Thread: Report: Immigrants will drive American population growth

Report: Immigrants will drive American population growth
By Lori Weisberg
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
8:40 p.m. February 11, 2008

By the mid-point of this century, America will look much like California does today as it morphs into a far more racially and ethnically diverse nation that will owe most of its population growth to immigrants and their offspring, according to a report released Monday.
By 2050, nearly one in five of the projected 438 million Americans is expected to be foreign-born, a proportion higher than at any other time in U.S. history. And whites will lose their majority status, a milestone marked by California nearly a decade ago.

The Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, which compiled the demographic forecast, was careful to stay clear of making pronouncements about the data's significance, acknowledging only that immigration will dramatically alter the nation's demographic profile.

The center's conclusions, though, will be certain to fuel debate over the country's immigration policy, demographers predict.

“In California, we're the precursor of what's projected to be happening for the rest of the country for the next half century,â€

Put another way, if there were no new immigration, there would be a decline of 7 million people in the working population, the Pew Center found.

THIS WOULD BE GREAT. WHAT IS THAT ABOUT HALF OF THE UNEMPLOYED IN OUR COUNTRY? WELL IF YOU GO BY THE "UNEMPLOYMENT RATE". THE ACTUAL RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT IS MUCH HIGHER. SO EVEN IF THE POPULATION WERE REDUCED BY SEVEN MILLION....THERE WOULD STILL BE MILLIONS OF UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS. WE REALLY NEED TO HAVE A MORATORIUM ON IMMIGRATION UNTIL ALL AMERICANS ARE EMPLOYED AND BEING PAID DECENT WAGES.