is skyrocketing real estate costs, higher taxes, and greater urban congestion. Quite simply, it is unrealistic to expect Portland's population to stop growing as long as the country's population continues to grow rapidly, and as long as immigration continues to serve as a "push" factor driving people to seek better places to live. While some environmentalists argue that the best way to stop the immigration-driven expansion of the U.S. population is to address the "push" factors in the immigrants' homelands, they ignore the "push" factors that are swelling the population of cities like Portland. Ironically, unlike the problems that make people want to pick up and leave Mexico, or Pakistan, or the Philippines – over which we have very little control – we can affect one of the most significant push factors that is driving people away from New York and Los Angeles. That factor, of course, is the influx of immigrants into these areas, which is forcing Americans to seek sanctuary in places like Portland. Lot Full: Seattle, Washington "We exceeded the capabilities of our natural environment and our infrastructure long ago. That's the time to hang out the 'lot full' sign on the gates of Seattle," said a long-time Seattle resident at a citizens' forum discussing the city's explosive population growth.(29) Like its neighbor to the south, Seattle is experiencing intense growing pains. Metropolitan Seattle is bracing for an onslaught of nearly a million new residents by 2020, much to the chagrin of those who treasure the spectacular natural beauty of the Puget Sound region. Hoping to stave off the inevitable, local communities are making a last ditch effort to discourage further development. In Redmond, home of Microsoft, the city declared a yearlong moratorium on commercial development after learning that tax revenues were not keeping pace with the costs of urban expansion. "We've allowed [growth] to happen too fast. I think it's appropriate for people to say, 'Time out,'" said Redmond's mayor, Rosemarie Ives.(30) In nearby Issaquah, voters rejected a $53 million bond issue that was earmarked for school construction. Issaquah residents are hoping that if they don't build them, they won't come. But they keep coming anyway. Like other rapidly-growing areas, Seattle is a victim of both its own natural attractiveness and of immigration. Even if the United States had a stable population size, it is hard to believe that there would not be internal migration to this magnificent part of the country. Immigration is exacerbating the internal migration trend and directly adding to Seattle's growth woes. According to INS data, Seattle is the 17th most popular destination of newly arriving immigrants from other countries, attracting about 10,000 such newcomers each year.(31) And, like Las Vegas and Portland, Seattle is a very popular refuge for stressed-out Californians. As in Portland, Seattle is attempting to hold the line on urban sprawl. But a growing population without flexible boundaries is sure to become politically problematic. The law of supply-and-demand is fueling a runaway housing market, where home prices are increasing dramatically as fewer single family homes can be built and those that are, are crammed closer together. With roads and freeways choked with traffic, local taxpayers are being asked to ante-up billions of dollars for road construction and mass transit. However, even that is likely to be only a temporary fix, as history has taught us that new roads and transportation only encourage new development and settlement, which necessitate still further expansion. The simple reality is that Seattle is going to continue to grow. The only real questions are, how much, how fast, how far – and how great an impact this growth will have on the surrounding estuaries, rivers, streams, and rain forests that are so vital to the ecology of the area. The answer depends on whether America chooses an immigration/population policy that leads us to stabilize our population at about 320 million in the 21st century, or whether we continue down a path that is leading us to half a billion people by the middle of the century with no end to growth in sight. Ground Zero: Washington, DC Communities all across the United States worry about how to keep Washington at a distance. For most of the country, the problem is figurative. To many Maryland and Virginia residents, the encroachment of Washington is literal. While people in the rest of the country try to hang onto local autonomy in the face of an expanding Washington bureaucracy, folks in surrounding counties are simply being swallowed up by the capital's sprawl. Like other metropolitan areas experiencing rapid growth, the Washington area suffers from a population chain reaction. The metropolitan area is the destination of about 25,000 new immigrants each year(32) in a region that increased its population by 300,000 between 1990 and 1995, or approximately 50,000 annually.(33) (The actual impact of immigration is even greater, as a significant portion of the "natural" increase is due to births to immigrants who have settled in the area.) Having experienced an earlier episode of "white flight," the District has had a largely black population, with the whites settling in nearby Prince George's and Montgomery Counties, Maryland, and in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax Counties in Virginia. With a wave of new immigrants from Central America and Asia moving into the city and the immediate suburbs, many inner city blacks have settled in Prince George's County, while white suburbanites have moved even farther out into what used to be rural areas of Maryland and Virginia. The "odd man out" in this game of demographic musical chairs is the country folks who have seen open space, farmland, and a centuries-old way of life quickly transformed into residential subdivisions and strip malls. In metropolitan Washington, sprawl is partly a result of the desire of more affluent residents to escape the consequences of immigration. These deteriorations in the quality of life include urban congestion, declining standards of public education as schools are overwhelmed by the burdens of large numbers of non-English-speaking children, and growing burdens for public assistance. In the early 1990s, amid a booming economy, Virginia experienced a 34 percent increase in its child poverty rate, with most of the increase occurring in the high immigration counties around Washington, D.C.