Immigration & U.S. Population Growth:
Ethical Issues

Virginia Abernethy, Vanderbilt Medical School

Were it not for immigration flows that occurred after passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, the U.S. population would now be close to stabilizing - as are the populations of most other industrialized countries in the world - instead of rising at 1.1 percent per year. Immigration legislation in 1965 increased immigration from the rate of about 100,000-200,000 annually that had prevailed since 1924 to unprecedented levels, mostly through family reunification provisions in the 1965 law.

Two ethical issues are paramount.

First, immigration - most of it legal - is occurring over the objections of U.S. citizens. Although polls consistently show that upwards of two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of minorities, wish to slow or stop immigration, the big media suppress debate and the federal government encourages, rather than restricts, immigration.

The second ethical issue addresses who and what in the United States is harmed most by immigration and immigration-driven population growth in the United States. This paper addresses environmental, economic, and fiscal effects that systematically burden lower and middle class Americans.

Immigration Law

As amended in 1965 and later, a system of family preferences entitles naturalized citizens to sponsor spouses and immediate family members without limit. Adult brothers and sisters are put on a waiting list. Family members of non-citizen legal immigrants are also wait-listed when the so-called cap is reached, annually. This flow accounts for approximately 850,000 of each year’s legal immigrants.

Other categories that enter legally also become permanent U.S. residents. In 1980, a refugee category was added and later expanded through a vehicle known as the Lautenberg Amendment. Introduced by Congressman Morrison (D-CN) on April 18, 1989, its purpose was, "To establish certain categories of nationals of the Soviet Union and nationals of Indochina presumed to be subject to persecution and to provide for adjustment to refugee status of certain Soviet and Indochinese parolees." The Amendment was designed specifically to benefit Vietnamese and Cambodians, and Russian Jews and Pentecostals. The "presumption" of persecution covers categories, in contrast to the UN standard that threat be evaluated individually.

The President of the United States is empowered to set an annual cap on refugee numbers. The Congressional Record suggests that this cap was envisioned as about 50,000 per year, but very large flows from the former Soviet Union have pushed refugee numbers to as high as 140,000 annually.

In 1997, about 100,000 refugees including Cubans came to the United States. In 1998, a clash arose between certain black Congressmen and their traditional Jewish allies over admission of Africans as a new category of refugees. Some fear that an African entitlement will come at the cost of reducing numbers from Russia (Clinton’s Africa Trip, 1998). Raising the overall number of immigrants is the usual way of treating claims by competing ethnic groups, but public sentiment against the present level of immigration may foreclose, ultimately, that politically-easy option.

Asylee claimants differ from refugees in being physically in the United States at the time of their plea. Few are detained pending status adjustment or deportation, most being released on their own promise to return for a hearing. The vast majority does not return and simply disappears into the population. Asylee applicants may add as many as 150,000 persons annually.

Several recent legislative sessions have seen an increase in H-1b visas, a category that responds to alleged labor shortages and carries two, 3-year residence entitlements. H-1b workers are not technically immigrants. However, most do successfully apply for status adjustment that entitles them to permanent residence. Year-2000 legislation sponsored by the Republican majorities in House and Senate and signed by President Bill Clinton raised annual H-1b visas to approximately 300,000.

Illegal immigration accounts for another very large flow of newcomers to the United States. The number has been variously estimated at between 300,000 and one-half million annually. However, a recent study at Northeastern University suggests that the actual number may be twice as large (Rodriguez, 2001).

In return for amnesty to the approximately 3 million illegal aliens who could prove long-time residence in the United States, a 1986 bill increased penalties on employers of illegal aliens in order to stop further illegal immigration. The enforcement provisions are almost unworkable during periods of economic growth given the low-tech identification system then, and still, in place.

Immigrants amnestied by the 1986 legislation began to naturalize as citizens in the early 1990s, entitling them to bring in immediate family members. Many family members had come already, illegally. The legislation resulted in almost 3 million amnesties and a non-tallied increase in chain migration.

Amnesty rewards illegal entry and raises expectations for new amnesties. The year-2000 legislative session narrowly avoided an amnesty for an additional 2 million illegal aliens. As the trade-off for increasing the H-1b visas desired by business, Democrats in Congress with the support of then-President Clinton did, in fact, legalize several categories amounting to approximately 700,000 persons.

Children born in the United States automatically become citizens, another practice that encourages coming illegally to the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is the ostensible basis for granting citizenship to anyone born on U.S. territory, although such an interpretation was not contemplated when the amendment was ratified in 1868. A bill to exclude the children of illegal aliens from acquiring automatic citizenship has been introduced in virtually every recent congressional session.

In 1990 a bill intended to curtail legal immigration ended by Congress’s increasing it by approximately 40 percent. The strategy of negotiating by category arguably contributes to the singular lack of success of those seeking to reduce immigration. The "category" approach invites horse-trading, because an increase sought in one category (say, for skilled immigrants) regularly elicits demands for parallel increases in family or other preference categories.

The result is that each year the United States admits over 1 million legal immigrants, including refugees and asylees, plus an estimated 500,000 or more illegal aliens who plan to settle. One might conclude that the United States is functioning as an escape valve - or, some say, a dumping ground - for citizens of third world countries that have failed to restrain fertility rates and population growth.

Immigration and Population Growth

Official estimates of immigration and U.S. population growth have been on the low side for nearly two decades. Until corrected by the year-2000 census, the most-often heard number for people settling "legally and illegally" in the United States, annually, was about 1.1 million. This delusion required closing one’s mind to the flow of refugees and asylees. Illegal immigration was likewise underestimated.

The additions to the U.S. population from immigration and the children born to recent immigrants is a matter of great consequence in the context of total U.S. population growth. Census projections between censuses have consistently under-estimated total population because of the underestimates of immigration and immigrant fertility rates. Throughout the 1990s, growth was said to be significantly less than 3 million persons annually, resulting in an estimated population size of about 274 million in l999. The year-2000 Census showed up the underestimate.

On December 28, 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau released findings from the March census. It appears that the U.S. population had increased by 32.7 million persons since 1990, to reach over 281.4 million in 2000, a 13.2 percent increase in ten years. The Census Bureau itself estimated that the foreign-born population had swelled to more than 28.3 million by spring, 2000 (Armas, 2001).

Independent analysts and demographers periodically attempt to refine the figures and projections emanating from the government. The Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington D.C. think-tank, recently analyzed the March, 2000, Census Bureau Current Population Survey, concluding that the 11.2 million immigrants who arrived since 1990 and the 6.4 million children born to immigrants accounted for 69 percent of U.S. population growth over the decade" (Camarota 2001).

Population growth in the United States is now fueled almost entirely by immigration and immigrant fertility [women of Hispanic origin, excepting Cubans, average approximately one child more per woman than women of other ethnic groups]. Writes demographer Meredith Burke, "Expansive immigration quotas may bring us to one billion or more by century’s end. Descendants of these newcomers, a category often discounted by immigration apologists, will outnumber the foreign-born themselves" (Burke, 2000).

Among the most potentially dangerous accompaniments to population growth are exceeding the environment’s carrying capacity, wealth redistribution to the detriment of those who depend on wages and salaries, increasing poverty, depressing educational achievement, and worsening race relations. Many of the difficulties exacerbated by immigration are then cited to prove the need for "big government" solutions, a further insult to the proclivities of many Americans.

Natural Resources and Environmental Quality

The linkage between population growth, poverty, and environmental devastation has long been evident in the third world and Russia. Protection and conservation take real money, lots of it, and such efforts are low on the list of priorities in poor countries. In the United States, the connections between population growth and environmental degradation are partially masked by affluence.

American affluence, based on use of concentrated energy sources, has so far let us afford environmental protection and restoration even in the teeth of population growth. Can this continue?

Energy

Energy use per capita is the acknowledged foundation of wealth in modern society (see, for example, Duncan 1993). Therefore, expert opinion that irreplaceable sources of petrochemical energy (oil and natural gas) are rapidly depleting (Youngquist, 1997; Campbell, 1998; Duncan and Youngquist, 1999; Duncan, in press, Simmons, 2000) should rise to the top of environmentalist as well as business agendas.

