What The New Census Bureau Projections Mean For Climate Change—And America
With President Obama barely
back from the
climate change conference in
Copenhagen,
his anti-global warming
accord is evidently already
working its wonders, unleashing a
blizzard to blanket the East Coast with snow.
With climate in the news, it`s
a good time to review the
Census
Bureau study of the factor that will have the single
greatest impact on U.S. carbon emissions over the next 40
years: immigration.
With a couple of weeks left in
the decade, the Census Bureau has finally gotten around to
releasing What If? projections showing the impact of various immigration
policies on
America`s population (which is today
308
million):
“… a greater number of migrants arriving in the United
States will correspond to a larger increase in the size of
the total population. Under the assumption of a high level
of net international migration, the population is expected
to grow to 458 million by 2050. … “
[United
States Population Projections: 2000 to 2050 by
Jennifer M. Ortman and Christine E. Guarneri of the Census
Bureau]
That`s an increase of 150
million carbon-belching residents of America.
“In contrast, for the Zero Net International Migration
series the population will increase slightly by 2050 to 323
million. “
That`s an increase of only 15
million.
In other words, immigration
policy will determine whether the population grows over the
next four decades by 150 million or by 15 million—an order
of magnitude!
Although the new Census Bureau
projections were released last week at the peak of the media
frenzy over Copenhagen, not a single one of the
387 articles tabulated by Google News mentioned
“carbon,” “climate,” or
“warming.”
Americans are just not supposed
to think about the link between immigration, population, and
carbon emissions.
Ignorance is Strength!
Mark Twain famously said:
“Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”
Yet the conventional wisdom in this decade has been that we
should be passionately doing something—anything—about
the weather, but
not even talking
about the population.
The Census Bureau`s 2009
projections are based on their 2008 projection, which I
discussed in VDARE.com
last
year. The old forecast just assumed a single best-guess
that the net number of immigrants would grow to over 2.0
million per year by 2050.
This year`s projections—which
got
a little publicity because they pushed back slightly the
date at which whites are set to become a minority in
America—feature four different scenarios regarding net
immigration (see
Figure 1 in the report). This allows us a much better
understanding of effect of immigration:
-
High Immigration: Net immigration
grows to an annual rate of 2.4 million by 2050, and the
total population reaches 458 million (of which 144 million
would be
Hispanic). -
“Low” Immigration: Net immigration
reaches 1.7 million by the middle of the century, and the
population climbs to 423 million (124 million Hispanics). -
Constant Immigration: The net number of
immigrants stays flat at just under one million per year,
and the population hits 399 million (111 million Hispanics). -
Zero Immigration: The number of
immigrants equals the number of emigrants, and the
population peaks at 323 million in 2050 (68 million
Hispanics).
Please note something that the
Census Bureau doesn`t quite make clear:
“Zero Net
International Migration” doesn`t mean zero immigration.
It means that the number of emigrants and immigrants must be
equal. Since a few hundred thousand people emigrate from the
U.S. each year, a few hundred thousand immigrants per year
could be accommodated under a policy of Zero Net
International Migration.
You`ll notice that the Census
Bureau`s “Low”
immigration scenario is higher than the Constant scenario of
under a million net immigrants per year.
“Low” assumes
almost a doubling of the annual number of immigrants over
the next 40 years.
In other words, the Census
Bureau is assuming, rightly, that without a major political
effort to limit immigration, the annual number of immigrants
will inevitably expand.
That`s because
immigration naturally tends to feed upon itself. Moving
to America becomes easier the more
friends
and relatives a potential immigrant already has in
America.
In contrast, there are
240 million people in Indonesia, but the 2000 Census
found only
63,000 Indonesians in this country. With so few friends
and relatives currently established in the U.S., moving to
America affords Indonesians a daunting prospect. Yet, if we
allow the
Indonesian beachheads in America to expand, eventually
they will be large enough to
attract an exponentially growing number of Indonesians.
(And there are a
lot of Indonesians…)
It`s instructive to extend out
the
scenarios from the Census Bureau`s stopping point in the
year 2050 to 2100.
Under the High Immigration
assumptions, the Census Bureau expects the annual increase
in population to slowly decline from 1.06 percent in 2010 to
0.89 percent in 2050. If we assume the same rate of
deceleration of growth in the second half of the century,
down to a 0.64 percent annual increase by 2100, America`s
population will then be 668 million.