(34) In both states surrounding the capital, the enrollment of non-English-speaking students doubled during the decade between 1984 and 1994, with most of this increase affecting the suburban Washington counties.(35) The response of many long-time residents to these immigration-related burdens is to seek tranquility in the far-reaches of Washington's exurbia. Wilderness and farmland in the region are being converted for residential and commercial use at a pace of 28 acres per day. Between 1990 and 2010, it is estimated that 309,000 acres will be paved, bulldozed, or built over to accommodate the area's burgeoning population.(36) Rural Loudoun County, a region in northern Virginia of rolling green hills and bridle paths, is the latest area to be swept over by an ever-expanding metropolitan area. In the past 15 years, this once bucolic county has seen its population double and it is on pace to repeat this redoubtable feat. The county increases its population by about 7,000 residents each year, and 3,000 new homes go up every year to accommodate that growth. Even more astounding, the county has approved plans for a twelve-fold increase in commercial and business development, from about 14 million square feet to 170 million square feet.(37) In addition to the prodigious pace of urban sprawl, the growth of the Washington metropolitan region places further stress on the ecologically fragile Chesapeake Bay. Already, some 40 percent of the Bay's surrounding forests have succumbed to developers' bulldozers, and the area's population growth threatens still more of this important ecosystem. The Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, sustaining countless plant, animal, and marine species, and serves as a natural filtration system for numerous streams and rivers extending from New York to Southern Virginia.(38) In Washington, perhaps more clearly than in any of the other examples given here, the nexus between immigration, population growth and urban sprawl is evident. Half (and much more, if births to immigrants are calculated into the equation) of the actual growth is directly due to immigration. Meanwhile, most of the secondary migration within the expanding metropolitan area is a result of people seeking to escape the social conditions that accompany mass immigration. Take away immigration from the Washington area, and much of the open space slated for development over the next decade or so could be spared. When Disney planned to open a historical theme park in Northern Virginia (a plan that was barely stopped in time), local residents "were concerned about the proposed park's potential for damage to northern Virginia in the form of increased pollution, traffic congestion, and urban sprawl.…Despite Disney's frequent pledges to develop Disney's America with sensitivity to environmental concerns, it quickly became apparent that the nation's most prominent environmental organizations were weighing in with the opposition.…Primary concern was expressed for the anticipated increase in pollution from automobiles travelling to and from the park, and for the extent to which this increase would damage the Washington area's efforts to comply with mandated reductions in its pollution level.…[The American Farmland Trust] held a news conference…expressing concern that Disney's America could 'wipe out productive farms in Northern Virginia.' " Within a 40-mile radius (or one hour's drive) of the proposed Disney site, according to Trust figures, were 6,000 farms and 1.2 million acres of agricultural land, accounting for 14% of all farmland in Virginia, as well as 57% of its orchards. Getting Goofy in Virginia: The Politics of Disneyfication, Michael P. Brooks, Arizona State University, 1997. Conclusions It is impossible to assign an exact weight to the role immigration plays in the phenomenon of urban sprawl that is affecting many areas of the country. Nor is it possible to deny that immigration is a significant factor either in the actual growth of an area, or as a cause for secondary migration. It is fair to assume that, even with a stable population, people would move from one part of the country to another in search of better economic opportunities, better schools, better climates, better housing values, and a better quality of life. The additional factors of rapid population growth, and the social, cultural, and economic displacement that goes along with high immigration are making it impossible to hold the line on urban sprawl, even in communities where there is an overwhelming public desire to do so. As our population hurtles toward half a billion by the middle of the new century, it will become physically (and probably politically) impossible to preserve the land, the ecology, and the natural resources of forests, deserts, and coastal areas. As we will see in the next chapter, our immigration policy is not only importing rapid population growth, but also cultural values that will make the cause of conservationism ever more difficult. CHAPTER FOUR: THE GROWTHMONGERS Constructomania: The Growth of Sprawl As the last chapter illustrates, the phenomenon of urban sprawl is the result of a combination of factors, not the least of which is population growth. The more people who live in a city, state, or nation, the more houses and apartments will be required. To environmentalists, this population growth translates into an assault on open space, wildlife habitat, and the ecology. To real estate developers, building contractors, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, and others, population growth means business and jobs. Immigrant Boom to Boost Real Estate Market, Ernst & Young Says by Janet Morrissey, Dow Jones Newswires, May 6, 1998 NEW YORK – An immigration wave in the U.S. could mean big business opportunities for real estate developers, builders and investors, an Ernst & Young Kenneth Leventhal study said. Based on current immigrant projections, the study estimated that 30 million housing units will be needed by the year 2050 to accommodate the immigration boom. This works out to be a 27% increase in the country's current housing stock.