Resource depletion, the root issue, is often hidden by the tendency to see rising energy prices as the result of managerial ineptness or even price-gouging. Hence, some politically popular solutions focus on regulating business. Business and some government entities, meanwhile, concentrate on increasing the supply of power generating plants, refineries, and drilling rigs.

The debate about electricity and energy sufficiency should address both supply and demand functions. Unfortunately, the solutions being touted most vigorously address only supply. Debate over demand, when heard, is limited to strategies and incentives for conservation. As stated above, politicians and the big media steadfastly ignore the root cause of continuing increases in demand - that is, population growth.

Strategies to increase supply deal almost entirely with short to medium term conditions. Drilling rigs, gas lines, and power plants are merely tools - man-made capital, in the words of economist Herman Daly (1990). They do not increase the natural resource - gas, coal, or oil - but simply allow it to be exploited more rapidly.

The other set of solutions to energy insufficiency addresses conservation. Conservation breaks down into two arms: decreasing per capita demand, and limiting the number of heads - capitas - that is, reducing or stabilizing the population. California is one state that has successfully decreased per capita demand of electricity - probably through increasing energy efficiency - but this achievement has been overwhelmed by population growth.

Ric Oberlink shows that per capita consumption of electricity in California has declined over the past 25 years. "In 1979, per capita consumption of electricity in the state was 7,292 kilowatt-hours. In 1999, it was down to 6,952 kilowatt-hours" (Oberlink, 2001). The growth of California’s high-tech industry did not break the bank; it coincided with a 5 percent reduction in per capita electricity use.

But total electricity use in California rose, nevertheless. The explanation is the larger number of people using electricity. From 1979 to 1999, California’s population "grew from 23 million to 33 million - a 43 percent increase" (Oberlink, 2001). Immigration is the principal source of increase. Over one-quarter of California’s population in year-2000 was foreign-born (U.S. Grows, 2001).

Substitution of renewable energy sources for fast-depleting petrochemicals, less desirable coal, and politically-infeasible nuclear will probably not be sufficient to stabilize energy prices in the near future. Geologist WalterYoungquist covers alternative energy sources in his award-winning book, Geodestinies (1997). Expect high energy prices to go higher as the demand for energy grows.

Other Resources

The renewability of certain resources should not blind one to time-frames. Not in several human or civilizational lifetimes will underground water and topsoil come back. Just as oil, once used, is gone, so can fresh water and topsoil effectively vanish (Pimentel and Pimentel, 1997).

The supply of natural capital is, ultimately, limited. One must worry about continuing population growth because it drives increasing demand for the natural capital - including petrochemicals, coal, dam sites, waste disposal sites, top-soil, and water - that are limited despite many people’s preference for the it-will-go-away-if-you-don’t-think-strategy of addressing hard questions.

Environmental Quality

Well-meaning citizens have decreasing options for addressing environmental quality. Resources are being depleted even at the present rate of use; more people demand more resources; in using them, people often create pollution.

Some natural systems that cope with pollution have no substitute and, once used up or degraded, the loss is irretrievable. Other systems are remediable but at a cost. Wealth-creation foregone diminishes a society’s ability to restore quality.

Economist Dale Jorgenson estimates that the environmental regulations in force before 1990 lowered economic growth by 0.2 percent annually, and that provisions of the Clean Air Act coming into force by 1995 would cut 2.6 percent, annually, from economic activity (The Environmental, 1990). The Clean Air Act was expected to cost $25 billion annually (Gutfeld and Rosewicz, 1990) and was expected to cause a loss of U.S. job to countries that have lower environmental standards (Abelson, 1990, p.1497). Its cost is born primarily by the private sector including small businesses such as dry cleaners, furniture builders, and repair shops.

A decade after passage of the Clean Air Act, one sees that environmental protection not only costs money and jobs but also creates opportunity for businesses that spring up around the clean-up. Nevertheless, cleaning up barely restores earlier environmental quality - it substitutes costly technology for the formerly-free services of nature. The human quality of life is protected - at a price that the United States still, fortunately affords -but it is not enhanced.

Environmental programs are socially valuable but burdensome to those whose compliance is mandated. The burdens become progressively severe, because the cost of mitigating the environmental damage done by large populations grows along with population size.

Instead of relying on government regulation and a mix of private and public (tax-payer) funding for conservation, environmentalists should seriously address the demand side through lobbying to stabilize population size. Family planning programs are not enough, because native-born Americans have exercised reproductive restraint for two generations and do not, now, have sufficient children to replace themselves in the population. Ending mass immigration is the remaining option.

Economic Considerations

Preserving a strong and vital middle class is a principal concern of Americans who fear the labor market effects of population growth and immigration. Since the U.S. population burst through the 200 million mark -- about 1970 -- the working and middle classes have experienced continuing erosion in buying power, in leisure and family time, and in women’s economic freedom to be full-time homemakers and mothers.

The average intact family needs the incomes of two working parents to support the family life style and educational opportunities for children that previously were afforded on one income. Writes Swarthmore College economist Barry Schwartz, "The income of the average wage-earning workers in 1997 was 3.1% lower than it was in 1989. Median family income was$1000 less in 1997 than in 1989. The typical couple worked 270 more hours in 1997 than in 1989" (Cited in Ferguson, 2000).

Income

Beginning with the 1973-74 oil shock, a trend documented through 1993 saw young men with a high school education lose "30% of their real incomes." Nearing the end of the early 1990s recession, average inflation-adjusted salaries for all men remained "below the levels of the late 1960s" (Rattner, 1995).

Well into a period of economic expansion, six million Americans wanted full-time work but were working part-time. "Another large group was either overqualified or sheltered behind the euphemism of self-employment," adds U.S. News and World Report (Where Have the Good Jobs Gone, 1995; Stein, 1996).

U.S. corporations continued to lay off American workers even after an economic recovery was underway - 3.2 million in 1995 alone. Entering the twenty-first century, it is evident that America’s high-paying industrial jobs are being replaced by service-sector employment that is, for numerous reasons, less desirable.

Although unemployment declined to 4 percent in the late 1990s, consumer debt is at historically high levels and - even before the recessionary dip in late 2000 - about half of Americans were financially less secure than they had been some decades earlier. Commented economist Richard Freeman in 1998, "personal bankruptcies are at an all-time high, and the risk of consumer credit defaults is rising, as Americans’ credit-card debt has nearly doubled over the past five years. What will happen to consumer spending and the banking system if workers with large debts lose their jobs in a recession?" (Freeman, 1998, p. 64).

Moreover, writes Herbert Stein, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers in the Nixon administration, "the risk of becoming unemployed has now spread to people who did not expect to have that risk" (Stein, 1996). Are college-educated technical and middle-management personnel replaceable?

This question looms over the acrimony and conflicting statistics that have characterized every congressional debate about increasing the number of H-1b visas. Apparently confident that the good times will roll on, the information industry is prominent among those agitating for more visas for skilled immigrants. In early 1996, Microsoft allegedly hired lobbyist Grover Norquist at $10,000/mo. to help defeat Republican-sponsored legislation aimed at reducing legal immigration. Republicans including former-Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) and Congressman Richard Armey of Texas carry water for the pro-immigration lobby. Neo-conservative think tanks including the Cato Institute and the Hudson Institute provide the supporting rationale.

Invited to testify before Congress, the presidents and chief executive officers (CEOs) of numerous information technology (IT) companies explain at length that they needed to import immigrant computer software specialists in order to remain competitive. Primary reasons are that American universities graduate insufficient numbers of IT specialists, and companies cannot be adequately staffed from the pool of computer programmers then in the United States. IT specialists, themselves, might beg to differ.

Is there, in fact, a shortage of computer programmers? Citing a 17 percent unemployment rate for programmers over 50 years of age, Professor of Computer Science Norman Matloff says, not in 1998. At the height of the business cycle, salaries for computer programmers were rising modestly, but not at the rate that would suggest labor shortage. He states that the profit motive - without regard for fellow Americans - explains industry’s eagerness to import workers, because "imported programmers are paid between 15% and 30% less than their native counterparts" (Matloff ,1998).

