NPG Special Report: Immigration and U.S. Population Growth

American communities are being overwhelmed by population growth. Around the country, fast-growing communities are finding that population growth is overcrowding their children’s schools, threatening the environment, and causing them to spend more time in traffic and less with their families. Road and school construction can’t keep up with population increases, open space is vanishing at an alarming rate, and California-style blackouts are expected to spread to other states. More people also means more pollution, more sprawl, and tighter housing markets.

Schools are a special concern. In the last decade, school enrollments have increased by 16 percent, an increase that the Census Bureau attributes in large part to the immigration influx. Department of Education officials say that by 2100, the nation’s schools will have to find room for 94 million students–nearly double the number of school-age children, ages five to 17, the nation has now. How will our schools absorb the coming population increase, when already they are struggling to meet the needs of existing students?

Immigration is the U.S.’s major form of population growth. The U.S. Census Bureau says that two-thirds of future growth will result from immigrants arriving since 1994 and their descendants.

Today, U.S. population stands at 284 million, a 13 percent increase in the last decade. The Census Bureau’s middle series projections show that if current immigration levels continue, our population will increase to 404 million by 2050 and continue to grow steeply. (Even more worrisome, the Census Bureau’s high series projections–which have proven more accurate in recent years–project a population of 553 million by 2050.)

If, on the other hand, we reduce immigration to a replacement level–zero net increase–the Census Bureau projects that our population in 2050 is likely to be 328 million and the growth rate will be leveling off.

What this means is that immigration will not be a marginal contributor to future U.S. population growth, but, in fact, the primary one.