… About one million immigrants have been pouring into the U.S. each year since 1991, the report said. It anticipates two-thirds of the country's population increase – or about 80 million people – over the next 50 years will come from immigrants and their descendants. In 1996, 25 million people, or about 9% of the population, had been born outside the U.S., with California topping the list with 8 million, or about 25% of that state's population, being foreign-born.… Barring an economic recession or tighter immigration restrictions, the Ernst & Young report anticipates Hispanics will represent 25% of the total population in 2050, up from 9% in 1995. Asians will account for 9%, up from 3% in 1995. The white population will decline to 50% from 75% over the same period, while the black population will rise slightly to 14% from 12%. The newcomers and their offspring will create new demand for housing, retail space, manufacturing and warehouse facilities, and office space, as well as greater demand for educational facilities to help them improve their job and professional skills. Not surprisingly, lobbyists representing the real estate and construction trade groups have taken up the cause of maintaining high levels of immigration and were an integral part of a coalition of interest groups that scuttled immigration reductions in 1996. The Wall Street Journal, the advocacy mouthpiece for unfettered immigration, reported in 1996 that, "To builders, brokers and bankers…foreign buyers fuel demand for U.S. housing. These immigrants constitute 250,000 household formations every year. The housing industry sees immigrants, in addition to late-buying younger baby-boomers, as an antidote to the relatively small generation of 'baby busters' now entering their 30s."39 Stanley Duobinis, the director of forecasting for the National Association of Home Builders, projects immigration as being vital to the health of his industry. When Americans made the decision in the mid-1960s to have fewer children and move toward population stabilization, it was not good news for the building construction industry. "We expected the housing market to be considerably smaller because of the baby-bust generation. Luckily, we're finding that more immigrants are filling the hole. It's really critical," Duobinis said.(40) The industry is taking special pains to cater to unique characteristics and desires of the emerging immigrant home-buying market. With millions of immigrants pouring into the United States, all chasing their own versions of the American Dream, which inevitably includes "a house with a two-car garage," observed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, builders are anxious to do business. "This has the $800 billion housing industry salivating," contends the paper.(41) Salivating is not an overstatement. According to a 1998 analysis by the Ernst & Young Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group, continued immigration at its current pace would necessitate the construction of 19.5 million homes and 10.5 million rental units by 2050.(42) U.S. immigration policy, in a sense, has become a full employment guarantee for the real estate and construction industries. "It is a sleeping giant that's waking up," observes Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "We now have in place a population that is going to push up housing prices regardless of what happens in the global economy."(43) The search for affordable housing is a direct factor in the sprawl of metropolitan areas, as middle income people are forced to move farther and farther away from the urban core. "After running up against rising home prices, droves of Southern California home buyers are heading inland into bone-dry valleys and wind-swept desert areas in search of affordable new housing," the Los Angeles Times reported.(44) As long as America maintains a rapid population growth rate, the construction industry will not be forced to discipline itself in the same way that other industries have been forced to do in the interest of preserving the environment. As our population careens toward half a billion by the middle of the next century, new subdivisions will spring up faster than the crabgrass on millions of new chemically-treated lawns. Moving toward population stabilization need not spell doom for the home building industry. Rather it can mean an opportunity to profit, even as the outward drift of suburbs and exurbs is checked. Instead of focusing on accommodations for an expanding population, the construction industry could find virtually unlimited opportunity in replacing and retrofitting older housing and commercial stock. One of the chief complaints that environmentalists have about Americans' wasteful lifestyles is the inefficiency of our homes that results in our disproportionate consumption of the world's energy resources and emissions of greenhouse gases. So long as the construction trades can make a profit by building quickly, inefficiently, and outward, there is no incentive for them to turn their attention to sustainability. Moving toward population stabilization would not only slow the sprawl of urban areas, it would likely result in a more efficient, less polluting society as the construction industry learns to profit by replacing the existing housing and commercial stock with more efficient structures. Sprawl Goes Multicultural One of the major obstacles that has kept many