Demographer Michael Teitelbaum concurs that American skilled labor is under pressure, particularly in fields where fluent English is not required. As immigration numbers grow, it is becoming clear. that too many engineers for too few jobs are responsible for the 13% decline, in constant dollars, between 1968 and 1995, in "the median annual salary, including benefits, for an engineer with 10 years of experience..." (Teitelbaum, 1996, OP-ED).

Parts of the skilled sector of the labor market, including both scientific and managerial, have appeared to approach saturation. In 1995, Joel B. Snyder testified before the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, on behalf of the one-quarter-million-member Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers, that immigration is the cause of significant increases in unemployment and underemployment among engineers (Jan. 20, 1995). At least until 1996 and a record-long business expansion, similar labor surpluses existed in chemistry, physics, mathematics and other specialties (Math, 1991; CCN, 1994; Coping, 1994; New Limits, 1996; Stein, 1995).

Similarly, Edwin Rubenstein suggests that "The alleged shortage of highly educated workers in the U.S. is a myth. In fact, we’re suffering from a chronic surplus of Ph.D.’s" (1999, p. 44). In June, 1998, Chairman of the House of Representatives Immigration Sub-Committee of the Judiciary, Lamar Smith (R-TX), released a survey showing that 21 American high-tech companies had dismissed 121,800 workers since December, 1997. Similarly, professor of computer science Norman Matloff stated in an Investors’ Business Daily interview, "The problem is that most employers prefer less-expensive talent. Most software firms surveyed hire less than 5% of the software professionals that apply for jobs. Microsoft Corporation, hires 2%. Brodebur Software Inc. hires just 1%" (Alster, 1998).

Congress’s watchdog, the General Accounting Office (GAO), takes no position on scarcity of skilled labor but, in 1998, pointed out serious flaws in two studies that are the basis for claims of skilled-labor shortage. Their assessment of a U.S. Department of Commerce study is that it "has serious analytical and methodological weaknesses that undermine the credibility of its conclusion that a shortage of IT (information technology) workers exists" (cited in Zitner, 1998). The GAO further criticized Information Technology Association of America findings, saying that the Association had relied "on two employer surveys with ‘unacceptably low’ response rates of 14 percent and 36 percent" (Zitner, 1998).

Nevertheless, industry representatives and Congressional allies, former-Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) foremost among them, relied in 1998 and again in 2000 on several sets of data to bolster personal testimony. Between 1994 and 1997, for example, the Labor Department, working with the Commerce Department, nearly tripled the number of job openings it "certified," a declaration that no American was trained and available to do these jobs. Further, a survey by the Information Technology Association of America found that, "Half of all respondents cited [a lack of high-skilled workers] as the biggest barrier" to growth. Finally, the Hudson Institute concluded in Workforce 2020 that skilled-labor shortage could "shave 5% off the growth rate of GDP" (Duff, 1998).

Typical of industry’s view is the testimony of T.C. Rodgers, president and CEO of Cypress Semiconducter Corporation. He struck the prevalent note in the 1998 debate over H1B visas: "…we have strong feelings about the value provided by immigrant engineers - and also about the factually hollow, emotion-driven claims of those who insist the U.S. semiconductor industry could retain its current global leadership without an adequate supply of high-quality engineers, including immigrants." Further excerpts include, "The need for skilled workers in the high-tech sector is growing exponentially…. Foreign skilled workers do not take jobs from Americans…but, in fact, create additional jobs" (Rodgers, 1998).

Labor shortage or surplus has implications for the society at large and, in particular, for the middle class. A super-abundance of labor has the socially dysfunctional effect of breaking down the historic linkage between productivity and compensation. For decades, labor productivity increases were seen as the precursor to rising wages (Backlash: The View, 1996; Where Have, 1995). But no longer.

In spring, 1995, Steven Rattner wrote in The Wall Street Journal that productivity had risen at a 2 percent per annum rate since early 1993, but productivity increases were not visibly translating into higher wages. Instead, "Companies have been able to transform those cost savings into higher profits -- leading to a sharp drop in labor's share of the national economic pie" (Rattner, 1995, p. A22). As Ronald Lee sees for late Medieval England (see below), it today appears that return on capital increases as a result of a relative over-abundance of labor.

Historical demography shows that a rapidly growing labor force depresses wages and conditions of work (Lee, 1980; 1987). Labor’s income declines while profits to owners of land or other capital rise.

Large infusions of capital that create new jobs may offset a rapid increase in the supply of labor (Macunovich, 1996), but the quality of new jobs depends on the ratio of capital to new job-seekers. The investment needed for a standard quality U.S. job has been estimated at $150,000 to 200,000 per new job added. Jobs become less well paid if the average capital investment per job declines.

Relative to the infusion of capital needed to create good jobs, recent increases in the size of the U.S. labor force have been very rapid. To some extent, the process is circular, because job insecurity and the stagnation in some male workers' real wages is one factor driving mothers into the labor market while their children are still pre-schoolers, even infants (Leibowitz & Klerman, 1995). A second factor, immigration, is external to the U.S. economy.

Immigration nearly doubles the annual need for net new jobs. Although the employment rate for men who have been in the United States less than five years is about ten percentage points less than that of native-born men (Price, 1998), about three-quarters of immigrants enter the labor force. The large supply of labor in certain industries- food service, construction, meat-packing, and hostelry, for example -- competes down wages and conditions of work so that they devolve toward jobs which, it often is said, "Americans won't do." If more immigrants are imported to do these jobs, the downward spiral continues. Research suggests that Americans tend to be excluded after immigrant networks capture access to a job category or industry (Huddle, 1992; 1993; Takahashi, 1998).

Economists George Borjas and Richard Freeman (1992) see a double-edged sword falling on labor: both competition from immigrants and net imports of goods manufactured by unskilled labor outside of the United States directly and indirectly cause deterioration in the economic position of high-school-educated U.S. workers. High-school dropouts face the most competition. By 1990, immigrants accounted for one-quarter of all workers without a high school diploma, and, in this sector, immigration and the trade imbalance together raised the 1988 effective supply of labor by 28 percent for men and 31 percent for women.

The large labor supply, say Borjas and Freeman, accounted for up to half of the ten-percentage-point decline in the real wages of unskilled labor between 1970 and the late 1980s. Wages began to rise only near the end of the 1990s economic expansion. If the economic stagnation evident by the fourth quarter of year-2000 continues, a return to declining real incomes in the lower and middle class sectors should be anticipated.

Borjas calculates that immigration costs native workers $133 billion annually, through both wage depression and job displacement. At the same time, employers gain $140 billion. The $7 billion difference, trivial in a $7.5 or $8 trillion economy, Borjas calls the "immigration surplus" (Borjas, 1995; 1996; 1997).

The 1997 Rand Corporation study of immigration in California reaches congruent conclusions, finding that "1 to 1.5% of the adult native-born population has left the labor force or become unemployed because of immigration" (McCarthy and Vernez, 1997, p.xxvi). Similarly, David Jaeger at the Bureau of Labor Statistics writes that, "roughly half the decline in real wages of native [school] dropouts is caused by immigration" (America or Utopia, 1996, p. 20).

Combining immigrants with the approximately 900,000 more young Americans who enter than older workers who leave the labor force each year means that the economy must create approximately 2 million net new jobs annually. Local unemployment figures often underestimate the extent to which Americans are displaced. The labor market is in many respects national.

As documented by William Frey (1993; 1994; 1995), workers leave areas, such as California, that are heavily impacted by immigration. In addition, jobs are lost in higher-wage states because certain industries leave areas with more expensive labor and taxes to settle in states where costs are lower.

Disparate Effects

Labor economist Vernon Briggs, Jr. (1990; 1992) and political scientist Frank Morris (1990; 1995) contend that immigration harms first and worst America's own poor and unskilled workers, many of whom are minorities. Briggs (1990) testified before the Congressional Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law that immigration victimizes the lower end of the U.S. labor pool. The pressure-cooker competition for low skill jobs is disruptive for both citizens and established, earlier immigrants whose labor force characteristics resemble those of newcomers.

