20
Oct

Thinking Long-Term on Population: An Essential but Ignored Government Obligation

Published on October 20th, 2014

By Joe Guzzardi
October 20, 2014

The combination of everybody from everywhere being able to get into the U.S. and few going home or being deported will create a U.S. population of 438 million by 2050. For those who think that today’s 320 million people makes America crowded, imagine what conditions will be like in just a few decades.

The U.S. has always had a rich history of welcoming immigrants. But since 1970, laws passed by Congress and Executive Branch programs that increase immigration have been the major contributor to huge and unsustainable population growth. Before 1970, traditional immigration levels averaged about 250,000 per year. But since 1970, annual legal immigration has increased to 1 million, according to data gathered by the Census Bureau. Add to that about 700,000 illegal immigrants who settle in the U.S. each year and the total new annual residents is 1.7 million, the equivalent of Philadelphia’s population.

If Congress had kept immigration at its historic 250,000 a year level, the nation’s population would have increased from 205,000 in 1970 to 265,000 in 2050. Instead, Congress has been on autopilot to maintain existing immigration totals while refusing, regardless of economic and societal factors, to reduce them.

There are myriad examples where immigration could be limited but is instead expanded. This summer’s border crisis where tens of thousands of Central Americans, some minors and some adults, entered the U.S. is one. Originally, President Obama promised that they would be returned. However, most have been reunited with their families, also unlawfully in the U.S. Eventually, many of these minors will become U.S. citizens and will petition other family members, in a phenomenon known as chain migration, to join them and thereby create endless population growth.

To ensure that the maximum numbers of Central Americans stay, the Department of Justice has joined with the Corporation for National and Community Service to provide legal service to the minors. The goal is to obtain a Special Immigration Juvenile (SIJ) status visa which includes permission to legally live and work in the U.S. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website defines the SIJ visa as intended for children who have been “abused, abandoned or neglected.” The Central Americans, however, came to the U.S. voluntarily either by walking across the border or paying smugglers to get them in. Technically, they don’t qualify for SIJ, but under President Obama’s welcoming immigration policy, everyone gets in.

Then, there’s temporary protected status, a designation that the Department of Homeland Security can give to certain foreign-born nationals living illegally in the U.S. if conditions in their home country “temporarily prevent the nationals from returning safely or where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately.” Since its creation in 1990, TPS has become a rollover program that’s renewed automatically every 18 months regardless of what conditions may be in the aliens’ birthplace.

Late last Friday, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson extended TPS and work permits to Hondurans and Nicaraguans who have been in the U.S. since 1999 (Hondurans) and 2001 (Nicaraguans). Johnson also announced that in 2015, a program to expedite family reunification among Haitians will be implemented.

Originally intended as a humanitarian program to help those who legitimately could not go home because of war or environmental disasters, routine TPS extensions even long after the original crisis has passed represent one more example of Congress and the Executive Branch’s failure to understand the far-reaching consequences of more immigration.

Planning for the long term is an essential obligation of government, one that U.S. leaders continue to ignore.  America has limited resources, increasingly fewer jobs, and a decaying infrastructure. No matter how much we may want to help the world’s poor, we cannot absorb them all without further hurting already struggling Americans.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow whose columns have been nationally syndicated since 1987. Contact him at [email protected]

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