environmentalists from openly advocating immigration reductions is the idea that it is elitist. Environmentalists tend to be whiter, better educated, and more affluent than the rest of the population, while immigrants today are less-educated and emanate mostly from poorer non-white countries. There is, understandably, some self-consciousness among well-meaning environmentalists that calls for immigration reductions might be viewed by others as rooted in baser motives. The environmental battle to protect the wilderness from the steady march of the real estate developers is no different from previous efforts to prevent oil drilling in Alaska's fragile tundra, or along the Pacific and Gulf coasts. The response of the construction trades to proposals to limit immigration and, therefore, population growth, has been not only predictable, but is strikingly similar to that of the auto industry when the idea was first proposed that they improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Exxon, Chevron, and the rest of the oil industry argued that America's energy needs could not possibly be met without access to oil deposits in environmentally sensitive areas. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler insisted that there was no way they could make cleaner burning, more fuel efficient cars and still make them affordable to the public. However, when faced with reality, these industries learned to compensate and found a way to do the "impossible" and still thrive. America's energy needs are being met, and at lower costs than 25 years ago, without additional risk to fragile ecologies. Americans today drive more fuel efficient, less polluting automobiles, at no more cost than the gas guzzling, carbon monoxide spewing vehicles of a generation ago. But these improvements would not have happened had environmentalists not stood up to the powerful corporate interests that insisted that business-as-usual was the only way they could survive There are other cultural aspects to the problem as well. In some cases it is more than just the need to accommodate a growing population that creates pressure expanding the bounds of a city. Deep-seated cultural values that some immigrants bring with them must also be reckoned with. Real Estate Directions, Inc., a market research company in San Diego, has found that nearly a quarter of Asian immigrant home buyers will only consider buying brand new homes, compared with only 8 percent of the general public that demands new construction.(45) Whole new development projects, stretching farther and farther afield, have been undertaken to meet the particular needs of immigrant home buyers. In some newly sprouted Southern California housing developments favored by recent immigrants from Asia, no street address ends with the numeral 4, which is considered an unlucky number by many Chinese. Other ethnic groups have their own culture-bound preferences that often lead to developers breaking new ground to build houses that meet these specifications. Each time this happens, a little more open space disappears, water and sewage hook-ups have to be extended, and a commercial infrastructure developed to serve the needs of new communities. There are also the cultural values of our own society that must be reckoned with. Part of the American culture is the aspiration of owning a home with a small plot of land. It is a part of our culture that is now threatened by our rapid population growth. To those who place economic activity as the highest human value, this is a part of the American culture that is just going to have to change. "One imperative change is that Southern California must rethink its attitudes about housing density," writes Los Angeles Times business columnist James Flanigan. "Many of its communities have a virulent not-in-my-backyard syndrome of not wanting multifamily housing – much less rental properties – built amid their 'single-family cul-ture.'"(46) While advocates of reducing immigration and population growth are the ones who are often accused of elitism, it is in fact the advocates of unrestrained growth, like Flanigan, who embody the elitist point of view. If one reads carefully, what they are saying is that middle income Americans, who cannot afford half a million dollars or more to buy a home, must change their expectations of a good life. What they are saying is that the concerns of those with an economic interest to build on every square inch of available land must take precedence over the desire of ordinary citizens to own a home with some rose bushes and tomato plants in the backyard. Developers' Gain, Our Loss There is an old vaudeville joke about a man going in to see a psychiatrist regarding a problem with his brother. "My brother thinks he's a chicken," the man tells the psychiatrist. "Have you tried telling him that he isn't?" asks the doctor. "We would," replies the man, "but we need the eggs." The profile of the typical environmentalist tells us something very important and, while it may not be comfortable, it reinforces the need for reducing immigration and slowing population growth. A culture of environmentalism can only exist in a society in which people have already "made it." When people feel secure, can put food on the table, and have a few dollars in the bank, then, and only then, do they have the luxury of worrying about old growth forests and spotted owls. For someone struggling to get an economic foothold in a new society, a new subdivision on the outskirts of town, where homes are perhaps a bit more affordable, is a much greater concern than the long-term harm that construction might cause the environment. Whether it is subsistence farmers in the Amazon rain forest, or a growing population pushing back the frontiers of a modern American city, the immediate concern is obtaining what is perceived to be life's necessities. Concern about the ecology comes much later. This tired old gag is a metaphor for the problem this country has in facing the issue of population growth. Nearly