Frank Morris (1990) testified in the same hearings:

"My first concern is that the black community, in looking at the slow rate of growth of our numbers in the labor force and our increasing need for higher skills, may find that any encouraging assumptions we had about opportunities for young black workers and prospective workers have been sidetracked by hasty immigration policies...."

Historic leaders in the black community, including Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, called early and often for an end to immigration (See Washington, Up From Slavery). Indeed, after last century’s large wave of immigration was effectively ended in the early 1920s, African-Americans began for the first time to take advantage of industrial job opportunities in the North.

Author and editor Michael Lind (1995, p. 111) also sees a connection. Historically, European immigrants took entry-level jobs away from black American workers, and "No one who lives in a city where taxi service and many other trades are almost monopolized by new immigrants can doubt that the same phenomenon is occurring again." Nationwide, blacks are losing jobs while Asians and Hispanics gain jobs. Half of Small Business Administration (SBA) contracts set aside for minorities got to immigrants or their children, and non-black minority-owned firms rarely rarely hire blacks (Daleidan, 1998).

In California, author Jack Miles (1992) and UCLA faculty James Johnson and James Oliver (1992) concur. Black Americans not only lose economically but also feel encroached upon in public schools, public sector jobs, and neighborhoods.

Richard Estrada, editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News, adds that, "Apologists for massive immigration appear to blame the large-scale replacement of black workers by Hispanic immigrants in the hotel-cleaning industry of Los Angeles on the blacks themselves, instead of acknowledging the obvious explanation that the immigrants depressed prevailing wages and systematically squeezed thousands of citizens out of the industry" (1991, p. 25). It appears that again, today, America's black population is bearing a disproportionate share of pressure from the competition for jobs, housing and social services.

Earlier immigrants also lose, even when an influx is their own ethnic group. Continues Estrada,

"In sum, the evidence shows that Hispanic-Americans have emerged as the greatest victims of U.S. immigration policy since 1965, instead of its greatest beneficiaries. The notion that Hispanics in this country favor more immigration, while the rest of America favors less, is a false one that has poisoned the debate for too long. This distortion must be corrected, especially by those who explicitly claim to represent Hispanic-Americans" (1991, p. 28).

Polarization in America

In view of the labor market effects of immigration and more women working outside the home, it is not surprising that the investing, upper sector of American society prospers at the same time that hourly and middle-level salaried American workers struggle. Writes economist Richard Freedman, one among many who note that during the 1990s the rich and poor drew ever farther apart,

"The United States has the most unequal distribution of income among advanced countries - and the degree of inequality has increased more here than in any comparable country. The earnings, adjusted for inflation, of workers in high-paying occupations - chief executive officers and professional athletes, to name the most prominent - have risen rapidly, while the earnings of the majority of the work force have barely kept pace with inflation, and the earnings of less-educated and lower-paid workers, adjusted for inflation, have fallen. The income of the average family has increased, but largely because women are working more" (1998, p.62).

Inequality in income as well as wealth is an accelerating trend. Since the late 1970s, the poor in up to 44 states have seen their income decline. The income of the poorest fifth had fallen by 21 percent, and of the richest fifth had risen by 30 percent by 1996. The cash differential is somewhat mitigated by non-wage benefits, as much as 40 percent of the compensation in some jobs. Nevertheless, the wage differential combined with returns on investment leave the top one-fifth of families at least eight to fourteen times richer than the bottom one-fifth (New York’s Economy, 1997; Phillips, 1997). In 1996, the top fifth of the income distribution received 47 percent of all income (Freedman, 1998).

The poor gained ground in only a few states, including Minnesota and Maine. Note that these states have a low immigrant population.

On the contrary, New York, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Connecticut, California, and Florida had the greatest disparities in wealth (Phillips 1997). Trends were magnified in New York, which has the largest income gap in the nation, because "the poor are harmed by the decline in low-skilled jobs like manufacturing and construction, and [by] competition with immigrants for low-level jobs" (Perez-Pena, 1997). Note that California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Florida are major recipients of immigration. The concentration of immigrants in states with the largest wealth disparities heightens the credibility of those who say that immigration displaces native-born workers and drives down their wages.

The erosion of the middle class may be the most ominous aspect of the polarization of society into rich and poor. The U.S. Department of Commerce (Bureau of the Census, 1995) tracks "share of aggregate household income, by quintile," finding that the share of national income of the middle 60 percent of the population shrank from 53.0 percent in 1968 to 48.2 percent in 1993. Adds economist Lawrence Katz, "It is hard and dirty work trying to deny the dramatic growth in inequality and the slowdown in the rate of growth of middle class living standards" (Katz, Aug. 31, 1995).

A strong middle class has long been seen as the backbone of democracy. Inequality is surprising and troubling in industrialized countries in part because it is characteristic of third world economies. Simon Kuznets argued during the post-World War II boom economy that inequality wanes as a country industrializes (Inequality, 1994). Unless one would argue that the United States is currently de-industrializing and de-skilling its labor force (for which there is, in fact, evidence), the record contradicts his sanguine assumption. The trend toward polarization into rich and poor sectors is most pronounced and appears to be progressing faster in the United States and Great Britain - which have large foreign-born populations - than in other western industrial countries (Sklar 1995; Inequality 1994; Rattner, 1995; Widening Wage, 1995).

Freeman suggests that the polarization of society results from multiple, ongoing pressures: "increased foreign trade, technology, declining unionization, immigration - all seem to have some effect, and none of these factors seems likely to move in favor of the low paid" (Freeman, 1998). Comparing the harms from exporting jobs or importing immigrants, Borjas points out that immigrants are forever: they remain through economic downturns, inflating a labor force that one might wish to shrink, and disproportionately using public services even when unemployment is low (Borjas, 1995; 1996; 1997).

The 1990s have been a period of great economic activity and high levels of job creation, and both the liberal and the dominant, neo-conservative ideologies would have one believe that these conditions bring prosperity. But certain data suggest that the prosperity is confined to a narrow, upper-income, band. Economic growth has not brought the good jobs that would allow average working Americans to live debt-free lives according to the standard which they believe to be their birthright.

Fiscal Issues -Infrastructure

Population growth, by itself, appears to raise the cost of government. Eben Fodor (1997) finds that each new residential unit in Portland, Oregon (assuming an average of three occupants) creates demand for approximately $24,000 worth of new infrastructure, the costs for which are born primarily by established residents.

Without the newcomers, new schools, libraries, firehouses, police stations, transportation systems, sanitary sewer and storm drainage systems, recreational facilities, and electric power generation and distribution systems would not be needed. Is it fair that established residents, often older and retired people, must pay for growth in their community - especially when the effects for them are negative or, at best, marginally positive?

The apparently inescapable effect of population growth is to raise taxes. Testing the hypothesis that local taxes are higher in larger compared to smaller communities, University of Colorado physicist and Boulder, Colorado, community activist Albert Bartlett compared per capita municipal taxes in communities that differ in size by a factor of two. Bartlett found that communities of a given population size impose 25 percent higher taxes, per capita, than do municipalities half the size.

In California, immigration flows accounted for 96 percent of 1990s population growth. Thus, immigration accounted for most of the demand for additions to the infrastructure. Nevertheless, typical estimates of the costs of immigration ignore infrastructure, focusing only on annual, operating costs.

Fiscal Issues - Operating Costs

Estimates of the total annual public costs from immigration (after subtracting taxes that immigrants pay) vary greatly, depending upon assumptions and cost categories. Most of the burden is born by states and local government. Few economists now count immigration as a net gain.

Efforts to show that immigration even so much as pays its way are almost comically strained. For example, the National Research Council’s 300-year projection shows that immigrants and their descendants cease to be a net drain on the public purse after about 80 years; and about one century after that, their cumulative balance turns positive (NRC, 1997).

