growth

As the Obama administration attempts to press its version of immigration reform through Congress, here are three relevant issues unlikely to be considered in the debate.

First, you probably won't hear a thing about droughts, either present or future. Yet according to the Science World Report website, 2013 has the potential to outdo the record drought of 2012...

Second, you'll hear no mention of the fact that the Colorado River -- which serves the needs of 40 million people living in the Southwest and irrigates 4 million acres of farmland growing 15 percent of the nation's food -- is drying up...

Third, don't expect to hear about how our rapidly growing population is depleting groundwater resources...

What does immigration reform have to do with water shortages? Plenty.

The vast majority of U.S. population growth since the 1970s has been fueled by massive legal and illegal immigration and the children of new immigrants. The fertility rate of U.S.-born American women has been at replacement level since that time.

There's irrefutable evidence that the U.S. is on the verge of a major water shortage.

Wouldn't it be easier to have a national conversation about the environmental impact of mass immigration and to make a rational decision about the number of immigrants we might comfortably accommodate?... Read more about Immigration Deluge Will Drain Water Resources

Immigration will be the primary driver of population growth in the United States within a few decades, a milestone not seen in almost two centuries, the Census Bureau projected Wednesday.

  Read more about Immigration to fuel future population growth

An analysis of future immigration flow released Friday by Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions shows that more than 32 million immigrants [and illegal aliens] would receive legal status over the next decade and an additional 25 million would be granted non-immigrant work visas under the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill.

...Sessions explained that number of legal immigrants over the next decade “exceeds the population of California, our largest state, and will have a very significant impact on our economy and the American people.”

According to the analysis presented by the senator, the high immigration estimate derived from visa program proposals in a revised 867-page bill crafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators shows that the bill would vastly increase the level of future “low-skill” immigration.

“[O]ver the first decade, the total number [of legal status] granted will be well over 32 million (not taking into account chain migration from increased legal flow),” the analysis reads. “Adding in all the various categories of nonimmigrant work visas, the number climbs to more than 57 million.”

The 57 million estimate includes the 11.1 million [to 40 million] illegal immigrants [illegal aliens] already in the country, who would receive legal status under the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill.

On the increase of new workers, Sessions did not mince words.

“This large flow of workers will impact working Americans significantly. It will reduce their salaries; dynamic scoring will not change that,” Sessions said, addressing one of the criticisms leveled against past immigration analyses.

“We have a time in this country when there is a growing failure of working Americans wages to keep up with inflation. That has been going on for more than a decade, some say 15, 30 years. And a large flow of low-skilled workers does impact the wages of Americans,” Sessions added. "...we have 90 million people outside the work force, 47 million on food stamps. Shouldn’t we be working to make sure every single American citizen now dependent on the social services of the government be provided the first opportunity to achieve a good job with decent pay with a retirement plan and a healthcare plan?” Sessions asked...

...Gang of Eight member Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s spokesman pointed The Daily Caller to a “Myth vs. Fact” series the senator’s office has been dispatching to attempt to dispel negative findings about the bill...

CAIRCO Research

United States Population is 315.8 million according to the US Census Bureau, and currently US population grows by one international migrant (net) every 44 seconds. 32 million new immigrants is equivalent to 10 percent of today's US population.

  Read more about Sessions: ‘Gang of 8′ would give legal status to 57 million, including non-immigrant visas

...A national opinion survey of Mexico by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 4-17 among 1,000 adults, finds that roughly two-thirds (66%) of Mexicans have a favorable opinion of the U.S. – up from 56% a year ago and dramatically higher than it was following the passage of Arizona’s restrictive immigration law in 2010, when favorable Mexican attitudes toward the United States slipped to 44%...

Mexicans are also now more of the view that the U.S. takes their country’s interests into account when deciding international policy. About half (51%) say Washington considers their country’s interests...

More than 11 million Mexicans live in the U.S., including about 6 million [to 40 million] who are in the country illegally. Mexicans are divided on whether this is good or bad for their country...

About six-in-ten Mexicans (61%) say they would not move to the U.S. even if they had the means and opportunity to do so. However, a sizable minority (35%) say they would move to the U.S. if they could, including 20% who say they would emigrate [illegally] without authorization.

9Mexicans are less likely than they were a year ago to say that people from their country who move to the U.S. have a better life there; 47% say life is better in the U.S., compared with 53% in 2012. About one-in-five (18%) say Mexicans have a worse life in the U.S., while 29% say it is neither better nor worse. However, among those who have close friends or relatives living in the U.S., 70% say these friends or relatives have achieved their goals, while just 25% believe they have been disappointed.

Three-in-ten Mexicans say they personally know someone who went to the U.S. but returned to Mexico because the person could not find work. About a quarter (27%) know someone who has been deported or detained by the U.S. government for immigration reasons in the last 12 months...

CAIRCO Research:

As of May 3, 2013, US population was 315, 788, 230 according to the US Census Bureau.