everyone believes that it is necessary for the U.S. population to stop growing – sooner rather than later – but so many important interests in our country have come to rely on that population growth. Every immigrant who arrives in this country is a worker or a potential worker, and a consumer. Where there are workers and consumers, there are employers and businesses who may bemoan the negative effects of population growth, but have become dependent on the eggs. The interests of those who benefit from immigration and a growing population are not illegitimate. To the business owner who is struggling to remain competitive in the global market, the low-cost labor provided by an immigrant labor force may indeed provide the margin between viability and bankruptcy. To the teacher in an inner city school whose classroom is filled with immigrant children, those kids are a livelihood. To the real estate developer, an expanding population translates into a demand for new home construction, and paychecks for his employees and subcontractors. Having started down the road of high immigration and rapid population growth, we have created a constituency for its perpetuation. Even those who most fervently believe that immigration should be curtailed and population growth slowed must acknowledge that doing so will affect them negatively in some way in the near term. This must be balanced, however, against the much greater long-term harm that will result from continuing down our present path. Environmentalists are people who have been willing to face up to these trade-offs. No environmentalist has ever denied that there is some economic price to be paid for treating sewage, controlling emissions, saving endangered species, or preserving natural resources. The environmental response has always been that a few hundred dollars more on the sticker price of an automobile to reduce carbon monoxide emissions is a price worth paying. Forgoing the oil that lies beneath Alaska's North Slope or off California's coast is a legitimate sacrifice to make for protecting these magnificent national treasures. Similarly, confronting immigration and population growth will require the same sort of mature analysis on the part of environmentalists. No one can deny that curtailing immigration will be a short-term hardship on prospective immigrants. No one ever said we have to feel good about saying no to people, even when it is the right thing to say. When environmentalists have fought and won battles to prevent cutting in old growth forests, they have done so with the full knowledge that people were going to be hurt. Loggers lose their jobs when forests are protected. Sawmill workers can't make mortgage payments when the timber stops rolling in. We don't feel good about these consequences, but what is right and what feels good are not always the same thing. Stopping America's rapid population growth is the right thing to do. The immediate and tangible interests of the constituency for population growth must be weighed against the long-term and more general interest of preserving environmental quality, open space, and natural resources. The challenge posed by immigration and the resulting population growth is really no different from other issues that environmentalists have confronted over the years. Who Benefits From Mass Immigration? In order to argue against high immigration, it is important to understand the interests of those who are most likely to be harmed by curtailing immigration. The various pro-immigration, pro-population growth interests have some legitimacy, and cannot be cavalierly dismissed. The immigrants themselves It is a statement of the obvious to say that immigration benefits immigrants. People do not leave their homelands, their cultures, and their ways of life and move to a new and sometimes bewildering society unless there is a substantial pay-off. More than any other concern about ending mass immigration, this is the one that gives the environmental community the greatest trouble. When people choose to leave their homelands and settle in the United States, most do so in order to achieve greater economic prosperity for themselves and their families. A relative few seek to escape harsh and despotic governments and achieve greater political freedom, to get away from stifling cultures that limit their own personal aspirations, or to live with family members who have already settled in the United States. These are all understandable motivations for people to seek to migrate. Business interests We live in a highly competitive global economy. American businesses no longer merely vie with competitors across town, or in the next state; they now must confront challenges from businesses all around the globe. This condition is only likely to intensify in the coming years. An abundant supply of immigrant labor is a valuable asset to some business interests in the United States. While the interests of faceless businesses do not evoke the same sort of sympathy as individual immigrants, these concerns must also be weighed. Service providers Immigrants are human beings and have human needs. They need houses to live in, roads to drive on, health care when they get sick, schools for their kids to attend, and have countless other human needs. All of these needs provide work and profits for the businesses that render the products and services that immigrants consume. While environmentalists see a growing population as a threat to natural habitats or a cause of urban sprawl, many businesses see a growing population as an expanding customer base. It is this third interest category that must be of concern to environmentalists seeking to slow sprawl and consumption. It is human consumption that poses the greatest danger to our environment. As our population grows it consumes more of everything – land, water, species' habitats – while producing ever increasing amounts of environmental waste. This is not an effort to blame immigrants for these problems, but rather a statement