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Why must immigration be reduced to achieve a stable population? American natives achieved “replacement” rate (a birth-death rate where one child is born for each person dying off) in the 1970s and would be well on our way to stabilizing the population were it not for immigration.

But changes in immigration policies caused the admission of newcomers to skyrocket; in 1998, we admitted 2.7 times as many immigrants as in the year of the commission’s report, 1972. Immigration is increasingly identified as the primary factor to be dealt with in population growth.

At present, our population is growing by about 3 million people a year; yet legal and illegal immigration are adding about 1.5 million people a year—about 50 percent. If we do not lower the level of immigration back to traditional levels right away, our population will grow to 404 million by the year 2050—a 47 percent increase. [Note: In 2002 the Census Bureau released a preliminary recalculation of its projection to account for the more than six million additional residents in 2000 that it did not expect to find. In that revised projection the 2050 population is 420.1 million residents, a 49 percent increase from 2000.] Of that increase, 76 million—58 percent—will be post-2000 immigrants and their descendents. Unless you want your children to have to live with 50 percent more people than you live with now—and with the urban expansion, social tension, environmental degradation, and living congestion that additional population will create—you should support immigration reform.