Mexico's population was 116,147,000 and total fertility was 2.3 as of mid-2012, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

35 percent of Mexico's population who would migrate to the United States amounts to a staggering 40,651,450.  That's 40 million people, or nearly 13 percent of the total US population. 

The 20 percent of Mexico's population who state they would sneak into the United States illegally, amounts to 23,229,400, or 7.4 percent of the total US population.

Thus, with our incredibly porous border, and the undeniable attraction of promises of amnesty, we can rest assured that a sizeable portion of these millions will try to sneak into the United States as illegal aliens.

It should be noted that the old, outdated number of illegal aliens currently living in the United States is 11 million. Other analyses estimate that up to 40 million illegal aliens have escaped capture at our border and are living in the United States. These are the cumulative numbers of illegal aliens since the original 1986 IRCA amnesty for illegal aliens.

Thus, if all of the people in Mexico who said they would sneak into the US illegally actually did so, the number would amount to twice the official count of all illegal aliens currently living in the United States. If all of the people in Mexico who want to emigrate into the United States actually did so, it would amount to the total number of illegal aliens already living in the US as estimated by alternative studies.

It doesn't stop there. Mexico's mid-2050 population will be 143,924,800, according to the Population Reference Bureau. That's an increase of 27,777,800. Assuming the same interest in migrating to the US, an additional 5,555,560 Mexicans will want to sneak illegally into the US, and a total of 9,722,230 will intend to migrate to the US. That's in addition to the numbers today, calculated above, who want to migrate to the US.

The United States is under no obligation to act as Mexico's population relieve valve and to be forced to accept up to 50,373,680 new job seekers by 2050. That 50 million would be nearly 16 percent of today's US population. 

Why would we want to grow US population by another 16 percent within 40 years? 

  Read more about Poll: One Third of Mexicans Would Move to U.S.

33 million!!!!!

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1. See the analysis Estimated Future Permanent Legal Immigration Under S.744 - FY2015 - 2024 Read more about Gang of 8 amnesty bill adds 33 million people in first decade alone

A look at immigration reform being proposed by the bipartisan "Gang of 8". Panelists include Colorado University Professor Philip Cafaro (with Progressives for Immigration Reform and Immigration Environmental Impact Statement), and former Congressman Tom Tancredo. Panelists also include an immigration attorney and a former illegal alien who was amnestied in 1986 who now uses eVerify in her business.

Watch the video (27 minutes). Read more about Video: Immigration Reform - Colorado State of Mind

"Remove all the space within the atoms making up the human body, and every person that’s ever lived would fit inside a baseball. — Brian Greene"

...people, it seems, are willing to try. In the last century, all over the planet, billions of us have moved from villages and farms to squeeze into tighter and tighter, ever denser spaces... [see original article for photos of high density Hong Kong housing]...

...if all 7 billion of us had to live side-by-side in two story ranch houses, or yurts — no towers allowed — we'd overrun the planet; we'd strangle the forests, the meadows, the plains. So until we learn to have fewer babies, cities may be our salvation, no?...

Tim de Chant has a wonderfully creative blog called per square mile, where he thinks about population density. Last summer, he decided to try a little experiment. He asked himself: Suppose I could move everybody on Earth into a single city. How much space would that city occupy?...

Obviously, it depends on which city we choose as our model. Different cities have different densities. Hong Kong, as we've just seen, is very dense. Houston, much less so. Seven billion people living like Houstonians would occupy a lot more space than 7 billion people living like Manhattanites. But how much more? Tim did the numbers, and came up with this. [See original article for illuminating images. One shows all of the people of earth fitting in to Texas.]

But... You can't take 7 billion people, dump them into Texas and assume that the rest of the Earth will be left alone. Even if nobody lived in the other 49 states, Mexico, Canada, Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and South America, we would still need to use some of that space.

People in the Enormous City still need food, furniture, clothing, water, electricity, building materials, still need a place to store their waste. They still need water systems, farms, ranches, electricity grids, dumps, lakes, even if they never leave their city...

In a very rough way, he calculated that if everybody agreed to live like the average Bangladeshi, the world could exist largely people-free.

But as soon as we get richer — even as rich as the average Chinese — the world can't carry all 7 billion of us. We need more planet. If we all want to live American-style, we'd need four more planets.

CAIRCO Notes

Mass immigration is driving US population to double within the lifetimes of children born today. Doubling America's population will mean twice the demand for housing and twice the overcrowding. Doubling America's population will doubly diminish the natural ecosystems upon which we depend, including natural resources we draw down - such as water, farmland, and overseas petroleum. 

Squeezing twice as many people into the United States raises the issue of carrying capacity - the maximum population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently impairing the productivity and functioning of that habitat. As shown in the article, if everyone on the planet lived at the United States standard of living, we would require over four earths to sustain us. Read more about The Big Squeeze: Can Cities Save The Earth?