Why won't journalists breath a word about this subject ? 60 Million new immigrants=Environmental Suicide If you like sprawl, pollution, and resource depletion
you will love the current US immigration and
population trends.

US population has grown by about 100 million since the
1960's. Now, new 2004 US population studies sited by
Cox News Service and others indicate that we will grow
by another 120 million by 2050. In the 1990's alone we
added a record 30 million more Americans, the
equivalent of a new state of California every 10
years. The US Census Bureau also projects a 49%
population increase to about ½ a billion by sometime
in the middle of this century.

Most of us are not anti-immigration xenophobes and
welcome individual immigrants; but US census records
and all population studies now demonstrate that about 60% of the last 30 years of exploding population
growth has been due to immigrants and their children.
Immigration averaged a reasonable 178,000 per year
from 1925 through 1964. At these levels the U.S. was
projected to achieve population stability by sometime
in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, a Democratic controlled
congress increased immigration levels approximately
6-fold beginning in 1965. Next, Ronald Reagan declared
an Illegal Immigrant amnesty. Then, in 1999, Bill
Clinton revised immigration standards to allow those
just above poverty level to sponsor new immigrants.
Now President Bush and the Democratic Party are both
proposing their own legal status plans for millions of
illegal immigrants.


We are clearly no longer the sparsely populated
country of the early 20th century. The United States
has the highest population growth rate of all
developed countries in the world and at more than 290
million, is the third most populous country in the
world. Much of our coastline has a population density
equal to India. Any short term economic gains (i.e.
increased taxes, social security support) provided by
a rapidly growing population will be far outweighed by
the permanent environmental damage done by that
population.

Sierrans for US Population Stabilization, The National
Wildlife Federation, The Center for Immigration
Studies and other diverse groups have all produced
detailed studies proving that smart growth solutions
and environmental controls will ultimately fail if not
accompanied by population stabilization. Among the
findings was that the more a state's population grew,
the more the state sprawled. For example, states that
grew in population by more than 30 percent between
1982 and 1997 sprawled 46 percent on average. In
contrast, states that grew in population by less than
10 percent sprawled only 26 percent on average. On
average, each 10,000-person increase in state
population resulted in 1,600 acres of undeveloped
rural land's being developed, even controlling for
other factors such as changes in population density.

We should do everything we can to help those who have
already legally immigrated; but it is environmentally
destructive and counter productive to use the US as a
safety valve for countries that refuse to control
their own population growth. Those who argue that
limiting US immigration will not effect worldwide
environmental degradation are wrong. By what pretzel
logic are we somehow helping the world environment by
allowing over-immigration to destroy the environment
of the continent of North America? That is like
arguing that cutting
off your right leg is a great way to loose weight.
Over immigration not only helps destroy the North
American environment but it also lets us close our
eyes and indefinitely postpone real solutions to Latin
American population, economic and social problems. A
more humane approach would be to use massive US and
Canadian investment to help Mexico and other Latin
American countries modernize their economies and
environmental safeguards .


See: www.numbersusa.com, www.cis.org , www.susps.org

If they don't come over here, they will just pollute Mexico instead. Does it really matter that much where the pollution is being created?

We should do everything we can to help those who have
already legally immigrated; but it is environmentally
destructive and counter productive to use the US as a
safety valve for countries that refuse to control
their own population growth. Those who argue that
limiting US immigration will not effect worldwide
environmental degradation are wrong. By what pretzel
logic are we somehow helping the world environment by
allowing over-immigration to destroy the environment
of the continent of North America? That is like
arguing that cutting
off your right leg is a great way to loose weight.
Over immigration not only helps destroy the North
American environment but it also lets us close our
eyes and indefinitely postpone real solutions to Latin
American population, economic and social problems. A
more humane approach would be to use massive US and
Canadian investment to help Mexico and other Latin
American countries modernize their economies and
environmental safeguards .