of fact. Immigration is the leading cause of population growth in the United States. Population growth is the leading cause of environmental degradation. One or the Other, or Both: The Ways to Preserve Our Environment There are only two possible options for preserving America's environment and resources. We can either reduce our per capita consumption as our population increases, or we can limit the growth of our population. Americans have reduced consumption and waste emissions in some areas. We use less fossil fuel per capita than we did 25 years ago (although because of population growth our aggregate use of these fuels is roughly the same). Better emissions and effluent standards have resulted in notable improvements in air and water quality. We recycle more now and have cut down on per capita production of solid waste. These are all achievements to be proud of, although we can still do better. But in other respects, our rapidly growing population has made things far worse. There are strains on the environment caused by population growth that cannot be offset by conservation. People require space. As our numbers increase our use of land for human habitation expands as well. Often, this expansion takes place on prime agricultural land, diminishing our capacity to provide food for a growing population. Water is another resource whose consumption will inevitably increase as the population does. While there is a sinful misuse of our fresh water resources in America, there is only so far that per capita consumption of this most basic resource can be scaled back. Environmental waste also necessarily increases with population. While many environmentalists may believe that it is incumbent upon Americans to drastically reduce consumption and emissions, there is also political reality to be reckoned with. Governmental restrictions on where people can live, their use of resources, or other limits on what most Americans consider to be their personal freedoms will not sit well with voters. The other option is to limit population growth in the United States. Compared with reforming the personal habits of 270 million Americans, changing our immigration policy to admit fewer people is a far more feasible, sensible, and fair scenario. Bringing immigration back to levels that will not drive massive population increases in perpetuity will not be easy, nor can it happen all at once. However, a several step roll-back of immigration levels is achievable, without causing a sudden shock to the economic and social constituencies that want or depend on it. From the environmentalist's point of view, the most desirable policy would be a combination of the two available options. A vigorous policy of conservation that reduces consumption, emissions, and sprawl to the greatest degree politically possible, and a reduction in immigration levels to the point where they will not drive rapid population increases, would provide the best long-term scenario for our environmental future. Conclusions The United States has developed a constituency for high immigration and urban sprawl. We have large numbers of new people settling in this country, necessitating an increase of our housing stock and expansion of the territory on which to build. Coupled with population growth, there is the understandable desire of long-term residents to move away from urban centers that are not only congested, but are thrown into cultural and social turmoil as large numbers of immigrants move in. And, finally, there are huge profits to be made from never-ending population growth. Billions of dollars are at stake for businesses that play a role in construction of the new houses, roads, and commercial centers needed to accommodate a growing population. Policy measures adopted by our government can alter these factors. By taking steps to reduce immigration, we can slow population growth in our country, and lessen the desire of many of those already here to move farther and farther out, consuming new lands and new resources. And we can redirect the legitimate profit motives of the construction industry. Without a rapidly growing population, this important sector of our economy would likely turn its attention to upgrading the current housing and commercial stock, making it more efficient and more environmentally friendly. Ironically, the resulting reduction in American demand for energy and other resources might reduce the desire of people in other countries to leave their homes in the first place. CHAPTER FIVE: WHAT TO DO Recommendations If we want to achieve population stabilization in the United States, we must reduce immigration substantially. As uncomfortable as this fact might be for some, it is, nonetheless, a fact. Immigration now accounts directly for about 40 percent of the population increase in this country, and according to the Census Bureau, when births to immigrants are considered, immigration will account for more than three quarters of U.S. population growth over the next half century. We must act now to chart a course toward the steady seas of a stabilized population. Ending large-scale immigration need not be draconian or arbitrary. There are choices that can and should be made that are rational, morally defensible, and sustainable in the long-term. There are three broad policy goals that environmentalists should embrace. If these policy reforms are implemented over a reasonable period of time, it is possible to divert the nation from a future of endless population growth, urban sprawl, and a ceaseless assault on the environment. 