Why sustainable immigration would also benefit immigrants
The U.S. is now overwhelmed with high unemployment, severe budget deficits and many other problems which affect all racial groups including many hard-working legal immigrants already here. Although some individuals are great assets, adding 3 million native and foreign-born people every year to the U.S., including an average of one million legal immigrant, hundreds of thousands of skilled and low-skilled "guestworkers" and at least 0.5 million of illegal migrants, essentially means more jobseekers, patients, students, welfare recipients and users of energy and other fiscal and natural resources.
Population growth overall makes our budget deficits much more difficult to address in a responsible manner: Considering that the median household income in the U.S. is below $55,000, the taxes that most families pay are not likely to offset the costs of infrastructure such as contruction/maintenance of roads/briges, fire/police/emergency/prison/court services, traffic/pollution control, homeland security measures, etc. On June 17, 2011, CNBC posted an article by Reuters, which stated: "The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are "playing with fire" unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits."
The U.S. population exploded from 203 million in 1970 to 310 million in 2011, with immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants accounting for 70% of the increases. (According to the latest Census data, in the last decade non-whites account for all the youth population growth in the U.S.) Within 40 years, due to many of our domestic and foreign policies the United States went from being the world's most prosperous nation in the 1960's to being the greatest debtor country in human history.
Meanwhile, within the same 40 years, China went from symbolizing poverty to now holding the world's largest foreign currency reserves and being our largest foreign creditor. This stunning achievement is due partly to the fact that decades ago, China already understood that population growth would seriously impede its economic success. It has had an excellent immigration policy: Essentially, China grants permanent residency only to foreign nationals who make outstanding contributions or very substantial investments in China, their spouses and children, and those of Chinese citizens.
Therefore, using China's immigration policy as a model to reform ours will also benefits law-abiding legal immigrants already here. The U.S. should also enforce our immigration laws as strictly as Mexico and Israel. A combination of these measures will mean less competition for jobs and other resources for all U.S-born citizens and legal immigrants. Certainly, we should work on reducing teen pregnancies which total 750,000 a year nationwide and encourage parents to have small families, for the interest of their families, the U.S. and Mother Earth.