That`s 668,000,000.
It would be intriguing to ask
the Climate Change folks what they think about America`s
population swelling to 668 million. But, of course, they
wouldn`t answer. They`d just sputter and call you names.
Besides immigration rates,
another key number in projecting populations is the Total
Fertility Rate (the number of babies per woman per
lifetime). The Census Bureau appears to be lowballing its
forecasts by underestimating the Hispanic TFR. The Census
number crunchers assume that the Latino Total Fertility Rate
was 2.73 in 2001 and that it falls gently to 2.70 in 2010
and down to 2.29 in 2050.
In reality, the Hispanic Total
Fertility Rate rose significantly in this decade, reaching
2.99 in 2007, the last year for which we have annual
data. (I wouldn`t be surprised, however, if the Hispanic
birth rate
drops by 2009, due
to high unemployment among Hispanics, especially
construction workers following the bursting of the
delusionary Housing Bubble.)
It`s crucial to understand the
long run impact of high fertility rates among immigrants.
When a country admits an immigrant, it is also admitting
descendents unto the seventh generation.
Different
cultures
bring radically different
fertility patterns to the U.S. We can`t afford to be
oblivious to the implications any longer.
For example, in
2005, the TFR in California of foreign-born Latinas was
3.7, while it was 2.2 among American-born Latinas. This
means that the typical Latina immigrant can expect to have
over 8.1
grandchildren, or double the replacement rate. In
contrast, Asian immigrant women in California can expect 2.8
grandchildren (2.0 TFR for the first generation and 1.4 in
subsequent generations). American-born
white
women in California can expect to average 2.6
grandchildren each due to their 1.6 TFR.
Hence letting in a Hispanic
immigrant leads to almost three times as many babies being
born two generations from now as letting in an
Asian
immigrant, or an American woman moving to California
from another state.
The long run political
implications for the Republican Party of massive
Hispanic immigration were
spelled out by
Antonio Gonzalez, head of a Latino voter registration
group:
"If there is one group you could say that
does not
share the Republican small-government philosophy, it`s
Latinos. … We are Big-Government, government-safety-net,
activist-government [voters]. There is a feeling in the
community that today we hurt, but tomorrow is ours, so you
spend money on your kids, on your community, on your
schools."
You`ll note that Mr. Gonzales
tellingly depicts the Hispanic political philosophy as
“you spend money on
your kids,” which is not at all the same as
“you spend
your money on your kids.” The
tax money this Hispanic activist wants to spend on
Hispanics is
largely earned by non-Hispanics.
If Republicans won`t restrict
immigration, they had better start thinking hard about
sneakier ways to postpone the oncoming political deluge for
a few decades. Aristotle
pointed out that the inevitable problem with democracy
occurs when the majority finally grasps they can vote
themselves the wealth of the minority.
That can take quite awhile,
fortunately. A VDARE.com donor in Texas, a state that does
not have an income tax, suggested in an email:
“One of my theories is that Texas can hold on a really long
time as a tolerably low-tax place for whites who can afford
to insulate themselves, as it will be a long time before a
majority could show up at the polls to push through an
income tax necessary to start the wealth redistribution in
bulk
as in California.”
Clever
“poison pill”
amendments can delay the point at which future liberal
majorities can redistribute wealth unchecked. In 1993, my
reader pointed out, Texas voters passed a
referendum requiring that any income tax initiated by
the legislature must be submitted to the voters for
approval. My reader explained:
“The constitutional amendment elections are in odd years
with no other races on the ballot. This year`s
turnout
was eight percent, so no one even bothers to do an exit poll
for demographic stats. I`m guessing it`s
mostly
white people who show up to vote. “
On the other hand, he adds:
“This is actually bad because once Texas does flip all the
way, things will be much farther along before many middle
class whites feel any pain.”
In the very long run, he
guesses that the return of
literacy tests for
voting
eligibility is the least unachievable way to
disenfranchise enough Democrats to keep the country from
keeling over.
That`s a good idea to keep in
mind.
Of course, it would be simpler
to win the battle for patriotic immigration reform now.
[Steve Sailer (email
him) is
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com
features his daily blog. His new book,
AMERICA`S HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: BARACK OBAMA`S
"STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE", is
available
here.]
