I am very pleased to provide a written statement regarding the important issue of immigration’s role in U.S. population growth.

Negative Population Growth (NPG) is a national, non-profit organization of 26,000 concerned citizens working for a smaller, more sustainable U.S. population size, in order to protect our environment and quality of life.

I. Immigration’s Contribution to U.S. Population Growth

Immigration is fundamentally a 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.

II. Why Does Population Size Matter?

a. Environment

There is an overwhelming national and international scientific consensus on the relationship between population growth and environmental degradation. All the environmental consequences of human activity increase with the growth of the population: Demands for resources increase, and pollution, deforestation, waste, habitat destruction, and soil erosion rise. More homes, factories, and roads must be built, reducing agricultural land and open space. (Already in the U.S., we lose three acres of farmland and open space every minute to meet the needs of an expanding population.) More energy and water are used, further eroding our limited natural resources and exacerbating water and energy shortages like those already affecting many states.

This essential relationship is nearly universally recognized as one of the fundamental bases for providing international population stabilization funding. In 1994 at the International Conference on Population and the Environment, the United States and dozens of other countries reaffirmed the goal of stopping population growth as a key element in any environmental protection plan.

Consider the impact of population growth on the energy crisis. Between 1970 and 1990, when numerous conservation and efficiency measures were enacted, per capita energy consumption barely increased. But, because the U.S. population continued to grow during this period, total energy consumption increased by 36%, with more than 90% of this increase in energy consumption due entirely to population growth.

The nation’s anti-sprawl, water conservation, and environmental protection priorities cannot be reconciled with the new infrastructure and resource consumption that continued growth will require. Unless we address population growth, our net environmental gains will be reduced (or even reversed) by the demands imposed by our growing population. If the population increases, as the Census Bureau projects, to 404 million by 2050, how will our current environmental victories survive?

b. Quality of life

The problems associated with continued population growth reach beyond the environment to basic quality of life: overcrowded schools, urban sprawl, increased traffic congestion, and higher costs of living.

As an area gets more populated, its infrastructure starts straining under the weight of all the new residents who must be served. Police forces, roads, and schools no longer satisfy the demands of a growing population. Farmland and forests are sacrificed to strip malls and housing developments. More and more schools, sanitary systems, roads, libraries, and water services must be built. Meanwhile, congestion increases, pollution rises, and school overcrowding goes up.

As the county commission chairman of Barrow County, Georgia, which has experienced a 55 percent growth rate in the last decade, noted, “[Population growth] doesn’t increase the tax base as much as it increases the need for services in that area.”

c. Education

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? Across the country, students are attending classes in portable classrooms and eating lunch in staggered schedules starting as early as 10:30 to ease the strain on crowded cafeterias. In Georgia, a recent law requires schools to cut the class sizes over the next few years, but principals report that they simply don’t have the space to do it. There are too many students for the available classrooms. More than 14,900 new classrooms are needed. In Florida, schools are so overcrowded that legislators are considering paying students to go to private schools instead of public ones. In Kansas City, one class meets in what used to be a restroom.

Rather than being used to improve the quality of education for current students, communities are forced to spend their limited tax dollars to build new schools to accommodate growth.

III. Immigration and Population Policy

The problem of U.S. overpopulation and the possibility of adopting a national population policy have been debated at the highest levels of government.

President Nixon voiced concerns about population growth in 1969, arguing that continued growth could only lead to negative consequences: “Look ahead to the end of this century,” he said. “There are 200 million Americans now. By the end of the century there will be 300 million. Where are those 100 million going to be? You can’t pour them into New York, into Los Angeles, into Chicago and the rest and choke those cities to death with smog and crime and all of the rest that comes with overpopulation.”

In 1972, a two-year study by a joint presidential-congressional commission (the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, also known as the Rockefeller Commission) which had representatives of major corporations, unions, governments, environmental organizations, and urban, ethnic, and women's groups, recommended freezing immigration at its then-current level of about 400,000 a year as part of a national population policy.

The commission’s report concluded: “We have looked for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our country does not depend on it, nor does the vitality of business nor the welfare of the average person.” At the time, the U.S. population was only 205 million; now the population is over 284 million–more than a third higher than when the Commission found no justification for further growth.

More recently, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) advocated the goal of voluntary population stabilization in the United States, but fell short of recommending a specific immigration level. This recommendation, like the one preceding it, has not yet been acted upon.

To the contrary, our population has grown by more than 78 million, or 38 percent, in that period. Annual immigration levels have risen dramatically, from approximately 400,000 in 1970 to about one million today.

Had the Rockefeller Commission’s recommendations been adopted in 1972, the United States would look very different today. If post-1972 immigration been limited to replacement level (equal to the amount of out-migration), today U.S. population would be about 243 million—41 million less than our current size.

With each passing year, it becomes more imperative that we address the problems associated with unlimited population growth. Given that our population is already above an optimal level for our resources and environment, adding large amounts of new residents at this time will create a major obstacle to efforts to preserve quality of life and achieve environmental sustainability.

NPG recommends the immediate establishment of a commission or cabinet-level position to advise the President and the Congress on population policy, with immigration levels considered as an integral component of domestic population.