Of note, the NRC calculated costs on the assumption that immigrants were ineligible for some $23 billion in welfare benefits over 5 years, but as their study went to press, in 1997, Congress restored more than $18 billion of that money. The NRC makes the further interesting choice not to pro-rate to immigrant households the cost of "public goods" (which account for 23 % of total federal outlays) {p. 304}). Public goods include national defense and public health, and pro-rating their costs among native households is standard. Someone has to pay the bill. This asymmetrical accounting practice by the NRC makes meaningless every comparison to native-born Americans’ net tax account.

Even with such assumptions, the National Research Council cannot find that immigration makes fiscal sense for America. They estimate that in fiscal year 1994-1995 in California, each immigrant-headed household cost state taxpayers $3,463. If per-household costs in California were extrapolated nation-wide, the NRC calculates that the net public cost of immigration would be $15-20 billion or more, annually.

In New Jersey, with proportionately more European and longer-established immigrants, the 1989-1990 public cost per immigrant-headed household was $1,484 annually (NRC, 1997, pp. 276-277). The smaller fiscal burden associated with New Jersey compared to California immigration reveals how much immigrant characteristics have changed. The changes began to be manifest about 1970, in the aftermath of the 1965 legislation that made family reunification the cornerstone of immigration policy.

A 1997 accounting of the fiscal effect of immigration by economist Donald Huddle is relatively comprehensive. Based on the Census Bureau number of 25.6 million legal and illegal immigrants (and U.S.-born descendants of the latter) who had settled in the United States since 1969, Huddle estimates that immigration costs the public a net $68 billion, annually, that is, after subtracting taxes that immigrants pay. This accounting includes (1) programs used by immigrants such as education, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), health care, welfare, and criminal justice (25% of the federal prison population is foreign-born); (2) the social safety net for Americans whom immigrants displace from jobs; and (3) the net present value of the Social Security liability that is incurred annually in immigrant accounts.

The single largest public cost attributable to immigration is kindergarten through secondary school education. Huddle finds that the combined state, local, and federal cost in 1996 was $20.23 billion, not counting expenditures for certain bilingual education programs (Huddle, 1997). The burden falls first on inner cities where many immigrants settle but soon passes to middle class suburbs. In a typical ring community near Philadelphia, "Cash strapped schools are jammed with troubled youngsters from dozens of nations. And many homeowners are suddenly desperate to sell" (Phillips, Nov. 13, 1997).

Steven Camarota finds that "immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades." Nevertheless, the "percentage of [adult] immigrants without a high school diploma is 30 percent, more than three times the rate for natives" (Camarota, 2001).

Health care is a further casualty of large increases in the number of poor. Although Congress enacted major new health care programs in 1996 and 1997, increasing coverage for people between jobs and financing health care for low-income children, "the number of Americans without insurance has risen steadily, by an average of one million a year" (Pear, 1998, p.A1). The total in 1998 exceeded 41 million.

Camarota’s study for the Center for Immigration Studies [Washington. D.C.] shows that "Immigrants who arrived after 1989 and their U.S.-born children account for 60 percent or 5.5 million of the increase in the size of the uninsured population." Poor education, the low-skill jobs for which they are equipped, and poverty substantially account for finding that "one-third of immigrants do not have health insurance - two and one-half times the rate for natives" (Camarota, 2001).

The Center for Immigration Studies analysis of March, 2000, Census Bureau data further shows that immigrant households use public healthcare facilities at a significantly higher rate that natives, and that their use of welfare programs is 30 to 50 percent higher than by native households.

The Huddle findings are congruent, adding that immigration costs keep rising because "[t]he general costs of public services disproportionately consumed by immigrants are rising faster than the Consumer Price Index,…[t]he immigrant sector is both poorer and less educated than average in the U.S. population," and the number of legal and illegal immigrants rises by approximately 5 percent per year (over 5 times the natural increase of the native-born). "Moreover, the number of poor and low-skilled immigrants is rising as a proportion of all immigrants" (Huddle, 1997, Executive Summary).

Immigration is sometimes alleged to be the salvation of the Social Security system, but reflection shows that this cannot be true. Low-paid workers eventually receive more in Social Security payments than they will have paid in, and proportionately more than middle and high-paid workers. Even under proposals for an across-the-board reduction in Social Security pay-outs, these relative shares remain (Huddle, 1998).

The majority of immigrants are low skilled (Mexican and Central American immigrants average less than an eighth-grade education {NRC, 1997}). Therefore they typically receive below-average wages, make below-average contributions to the Social Security system, and will receive back proportionately more than average and high contributors. With more low-paid workers, the accrued net liabilities are greater and the Social Security system goes broke sooner rather than later.

Whether one accepts the higher or lower cost estimates of fiscal costs, it seems clear that taxpayers subsidize those who employ immigrants. Employers benefit from paying lower wages - whether in the avocado patch or in Silicon Valley - while the taxpayer watches as his community grows, and then pays for that growth.

Tax increases, falling primarily on established residents, are required to cover the cost of new infrastructure as well as operations. Compounding the deficit arising from the low tax contributions of low-skilled immigrants is their disproportionately high use of public facilities and services.

Like earlier immigrants, Latinos, Asians, Africans, and Eastern Europeans add to the cultural richness of an area, and most do contribute the positive qualities of hard work and family values. Nevertheless, recent studies show that most immigrants are a drain on local and state economies, burdens that the middle class can ill afford.

Disease

No present study of the fiscal impact of immigration includes the public health costs of containing communicable diseases. Nevertheless, immigrants are more likely than natives to be infected with communicable diseases that they introduce into vulnerable sectors of the native-born population.

The majority of the 28 million-plus foreign-born persons now in the United States are from third world countries where malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis, cholera, syphilus, and leprosy are endemic. The tuberculosis incidence rates in countries from which most immigrants now come are 10 to 30 times greater than the U.S. rate (St. Louis and Wasserheit, 1998; Mastro, 1992).

One result is that the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta must devote increasing resources to attacking outbreaks of disease at international entry points. Cholera from South America was intercepted in 1992 at the Los Angeles airport; and, in a South-East Asian connection, "an epidemic of imported leprosy in the United States began in 1978 and ended by 1988."

Nevertheless, disease slips through. When a 63-year old Monroe Hall, Virginia, woman contracted malaria, the first case in Virginia in 50 years, investigators drew blood from 88 Central Americans, mostly farm-workers, to determine if they had brought the Plasmodium parasite to Westmoreland County (A Rare Case of Malaria, 1998). The results were affirmative.

Similarly, hepatitis-B was virtually unknown in the United States as little as twenty years ago. It can lead to liver failure or liver cancer, The United States’ battle to intercept South-East-Asia-introduced hepatitis B was lost, so the containment effort must be ongoing and native-born Americans are encouraged to accept immunization shots (Mastro, 1992, p.1129; Gellert, 1993; Scott, 1992).

Hepatitis-B has risen to such prevalence and has such dangerous consequences that, for several years, it has been recommended that all babies be inoculated against it. It is reported, however, that the vaccine is not benign. A small fraction of the 200 million inoculated worldwide claim serious side-effects that cover a "spectrum of auto-immune and nervous disorders." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is taking seriously the possibility of side-effects to the vaccine, although World Health Organization officials discount the worry (A Shadow Falls, 1998).

Tuberculosis was never fully eradicated in the United States, and it is more widespread than hepatitis-B. The rate of tuberculosis in the native-born population has "remained relatively constant at 8.1 per 100,000," but by 1993, its incidence among the foreign-born population in the United States had risen to 33.6 per 100,000 (McKenna et al., 1995, p.1072). McKenna and co-authors write in the New England Journal of Medicine that, "The national surveillance data show that the proportion of diagnosed cases of active tuberculosis in which the patient was foreign-born increased from 22 percent in 1986 to almost 30 percent in 1993" (McKenna et al., 1995, p.107l). Similarly, Cantwell and co-authors (1994) report that foreign-born individuals accounted for 60 percent of the increase in active tuberculosis cases in the United States between 1985 and 1992.

