Our public policy debates would benefit from a broader understanding of the role immigration policy plays in many of the issues of the day.
For instance, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports:
"From water quality to infrastructure needs, education funding and prison overcrowding, many of the big issues facing Florida revolve around a familiar challenge: rapid population growth."
Outside of NumbersUSA members, how many Floridians know that the United States Congress is responsible for most of our national population growth?
"Between 1965 and 2015, new immigrants, their children and their grandchildren accounted for 55% of U.S. population growth," Pew Research reported in 2015.
"They added 72 million people to the nation's population as it grew from 193 million in 1965 to 324 million in 2015."
All of that is the result of immigration policies that were mostly put in place fifty years ago.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal doesn't connect the dots, but it does report the results:
"Water pollution has reached critical levels. Traffic gridlock is insufferable in many areas. Schools and other state services are underfunded in the eyes of many.With Florida's population projected to grow by nearly a million people over the next three years and by nearly 3 million people over the next decade, some worry the state is headed for more environmental degradation and gridlock.
The latest Census data projects immigration policy to account for 95 percent of U.S. population growth (75 million more people) between now and 2060.
Fifty years from now, hundreds of millions of Americans will be living in the America that politicians today will shape through immigration policy. And the key factor then (as it is now) will be about the numbers.
JEREMY BECK is the Director of the Media Standards Project for NumbersUSA
