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Article Immigration will determine your future Guest Opinion by Mikc McGarry,Spokesman, Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR) Colorado Daily (Boulder, CO) May 24, 2002 "If individual Americans really care ... about our children and grandchildren, we cannot help but focus on the fundamental issue which threatens national well being in the near future: relentless population growth." - David Durham, Carrying Capacity Network Because of mass immigration, America will double in population within the lifetimes of today's college students. So for most of you reading this, you will be at ground zero when our current 286 million Americans explodes to a possible 1.2 billion, exceeding India's current population by century's end. Ninety percent of that unimaginable human pile-on will be immigration driven. When I was attending CU in 1970, the US was a fairly comfortable 203 million residents. Indeed, 200 million is thought by many to be America's optimal carrying capacity, the sustainable number of people supportable over the over long-term. Since 1970 we have added a huge 83 million to the US population. That's more than the populations of most countries of the world, and nearly 70 percent of that unmonitored growth was immigration generated. Consider just these two facts. Because of immigration-driven population pressures, 25 percent of our underground aquifers are not now recharging at their natural rates. Since 1970 we have urbanized and degraded more than 30 million acres of farmland to make way for the millions, causing us to now import a significant percentage of our fruits and vegetables. Think what it will be like when you and a half-billion or more are competing for that much less food and water. Continuous population growth is unsustainable. Almost all of the world's population explosion, 80 million additions every year, comes from the Third World. Studies show that the opportunity of emigrating, even the hope or prospect of emigrating, keeps those countries and cultures with explosive population growth rates from moving toward demographic stability. That explains why, when recently asked what he intended to do about the fact that his country would double its population within 40 years, the president of Bangladesh presumptuously said he would just send his extra people to the "underpopulated US." There are those who say, "America is a country of immigrants", implying any amount of immigration, regardless of the numbers, is traditional and proper. But from 1776 to 1976 America averaged only 230,000 immigrants, yearly. Remember, that average includes the great immigrating numbers during the turn-of-the-century's Great Wave, when the US was only 76 million inhabitants, industrializing and still expanding west. Contrasting historical averages with today's nontraditional immigration engorgement of at least 1.5 million permanent additions annually should provide a much-needed perspective to an otherwise distorted historical picture. The late US congresswoman Barbara Jordan said, "It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest." America is full. It is your right and responsibility to demand the US Congress establish and enforce an immigration reduction moratorium of 100,000 legal immigrants a year. Even if that number were imposed today, you still would not see the country's population growth rate stabilize until about 325 million, nearly 40 million additions. It's your future. Back Home |