New York City, for example, was virtually free of tuberculosis in the early 1980s, but recent expenditures to control outbreaks run about $50 million per year (Disease, 1995). In "In Los Angeles County, which is second to New York as a center of tuberculosis, most active cases of tuberculosis are in immigrants (Ziv and Lo, 1995, p.1096). Secondary transmission to vulnerable U.S. populations, such as those infected with the HIV virus, amplifies the effect (Raviglione et al., 1995, p. 224).

Rubella - which causes fetal deformation if a pregnant woman becomes infected - was virtually eliminated in the United States after development of a vaccine in the early 1960s. That disease is another that has resurfaced, creating the need to inoculate a whole new generation of young women. An infection hot-spot in the United States it is Forsyth County, North Carolina, where, in 2000, it was associated with Hispanic immigrants (Frago, 2001).

The On-going Debate

Some say that the intellectual battle over stopping mass immigration is done, but no one should expect that the coming political battle will lack interest. Population projections are a foundation stone of the contest. Demographers Dennis Ahlburg and James Vaupel insightfully observe that, "Population projection is not a bloodless technical task, but a politically charged craft of great interest to policymakers and the public" (1990, p. 646).

Demographic facts and their interpretation have major social and economic effects. Why else would the National Manufacturers Association, the National Trial Lawyers Association, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church (Mumford, 1996), and "many Jewish groups" according to Washington Jewish Week, have engaged in "a concerted lobbying campaign" (Dorf, March 28, 1996, p. 25) to preserve current (or higher) refugee and other immigrant flows?

Constituencies for U.S. Population Stabilization

Middle Americans, environmentalists, multinational business interests, labor, and certain ethnic constituencies have widely differing views on population stabilization and immigration. Affiliation with a mainstream political party does not, however, predict positions on immigration.

For example, most environmentalists would welcome smaller, rapidly declining human populations and a stable U.S. population if this entailed no hard choice such as stopping mass immigration. The fertility decline is widely welcomed because individuals voluntarily make most of the decisions that cause this decline. The debate over reducing immigration is contentious.

The division among the largely-liberal, well-educated leaders of the environmental movement in the United States is illustrated by a disputed Sierra Club referendum in early 1998. Grassroots activism forced a referendum vote on whether the Sierra Club should advocate immigration reduction. The club leadership contended that "immigration is not an environmental issue" and prevented an up-or-down vote by offering an alternate (and, some say, illegal, not to mention confusing) motion (Zuckerman 1999). On final count, the club leadership prevailed, 60-40.

While results of the Sierra Club vote were pending, Mother Jones Magazine (March) polled its readers as follows: "The Sierra Club is now voting on whether to adopt a formal policy advocating ‘a reduction in net immigration to the U.S. in order to reduce population growth to protect the environment.’ Do you agree with the proposed policy?" The results were: Yes, 56 percent; No, 44 percent.

U.S. citizens at large tend to identify themselves as "conservationist" rather than "environmentalist." Population stabilization as a necessary part of environmental protection is widely recognized.

Politically, the issue remains submerged. It had not become salient by the time of the presidential election in 2000. The 1996 Republican Platform Committee put immigration reduction on the 1996 platform but, in his speech accepting the presidential nomination, Robert Dole explicitly removed it. Clinton political advisor Dick Morris reportedly has said that immigration control was one of two issues that Robert Dole could have used to defeat Clinton.

The Gallup and Roper Poll organizations have year-by-year sequences consistently showing antipathy toward immigration, punctuated by fluctuations that track the business cycle. Polls commissioned by entities that span the political spectrum show large and growing majorities, including a majority of minorities, wanting less immigration into the United States.

Mass immigration does not respond to the needs or desires of most citizens, majority or minority. Polls show that most Americans are opposed to mass immigration. "A nationwide Zogby poll in February [2000] showed that 72% of Americans want immigration reduced. In California, a July [2000] Rasmussen poll showed that 67 % of whites and 58% of all likely voters believed that immigration is too high" (Kolasinski, 2000. p.3). These results emerged during a long-running economic expansion. Recession invariably rekindles concerns about keeping American jobs and social services for Americans.

With relatively full employment during the 1990s economic expansion, a 1997 Wall Street Journal/NBC News Survey found tepid support for immigration even among interests supposedly identified with industry: "self-identified Republicans are narrowly pro-immigration while Democrats by a clear margin see more negative consequences." A negative effect on the economy is seen by 51% of Democrats while 41% say the effect is positive. And 48% of Republicans say "positive," while 46% say "negative" (Hunt, 1997).

An August, 1997, Washington Post/ABC News poll found that "57% of those interviewed said the country was headed in the wrong direction. Three out of four say they do not trust the government or its leaders…." Among their concerns, respondents "consistently stressed" immigration (Morin, 1997).

A 1996 survey of 1,621 Hispanic Americans by the Tomas Rivera Center of Claremont, California, found that an absolute majority of citizens favored immigration reduction. Even among non-citizens, "reducing immigration" found support levels ranging from 29% in California to 41% in Florida" (Price, 1997).

A detailed February 19, 1996 Roper poll shows that:

• "a large majority (75 percent) supports strong laws to identify and deport illegal aliens."
• "Large and substantial margins [of respondents] agree that overall immigration should be lower." Eighty-three percent of all those interviewed favored a lower level of immigration than the current level of over one million legal immigrants a year.
• A large majority favor overall immigration at less than 300,000 per year. This view is supported by 52 percent of Hispanics, 73 percent of blacks, 72 percent of conservatives, 71 percent of moderates, 66 percent of liberals, 72 percent of Democrats, and 70 percent of Republicans.
• A total of 54 percent say that annual immigration should be less than 100,000. Twenty percent support no immigration at all -- zero (New Roper Poll Reflects, 1996).

Similarly, a March 26, 1996, Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 52% of Americans support a five-year moratorium on all legal and illegal immigration into the United States (Diversity, 1996).

In September, 1995, CBS News/New York Times poll found that:

• 63% of Americans think immigration levels are too high.
• 66% of Republicans, 60% of Democrats, and 64% of Independents want less immigration.

A November 1994 Times/Mirror poll on legal immigration reflected both the trend and a still-weak economy. Compared to 76 percent in 1992, 82 percent of respondents said that the United States should restrict immigration (USA Today, 1994). A 1994 CBS/New York Times poll showed 63 percent of Americans supporting "reductions in legal immigration" and 38 percent wanting "no immigration whatsoever" (America or Utopia, 1996, p. 20).

A 1993 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found 76 percent agreeing that immigration "should be reduced or stopped" until the economy improves. In June, 1993, the Hispanic USA Research Group Survey of Hispanic Americans found that 89 percent "strongly support an immediate moratorium on immigration."

The December, 1992, the Latino Political Survey (commissioned by the Ford Foundation) found that "75 percent of Mexican-Americans agree there are too many immigrants in this country"; 79% of Puerto Ricans, 65% of Cubans, and 74% of "Anglos" agree.

A 1992 Gallup/Newsweek poll showed that 64 percent of Americans "are more likely to vote for a Presidential candidate who supports tougher immigration laws."

In order to put teeth into laws designed to stop illegal immigration, a surprising 53 percent of Americans favored a "required National Work Identification Card for all Americans, both citizens and noncitizens," according to a 1994 Harris poll (Public Opinion Polls, 1994; Espenshade and Hempstead, 1995). Congress, in 1996, gave the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) greatly increased authority to enforce immigration law and deport illegal aliens.

In spring, 1998, however, the INS appeared to try to obstruct Congressional intent. New guidelines instructed local "INS offices to issue warnings before raiding employers suspected of employing illegal aliens ‘unknowingly,’ obtain formal approval for raids from INS headquarters or regional offices, bring along ‘community liaison officers’ and ‘avoid contentious circumstances’ such as operations at restaurants during lunch or dinner" (Branigin, 1998, p. A2).

Americans vote not only at the ballot box but also with their feet. Demographer William Frey documents the "flight" of working and middle class Americans, both white and black, from the principal immigrant destination in the United States, California.

