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April 21, 2009
News and Commentary: A recent New York Times article lacks the key component…

Comments: Our nation is already vastly overpopulated in terms of the long-range carrying capacity of our resources and environment, yet we continue to grow rapidly. Our population, now 306 million, for the last few decades has been growing by over 30 million each decade. It is projected to reach 450 million by mid-century, and still be growing rapidly. That growth is a prescription for disaster.

Our population growth is driven by mass immigration, both legal (well over one million a year) and illegal immigration (over 600,000 a year). If legal immigration were limited to not more than 200,000 a year (including all relatives and refugees) and illegal immigration halted, our population would soon stop growing and begin a slow decline in numbers.

We believe that in order to create a sustainable economy for the long term, and maximize per capita income, we need to first halt our population growth and then, after an interim period of negative growth, stabilize our population at between 100 and 150 million.

By far the most important consequence of immigration is its impact on our population growth. A national immigration policy (which does not exist as of now) should be an integral part of a national population policy designed to halt and eventually reverse the disastrous growth of our population, which is rapidly destroying our economy and our environment along with it.

The most important task confronting our nation is to decide at what size we should seek to stabilize our U.S. population, yet, the urgent need to do so is hardly recognized by our opinion leaders and decision makers both in and out of government. Here is one example:

A lengthy article on the front page of The New York Times, Sunday, March 15th was titled, “Where Education and Assimilation Collide.” Some of the points brought out:

1. The United States has experienced the greatest surge in immigration since the early 20th century, with one in five residents now a recent immigrant or a close relative of one.
2. About a third of the country’s foreign-born residents, an estimated 11.9 million people, are here illegally. (Note: we believe the number is between 15 and 20 million.)
3. For the first time in at least a century, one country and one language have dominated the influx since the early 1990s. Mexico accounts for 31 percent of the foreign-born, while, over all, Spanish-speaking Latin Americans make up about half of the total.

There is not one word in the article about the most important consequence of mass immigration – its impact on our population size and growth. Amazingly, that concept seems to have almost disappeared from our national radar screen.

There has recently been a great deal of concern that the proposed fiscal stimulus will leave a legacy of overwhelming public debt for our children and grandchildren. What about the impact on their environment, resources and standard of living if we leave them with a nation of a half billion or a billion people?

Don Mann, President, Negative Population Growth, Inc.