Numbers count in the immigration debate

By Bonnie Erbe
November 30, 2007

No public debate about the impact of immigration on American life is fair or complete without reference to the most recent data from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Let me state for the record, as I always do when writing about this thorny issue, I am the proud granddaughter of a Cuban immigrant. Immigrants, like native-born Americans, are good people – hard-working and patriotic. Individual immigrants are not problematic; mass immigration, both legal and illegal, is. Race should not figure into the debate about mass immigration. Quality of life and immigration's impact on the U.S. environment and government resources should drive the debate.

Mass immigration is ruining the quality of life for the children and grandchildren of immigrants already in the United States. It is chewing up and paving over what little open space remains, driving up air-and water-pollution rates, amplifying the crescendo of suburban sprawl and placing a larger burden on already stressed publicly financed institutions such as the public school system and welfare.

The reason the new CIS data are so important is that most public debate on immigration ignores this central fact: Immigration, both legal and illegal, has ballooned to record levels since the early 1990s.

According to a report by the Population Reference Bureau this September, “New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey show that the number of foreign-born people in the United States has reached an all-time high of more than 37 million.â€