See: www.numbersusa.com, www.cis.org , www.susps.org

Specious logic for criticizing illegal immigration. It can be countered with another more reasoned approach that suggests that if this country is as good as we make it out to be, things learned here can be taken back to the countries of the immigrants' origin, thereby providing them with more knowledge about how to handle their pollution problems at home.

The Ehrlich (The People Bomb) alarmism does have another side; while we consume more than any other country, it's not the actual volume of what we consume that matters, its the manner in which they're obtained and who benefits. I submit that many poorer countries of the world have improved their status on worl markets by producing things which we consume.

The overall effect may be to decrease the likelihood of wars and increase the desire of many people in the world to emulate our lifestyles (assuming that anything we do is good) as this might be seen as a key to replacing petty nationalistic squabbles with a degree of unity so that they can better compete.

Living in Houston, I can tell you that the immigrants here do not significantly increase the pollution...unless our laws and corrupt system allows it to.

Coming from Iowa, I can attest to the shrinking population there, suggesting that a few families sponsored by local church groups (like the Vietnamese were once sponsored in the 80s) might revitalize the dying small towns and schools. Urban sprawl is not a necessary byproduct of increased population, and it can easily be reclaimed.

"it is environmentally destructive and counter productive to use the US as a safety valve for countries that refuse to control their own population growth."

Control it how? Forced sterilization civil war, AIDS...?

Actually...oddly enough...I made a JPG several years ago that's pretty germane...

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Mmmm.

Answer this simple question truthfully. In THE REAL WORLD will 2 billion people pollute more than 2 million people ?

This is not a hard concept: Check the web sites I sited .

You touched on world trade in your post. Yes world trade is good. Many desperate immigrants are now forced to come here just to survive. World trade will hopefully improve their home countries situation in the future.

Create equitable economic & political systems. Mexico, for example, has terrible corruption. As people prosper, they generally have less children.

Hi macrol, I guess that if you xenophobes have gone "green" too, then it truly is mainstream.

Population distributions and densities are certainly part of the issue. Let's analyse: when I think environmental destruction and sprawl, I think suburbs, malls, gated communities.... mainly from older middle and upper-class citizens. My experience with immigrants is that they work hard for little money, and hence have to live frugally, consuming much less per-capita than the middle and upper class citizens. So, if you want to get rid of the people creating the most environmental damage....

But on a more constructive note, let me tell you how to get rid of 99% of all illegal immigration. It's a method taken from drug enforcement: any business or or household that knowingly hires an illegal worker automatically loses their home or business, and it gets auctioned off. I GUARANTEE an end to illegal immigration at that point. Sorry about the economy tanking, but we'd stop those pesky illegals, huh?

We're going to find out real soon how much pollution 1.2 billion Chinese under authoritarian rule can create. Indications are (See: 3 Gorges Dam) that they can wreak environmental havoc on a grand scale.

A couple of things are happening here. through emigration, Mexico loses some of its best and brightest, the very ones who might right the corrupt wrongs if they were compelled to stay at home. Shipping home cash instead of principles also contributes to the materialistic decay.

Worse, however, is the fact that through our policies (the failed "War of Drugs") and our continued subsidization of nefarious activity, we contribute to the corruption problem. When horny white males go to Mexico it's to see putas, not historical sites.

We're the arrogant neighbors to the North with the fat wallets, so what we choose to support has much to do with what is provided.

Supposing all those illegal immigrants went home tomorrow. Would we then engage in that more humane approach, or would we just proceed to ignore their problems altogether? As long as we're economically, physically and culturally connected to them, we have incentives to do something about their problems.

A lot of those are good points, but what do they have to do with the environment, the issue at stake here? If overpopulation is the problem (likely the case), it would make more sense fixing countries like in Southeast Asia and the Middle East than Mexico. Mexican migration is a drop in the bucket in terms of environmental degradation.

Are these people causing more environmental damage here than they would if they'd had stayed home?

Saying "yes" doesn't count if you're basing it on the likelihood that more people would have died had they not come here.