What to do about booming legal and illegal immigration rates is one of the most controversial topics on Americans’ political agenda these days. More than a million immigrants achieve permanent resident status in the United States every year. Another 700,000 become full-fledged American citizens. The non-profit Pew Research Center reports that 82 percent of U.S. population growth is attributable to immigration.
U.S. Population is Growing Rapidly
Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that U.S. population will grow from 303 million people today to 400 million as early as 2040. While many industrialized nations, including Japan and most of Western Europe, are experiencing slowdowns in population growth due to below-replacement birth levels and little immigration, the United States is growing so fast that it trails only India and China in total numbers.
Does Immigration Stress the Environment and U.S. Infrastructure?
Advocates for U.S. population stabilization, including some environmental organizations and leaders, fear that this ongoing influx of new arrivals is forcing the nation to exceed its “carrying capacity,” stressing an already overburdened physical infrastructure. David Durham of Population-Environment Balance says that Americans who care about the environment should insist on reducing immigration, to recognize “ecological realities such as limited potable water, topsoil and infrastructure.” He also cites studies showing that a permissive U.S. immigration policy drives up fertility rates in the sending countries “which is the last thing these sending countries need.”
To others the problem is larger than immigration itself.
“People don’t just materialize at our border, or at any border,” says John Seager of Population Connection. “When you talk about immigration, you’re talking about the second half of a process that begins when people decide to leave their homes.”
Assistance, Not Rejection, May Help to Relieve Immigration-Environment Burden
Immigrants usually leave their homes because of hunger, lack of work, oppression, or any number of other often-desperate reasons. Seager and many others argue that by helping poor nations better address the economic and family-planning needs of their citizens, Americans can not only help to improve the lot of millions of people living in dire poverty, but also slow down the tide of immigration.
Americans Need to Adopt More Sustainable Lifestyles
Groups focusing on the immigration-environment nexus are keen to get their voices heard, but many mainstream green groups shun the highly divisive topic, preferring instead to encourage Americans, who are infamous around the world for their huge homes, gas-guzzling cars and extravagant consumption habits, to curb their unsustainable lifestyles, which they see as more fundamental to U.S. environmental problems than population pressures.
With just 5 percent of the world’s people, Americans use a quarter of the world’s fossil fuels, own more private cars than drivers with licenses, and live in homes that are on average 38 percent larger today than they were in 1975. By scaling back, Americans can take a big bite out of pollution, sprawl and other environmental problems, while also setting a good example for those who land in the United States every year, lowering the nation’s collective carbon footprint significantly in the process.
GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com.
EarthTalk is a regular feature of E/The Environmental Magazine. Selected EarthTalk columns are reprinted on About Environmental Issues by permission of the editors of E.
