Resources Are Not Infinite

One of the main reasons for having an immigration system that limits immigration and a legal system that enforces those limits is that the resources of the United States are not limitless, which advocates of mass immigration fail to acknowledge. The population of the United States is growing rapidly because of immigration – directly through the arrival of immigrants themselves and indirectly through the children born in the United States to immigrants. The population of the United States has grown exponentially since immigration laws were changed in 1965: by more than 105 million (or by over 50 percent) since 1970. We would have likely already achieved population stability if not for increasing immigration levels.

Census Bureau data reveal that, nowadays, a new immigrant is added to the U.S. population every 40 seconds, and that immigrant women on average have higher fertility rates than do native-born women. This leads to a growth in the overall population by one person every 13 seconds. Should this rate be kept up, our population would amount to a billion residents in the first decade of the next century. Our current rate of population growth simply cannot be sustained and should be addressed by reducing immigration levels and enforcing immigration laws; not by rewarding those who have come here illegally (thus encouraging more illegal immigration), and tripling legal admissions.

U.S. overpopulation is not something that can be brushed aside as insignificant or irrelevant to the discussion of immigration policy. It is at the heart of it.