1. End chain migration. Chain migration is the phenomenon of extended family members following a relative to the United States and then petitioning to bring their own extended families here as well. Chain migration now accounts for more than three quarters of legal immigration to the United States (and probably a very substantial portion of illegal settlement). The idea behind reuniting extended families may sound well-intentioned, but we all know where the road paved with good intentions leads. In practice, chain migration is neither fair, nor good public policy, nor sustainable. Chain migration is not fair. In a society that styles itself as a meritocracy, selecting people to receive a particular benefit solely on the basis of who they happen to be related to is counter to the principles Americans have always held dear. Since the selection of immigrants is a process of making choices, people whose needs may be more urgent, or whose contributions to American society may be greater, are shut out because they lack a relative who came recently. In addition, fairness should not require our country to provide a mechanism for reuniting extended families that the immigrants themselves disunited by leaving home. Moreover, extended family reunification is simply an unachievable objective. Every time one extended family is reunited, another one is separated. Chain migration is bad public policy. It is not only the prospective immigrants who have a stake in immigration policy, but the American nation and its citizens. The nation has a stake in seeing to it that immigrants who settle here are likely to be economic assets and can make the social and cultural transition to life in this country. This cannot be assured when immigration visas are an "entitlement" based on family connections, rather than a privilege based on an objective set of criteria. The most obvious place to begin cutting chain migration is by eliminating the immigration entitlement for adult brothers and sisters. Adult siblings constitute the most remote links in the family chain, and add the most to the backlogs. Along with each adult sibling very often comes a spouse and children. Thus for every adult sibling that is reunited with a brother or sister in the United States, we may have to absorb three or four additional people who are part of a separate nuclear family. Chain migration is unsustainable. Not only does the United States now admit nearly one million legal immigrants annually, we have accumulated an enormous backlog of more than three million relatives waiting to come. Each immigrant that is admitted can add to that queue by petitioning for his or her own newly entitled relatives. To alleviate the pressure that has resulted from family-based immigration entitlements, we have gradually admitted more and more immigrants, and sped up the growth of our population and its impact on the environment. It is neither unreasonable nor draconian for America to establish conditions for immigration. We are all confronted with difficult choices in every aspect of our lives. Choosing between immigrating to the United States and living with one's extended family is a legitimate and reasonable decision for an immigrant to make, in much the same way as an American who is offered a great job opportunity in another state has a difficult decision to make. Unlike fifty or a hundred years ago, modern trans-portation and communications make it possible for families to keep in touch, even if they are living on opposite sides of the world. A clear policy that limits family immigration to the immediate nuclear family, i.e., spouse and unmarried minor children, is a reasonable condition of immigration to the United States. It is also sustainable. Under a system of "family packet" migration we would know how many people will be coming and could plan for them. We would also know how many additional family members to plan for: Zero. That is something we cannot do with a policy that permits chain migration. 2. Support meaningful reductions in immigration levels. Just as there has been upward momentum on immigration, downward momentum can be created. Ending immigration entitlements for extended families will mean fewer people getting in line. But in addition to reducing the number of brothers and sisters coming to the U.S., it will eventually diminish the demand for immigration of spouses. Most of those who marry foreign spouses are immigrants themselves; with a reduction in the number of immigrants, nuclear family immigration will fall. Perhaps counter-intuitively, reducing immigration levels leads to less immigration demand, while higher levels create pressure for still larger quotas. Demographers estimate that to achieve immigration levels that would not contribute to U.S. population growth, we would have to scale back to about 200,000 immigrants a year. Given where we now stand, 200,000 cannot be reached immediately. However, by implementing Step 1 – eliminating chain migration – we can arrive at replacement level immigration over a period of time. Over time, our "essential" immigration needs could be met with limits of about 200,000 annually. By shifting from a policy that responds to the demands of would-be immigrants to one that conforms to the social, economic, and environmental goals of the nation, we could achieve sustainable levels. Essential immigration would include nuclear family members, a small number of people with highly specialized skills, and legitimate refugees who are in imminent peril and who are unlikely to be able to safely return to their homelands. Americans are honorable people, and one of the emotional obstacles people feel about reducing immigration is that we have tacitly promised millions of people the right to eventually come here. Dramatically decreasing immigration levels, therefore, feels almost like reneging on a commitment. By adopting policies that do not foster unrealistic expectations among people all over the world, we will, in essence, stop promising things we cannot deliver, and which would do irreparable environmental damage if we tried. 