The nation appears to be balkanizing, as immigration drives native-born Americans out of states with a high proportion of new arrivals. A result is the re-concentration of blacks in the Southeast and a flood of whites into the inter-montane West and states adjacent to California where, to the dismay of long-time residents, they are vastly increasing population density and driving up land prices (Frey, 1995; 1996; 1997). One bumper sticker reads, "Don’t Californicate Oregon!"

Americans appear to trust their own observations despite misleading statistics, interpretations, and media coverage of assorted environmental, social, and fiscal problems where the population factor might have been indicted, but was not mentioned (Maher, 1997). Many apparently think that immigration harms Americans, especially the poor and including established immigrants. Job losses, lower wages, competition for educational and social services, and higher public costs and taxes caused by immigration as well as environmental protection efforts rendered futile by rapid population growth (whatever its source) lead the list of commonly recognized harms.

The New Century

Small differences in fertility rates and immigration rates, early on, make enormous differences later. The point is well illustrated by United Nations projections of world population growth. Their estimate of a middle range scenario assumes that a fertility rate of 2.1 (approximately the replacement rate for the existing population) will be achieved within the next decade or so. This would result in population reaching 10.8 billion by 2150. But with a fertility rate just one-half child less, that is 1.6 births per woman, the population in 2150 would be 3.6 billion, i.e., smaller than today. And with one-half child more (i.e., 2.6 birth per woman), the 2150 population would be 27.0 billion (UN, 1998).

The principal governing the long-term effect of small, consistent differences also applies to U.S. immigration numbers, particularly because the fertility rate of most immigrant groups is substantially higher than that of the native-born. Traditionally, second and third generation immigrants have assimilated to U.S. patterns, but the conditions of immigration are vastly different today than formerly. Linguistically homogeneous non-English-speaking networks are increasingly self-contained, pressure to assimilate is less, and reinforcements of ethnic compatriots arrive continuously. Indeed, recent immigrants may become citizens without learning English and increasingly question the desirability of assimilating (Branigin, 1998).

Moreover, recently-arrived immigrants comprise growing shares of many ethnic groups, a trend that is most evident among Mexican-origin Americans. Longtime (often, many-generation) U.S. citizens of Mexican origin are completely identified with American culture. But increasing numbers of Mexican-origin residents are recent arrivals, so group characteristics change.

By 1989, the fertility rate of Mexican-origin women in the United States was rising significantly as the foreign-born increased their representation within the group. About 20 percent of births designated "white" by the Census Bureau are to Hispanic mothers. For the one-year period ending June 1998, Hispanic women had the highest fertility rate (100.4 births per 1000 in the population) of any other ethnic group. Non-Hispanic whites and blacks had fertility rates of 57.4 and 70.0 per 1000, respectively. (Smith 1999, p.25).

Forecasting from a different perspective, note that in the period 1989-1997 the non-Hispanic white fertility rate remained below replacement level, at approximately 1.8 births per woman, where it has been for two decades, and the black fertility rate declined sharply (falling to approximately replacement level). The black teenage pregnancy rate also continues a rapid decline (National Center for Health Statistics, 1998; Smith, 1999).

In 1994, the foreign-born accounted for less than 10 percent of the U.S. population but had 18 percent of births (Ventura et al., 1996). If the foreign-born population continues to grow, their fertility-rate characteristics will begin to dominate the national rate. Thus, at present immigration levels, the overall fertility rate is likely to climb above the replacement level. The natural increase attributable to immigrants, in addition to the flow of new arrivals, will produce a much different, and much more crowded, future than would otherwise be the case.

American citizens are entitled to have their voices heard with respect to the future population size of their own country. For several generations, Americans have exercised reproductive restraint. Absent immigration, the population of the United States would be rapidly approaching stabilization. The burden lifted from the natural resources and the waste-assimilative capacity of the nation (including CO2 emissions) would be enormous. The social and economic assimilation of the citizens of a stable population would also be expected to proceed at a rapid rate.

Most Americans do not want and cannot afford a growing population. Reproduction of native-born Americans is not driving population growth. Immigration is.

