Immigration
Driving U S Overcrowding
he
U.S, population will reach 300 million sometime this fall,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's 100 million
more people than the 200 million who lived in the U.S. in
1967. At the current rate of growth, the U.S. population
will grow to 400 million around 2040.
The rapid growth, which makes America the third fastest
growing nation in the world behind China and India, is due
primarily to immigration and the offspring of immigrants.
Those two groups account for more than two-thirds of the
country's entire population growth. Hispanics alone accounted
for about half of the population's increase since last year,
while native non-Hispanic whites, who are two-thirds of
the population, accounted for less than one-fifth of the
increase.
As a result of legal and illegal immigration, 36 million
U.S. residents are foreign-born, about one of every eight
persons.
America's immigration-driven population growth is having
a major impact on a variety of quality-of-life issues from
traffic congestion and land use to environmental quality
and education for the young.
In the fifteen years between 1982 and 1997, America converted
approximately 25 million acres of rural land - primarily
forests and farmlands - into developed land for new housing,
freeways, shopping malls, airports, schools, and other structures
to accommodate the growing population needs, according to
Population-Environment Balance, a non-profit research group
in Washington, D.C. That converted land - 39,000 square
miles - is equivalent to the size of Maine and New Hampshire
combined.
The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service reports
that the rate at which rural land is being developed accelerated
during the 1990's, rising to 2.2 million acres per year
from the previous average rate of 1.7 million acres per
year.
The increased population growth is fueling urban sprawl
and the growth of suburbs, which triggers construction of
roads and freeways on which increasing numbers of motorists
are driving. At the same time, increased population densities
are causing more and more traffic congestion.
In 1996, traffic congestion cost Americans 4.6 billion hours
of delay, 6.7 billion gallons of excess fuel, and $74 billion
in fuel and time, according to the Texas Transportation
Institute, which conducts annual surveys of congestion nationwide.
The Institute, which studied travel conditions of freeways
and main roadway networks in 68 major urban areas from 1982
to 1997, found that uncongested areas declined from 65 percent
in 1982 to 46 percent in 1990 and to just 36 percent in
1997. During the same time period, the percentage of urban
areas with severe and extreme traffic congestion grew from
14 percent in 1982 to 30 percent in 1990 and 36 percent
in 1997.
The Population-Environment Balance group warns that too
rapid of a population increase will overcome the environment's
natural "carrying capacity" in terms of available
resources. According to Balance, adding 3 million people
a year to the population requires construction of about
1.3 million new housing units. "Each new house requires
the addition of approximately $33,000 of infrastructure,
for which established residents are taxed. Increased pollution,
resource depletion, crowding and traffic congestion are
just of the damaging effects that population growth and
sprawl have on the physical and cultural environment of
the U.S. Our 'carrying capactity' is being depleted at an
alarming rate due to population growth..." said the
group in a position paper.
Immigration-driven population growth is also changing the
racial and ethnic composition of the country. Hispanics
surpassed blacks as the largest minority group in 2001 and
today make up more than 14 percent of the population. Blacks
are about 12 percent. If current trends continue, non-Hispanic
whites will become a minority of the population sometime
after 2040 .