3. Support a disciplined immigration policy. We have reached the point where we are now because we have refused to impose discipline in our immigration policy. Each time we have been presented with a compelling reason to admit a particular category of immigrants, we have done so without examining the rest of the immigration process to see where these special cases could be offset by less essential immigration. Making choices in immigration admissions has never been required. We have never felt the need to live within an immigration "budget." The consequence of this lack of discipline has been immigration "inflation," resulting in rapid population growth. Environmentalists must be at the forefront of the effort to hold the line on the numbers. Legitimate needs to admit a particular group of workers or refugees do emerge from time to time. But these special circumstance admissions must be offset by numerical reductions in other areas, or from the following year's immigration budget. And increases in a particular area based on an immediate need must be temporary. Too often we have responded to a short-term shortage of a particular type of worker with a permanent increase in the immigration quota. On numerous occasions we have responded to humanitarian emergencies with special immigration categories that live on long after the crisis that made them necessary. Environmentalists much choose between two scenarios for the future:
Your To-Do List for Preserving the Environment The next big battle to preserve the ecology of our nation will be fought over the growth of our population. Making the case against runaway population growth and in favor of lowering immigration levels must come from within the environmental movement. The environmental movement has taken on some powerful interests in the past…and won. The big auto makers were not happy when they were told that they would have to clean up their act, but eventually the environmental advocates prevailed and the car companies are making cleaner, more efficient, vehicles. The oil companies flexed their considerable muscle when they were told that drilling in environmentally sensitive areas was off-limits. Environmentalists fought them, and protected these areas. The timber industry protested when it was suggested that old growth forests be left alone. As a result of efforts by environmental groups, some of our ancient forests have been spared the loggers' chainsaws. The next big battle to preserve the ecology of our nation will be fought over the growth of our population. Making the case against runaway population growth and in favor of lowering immigration levels must come from within the environmental movement. 1. Raise the issue for discussion at local meetings. Many environmentalists already believe that limiting immigration for the purpose of leveling off U.S. population is essential. But, because of the political sensitivity of the issue, they have been reluctant to speak out, believing they were alone. Local chapters of the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and other environmental organizations are legitimate forums for raising these issues. 2. Adopt local resolutions on immigration and population growth. If raising concerns about immigration-generated population growth strikes a responsive chord among local environmentalists, put the local chapter on record as being in support of reducing immigration. Send a resolution to that effect to the organization's national headquarters and press for it to be considered by all its members. 3. Support environmental groups that address reducing population growth. Controlling population growth is the most important environmental priority facing the United States. If a group purporting to protect the environment is unwilling to address this issue, it isn't really serious about environmentalism. 4. Explain why urban expansion is happening. All across the country, environmentalists are appearing before zoning boards, city councils, county boards of supervisors, and other agencies to oppose urban sprawl. Make the connection between the pressure to expand cities and immigration. 5. Let your elected officials know you are concerned. Meet with as many local, state, and federal officeholders as you can. Support those who favor responsible immigration and population policies. 6. Use the media. Write op-eds and letters to the editor, and make calls to radio talk shows. Explain how immigration policies made in Washington are responsible for urban stress in your city. 7. Become a public speaker on this issue. Raise the need for immigration reform before civic and religious organizations in your community. 8. Form your own local group. If local environmental groups aren't making the connection between mass immigration and the environment, you can form an organization to do so yourself. Hundreds of citizens just like you have created such local groups; for more information, contact FAIR (and remember to ask about getting copies of FAIR's publications Building a Political Movement and You Can Help Reform Immigration). RESOURCES ORGANIZATIONS Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Negative Population Growth (NPG) The Population Clock The Social Contract Press READINGS A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay: Conservation, Population, and the Indifference to Limits (1997), Americans Have Spoken: No Further Population Growth (1997), A Tale of Ten Cities: Immigration's Effect on the Family Environment in American Cities (1995), Beyond Sprawl: The Cost of Population Growth to Local Communities (1998), Crowding Out the Future (1995), Elephants in the Volkswagen: Facing the Tough Questions About Our Overcrowded Country (1992), Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for a Humane Future (1996), How to Win the Immigration Debate (1997), How Many Americans? Population, Immigration, and the Environment (1994), Immigration and U.S. Population Growth: An Environmental Perspective (1997), Juggernaut: Growth on a Finite Planet (1996), Our Demographic Future: Why Population Policy Matters to America (1998), The Case Against Immigration; the Moral, Economic, Social, and Environmental Reasons for Reducing U.S. Immigration Back to Traditional Levels (1996), Under the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes (1999),
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