REFERENCES

• A Rare Case of Malaria is Reported in Virginia (1998). New York Times, Aug. 2, p. A24.
• A Shadow Falls on Hepatitis B Vaccination Effort (1998). Science 281 , July 31, p. 630.
• Abelson, Philip H. (December 14, 1990). Incorporation of New Science into Risk Assessment. Science 250 (4987), 1497.
• Ahlburg, D.A. and Vaupel, J.W. (1990). Alternative Projections of the U.S. population. Demography 27 (4), 639-647.
• Alster, Norm. (1998). Labor Shortage a Mirage, Tech Prof. Says. Investor’s Business Daily March 30. P. A8.
• America or Utopia. (1996). National Review March 25, pp. 18-20.
• Armas, Genaro C. Census: 28.3 M Foreign-Born in U.S. The Associated Press, January 3, 2001.
• Backlash: The view from Wall Street (1996). Harper's Magazine January, p. 16.
• Borjas, George J. (1997). How Not To Save American Jobs. National Review, December 22, p.20.
• Borjas, George J. (1996). The New Economics of Immigration. The Atlantic Monthly, November, pp. 72-80.
• Borjas, George. (1995). Know the Flow. National Review, April 17, pp. 44-49.
• Branigin, William (1998). Criticism Prompts INS to Make New Rules for Work Site Raids. The Washington Post, May 30, p. A2.
• Briggs, V.M., Jr. (1990). Testimony before the U.S. House of Representative Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and International Law. Congressional Record, March 13.
• Briggs, V.M., Jr. (1992). Mass Migration and the National Interest. M.E. Sharpe, Inc., Armonk, NY.
• Burke, Meredith B. The Defensible Immigration Level is Zero. Much Ado about Mensa, Pheonix, January 2001, p. 8,
• Camarota, Steven A. Immigrants in the United States - 2000: A Snapshot of America’s Foreign-Born Population. Washington, D.C: Center for Immigration Studies, Janmuary, 2001.
• Campbell, Colin (1998). The Future of Oil and Hydrocarbon Man. Houston and London: Petroconsultants, <sales@petroconsultants.com>
• Cantwell, M.F., Snider, D.E., and Cauthen, G.M. (1994). Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in the United States, 1985 through 1992. JAMA 272, 535-539.
• Clinton’s Africa Trip (1998). Russia’s Turmoil Coincides With Test of Refugees Policy. Forward, March 27, pp. 1,3.
• Daleiden, Joseph (1998). Immigration’s Impact on African-American Job Opportunities. Headway, February.
• Daly, Herman (1990). Toward some operational principles of sustainable development. Ecological Economics, 2, 1-6.
• Dorf, Matthew. (1996). Doors Stay Open. Refugees Cap Defeated in Congress. Washington Jewish Week, March 28, p. 25.
• Duff, Anna Bray (March 24, 1998). Is America’s Immigration Policy Making Worker Shortage Worse? Investor’s Business Daily.
• Duncan, Richard C. The Life-Expectancy of Industrial Civilization: The Decline to Global Equilibrium. Population and Environment 14(4), 325-358, 1993.
• Duncan, Richard. World Population and Energy-Use: The End of Exponential Growth, c. 1973. Population and Environment, in press.
• Duncan, Richard C. and Youngquist, Walter. Encircling the Peak of World Oil Production. Natural Resources Research 8 (3), 219-232, 1999.
• Estrada, R. (1990). Less Immigration Helps Hispanics. The Miami Herald July 24, 13A.
• Estrada, R. (1991). The Impact of Immigration on Hispanic Americans, Chronicles July, 24-28.
• Disease Fights Back. (1995). The Economist, May 20, pp. 15-16.
• Espenshade, T.J. and Hempstead, K. (1995). Contemporary American Attitudes Toward Immigration. Presented at Population Association of America Anual Meetings, San Francisco, CA, April 6-8.
• Ferguson, Andrew. The Impact of Globalization on the United States. U.K: Optimum Population Trust, September 10, 2000.
• Frago, Charlie. N.C. Leads Nation in Rubella. The News and Record, January 9, 2001.
• Freeman, Richard B.(1998). Unequal Incomes. Harvard Magazine January-February, pp.62-64.
• Few visas go to "best, brightest." San Franciso Chronicle March 11, p. 1.
• Frey, William H. (1997). Immigration, Welfare Magnets and the Geography of Child Poverty in The United States. Population and Environment 19(1), 53-86.
• Frey, William, 1995. Immigration and Internal Migration "Flight": A California Case Study. Population and Environment 16 (4): 353-375.
• Frey, William H. (1993). Interstate migration and immigration for white and minorities 1985-1990: The Emergence of multi-ethnic states, Research Report, 93-297. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: Population Studies Center.
• Frey, William, 1994. White and Black "Flight" from High Immigration Metro Areas: Evidence from the 1990 Census. #94-319, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
• Inequality: How the Gap Between Rich and Poor Hurts the Economy. (1994). Business Week August 15, pp. 78-83.
• Gellert, J.A. (1993). International Migration and Control of Communicable Diseases. Soc. Science Med. 37, 1489-1499.
• Gutfeld, Rose and Rosewicz, Barbara. (1990). Clean-Air Accord is Reached in Congress That May Cost Industry $25 Billion a Year. Wall Street Journal October 23, p. 2.
• Huddle, Donald. (1997). Executive Summary, Immigration’s Costs Keep Rising. Carrying Capacity Network, Washington, D.C.
• Huddle, Donald. (1998). Post-1969 Immigration and the Example of the Insolvency of the Social Security System. Population and Environment 19(6), 533-540.
• Hunt, Albert R. (1997). On Immigration, Party Leaders Aren’t Necessarily in Sync with Feelings of Rank and File. Wall Street Journal, June 27, Editorial Page.
• Kolasinski, Adam C. How Republicans Can Approach the Minority Vote. Frontpage Magazine.com, January 26, 2001.
• Lind, Michael (1995). America by Invitation. The New Yorker April 24, pp. 107-112.
• Macunovich, Diane J. (1995). The Economics of Fertility. In Household and Family Economics, pp.91-150, Paul Menchik (Ed.). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.
• Maher, T. Michael. (1997). How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection. Population and Environment 18(4), 339-372.
• Mastro, T.D., Redd, S.C., and Breiman, R.F. (1992). Imported Leprosy in the United States, 1978 through 1988: An Epidemic Without Secondary Transmission. Am. J. of Public Health 82 (8), 1127-1130.
• Matloff, Norman. (1998).Visa Program for High-Tech Workers. Wall Street Journal, June 5.
• McKenna, M.T., McCray, E., and Onorato, I. (1995). The Epidemiology of Tuberculosis among Foreign-Born Persons in the United States, 1986-1993. New Eng. J. of Medicine 332 (16), 1071-1076.
• Miles, Jack (1992). Blacks vs. Browns. The Atlantic Monthly 270, October, pp. 41-68.
• Morin, Richard. (1997). Poll Finds Wide Pessimism About Direction of Nation. Washington Post, August 29, p. A1.
• Morris, Frank L., Jr. (1995). Illegal Immigration and African American Opportunities. Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee SubCommittee on Immigration and Claims, Congressional Record, April 5.
• Morris, Frank L., (1990). Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law. Congressional Record, March 13.
• Mumford, Stephen D. (1996). The Life and Death of NSSM 200. Center for Research on Population and Security, Research Triangle Park, NC.
• National Center for Health Statistics (1998). Monthly Vital Statistics Report 45 (11), THS 98-1120. Bethesda, MD: Author.
• New Roper Poll Reflects Strong Agreement: Support for Big Immigration Cuts Now Overwhelming (1996). NPG Press Release, February 19.
• New York’s Economy: Miracle Needed (1997). The London Economist, December 20, p.28.
• Oberlink, Ric. Too Many People, Too Little Power: People ‘Longage," Power Shortage. Union Tribune Publishing CO. January 17, 2001.
• Pear, Robert (1998). Policy Changes Fail to Fill Gaps in Health Coverage. The New York Times, August 9, p.A1.
• Perez-Pena, Richard (1997). New York’s Income Gap Largest in Nation. New York Times, December 17, national page.
• PHILBIN, James. P. What Boom Times? Record Number of Mothers Working Disproves Rosy Talk. Investor’s Business Daily, January 31, 2001, p.A24.
• Phillips, Michael M. (1997). More Suburbs Find City Ills Don’t Respect City Limits. Wall Street Journal, November 13, p.B1.
• Phillips, Michael M. (1997). Income Gap Between Rich and Poor Grows Nationally. Wall Street Journal, December 17, p.B2.
• Pimentel, David and Pimentel, Marcia. Land, Energy, and Water. Revised edition. Boulder: University of Colorado, 1997.
• Price, David A. (1998). ‘New Economy’ 1, Immigrants 0. Investor’s Business Daily, April 7, p.1B.
• Price, David A. (1997). Anti-Immigration Immigrants: Hispanics Fret Over Job Losses from New Entrants. Investors Business Daily September 9, p.1.
• Public Opinion Polls: U.S. Immigration Policy. (1994).Population-Environment Balance, Washington, D.C.
• Rattner, Steven (1995). GOP ignores income inequality. Wall Street Journal May 23, p. A22.
• Raviglione, M.C., Snider, D.E., Jr., Kochi, A. (1995). Global Epidemiology of Tuberculosis: Morbidity and Mortality of a Worldwide Epidemic. JAMA 273, 18 January, 220-226.
• Rodgers, T.J. (1998). Testimony Before Senate Judiciary Committee, February 25.
• Rodriguez, Cindy. Impact of the Undocumented: Study Cites Boom in the Job Rolls. Boston Globe, February 6, 2001.
• Scott, Gale (1992). Hepatitis in Infants "Ticking Time Bomb." Nashville Banner, September 8, p. 2.
• Simmons, Mattew R. Energy in the New Economy: The limits to Growth. Conference: Energy in the New Century. Energy Institute of the Americas, Oklahoma City, OK, October 2, 2000.
• Sklar, Holly (1995). On this Labor Day, Let's Draft a New Economic Bill of Rights. Nashville Banner, September 4, p. A13.
• Smith, Betty L., Martin, J.A., Ventura, S.J. (July 29, 1999). Births and Deaths: Preliminary Data for July 1997-June 1998. National Center for Health Statistics. Washington, D.C.
• Stein, Herbert, (1996). Good times, bad vibes. Wall Street Journal March 14, Editorial page.
• St. Louis, Michael E. and Wasserheit, J.N. (1998). Elimination of Syphilis in the United States. Science, 281, July 17, p.353.
• Takahashi, Dean. (1998). Ethnic Networks Help Immigrants Rise in Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal March 18, p. B1.
• Teitelbaum, Michael. (1996). Too Many Engineers, Too Few Jobs. NY Times March 19, Op.Ed page.
• The Environmental Thing (1990). National Review April 30, p. 14.
• U.S. Grows with Residents Born Outside its Borders. Washington Times, January 4, 2001.
• Ventura, Stephanie, Martin, Joyce A., Mathews, T.J., Clarke, Sally C. Advance Report of Final Natality Statistics, 1994. (1996). Supplement 44 (11), Tables 10 & 11 (pp. 41-42). National Center for Health Statistics, Division of Vital Statistics.
• Where Have the Good Jobs Gone. (1995). U.S. News and World Report July 31, Feature.
• Widening Wage Inequality (1995). Policy and Research Report Winter/Spring. The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.
• Youngquist, Walter. GeoDestinies. Portland, OR: National Book Company, 1997.
• Zitner, Aaron (1998). GAO: Studies Citing Lack of Technology Workers ‘Flawed.’ Times Argus (Montpelier, VT) March 13, Editorial.
• Ziv, T.A. & Lo, B. (1995). Sounding board: Denial of care to illegal immigrants. New Eng. J. of Medicine 332 (16), 1095-1099.
• Zuckerman, Ben (1999). The Sierra Club Immigration Debate. Population and Environment, 20(5), 401-412.