If current trends and policies continue, immigrants will account for the largest share of US population ever by 2023, and white Americans will become a minority by 2044, conservative groups are claiming, citing US Census Bureau data.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which supports reducing immigration, pointed out that immigrants are expected to account for 51 million US residents by 2023, or 14.8 percent. By 2060, the number of foreign-born US residents would be 78 million, or about a fifth of the total population, itself projected to hit 417 million.
“Absent a change in immigration policy, immigrants who will arrive in the future plus their descendants will account for roughly three-fourths of future US population increase,” wrote Karen Zeigler and Steven Camarota of the CIS, comparing the development to “adding the combined populations of California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Massachusetts to the country.”
Their conclusions are based on the projections released last month by the Census Bureau, which for the first time included a look at immigration numbers. Previously, the Census Bureau estimated that by 2043, the US would become a “majority-minority” country, with Americans of European origin accounting for less than half the population.
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“The US population as a whole is expected to follow a similar trend, becoming majority-minority in 2044,” the updated Census Bureau report said. “The minority population is projected to rise to 56 percent of the total in 2060, compared with 38 percent in 2014.”
As early as 2020, more than half the children in the US are expected to be “part of a minority race or ethnic group,” the Census report said.
Paul Bedard, a columnist for the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner, noted that the “surge” of legal and illegal immigrants will hit a record high of 51 million in just eight years, and eventually account for an astounding 82 percent of all population growth in America between 2010 and 2060.
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“These numbers have important implications for workers, schools, infrastructure, congestion and the environment,” CIS’s Camarota told Bedard. “They also may have implications for our ability to successfully assimilate and integrate immigrants. Yet there has been almost no national debate about bringing in so many people legally each year, which is the primary factor driving these numbers."
Bedard also cited a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which indicated that the foreign-born population of the US has increased by 324.5 percent between 1970 and 2013, from 9,740,000 to 41,348,066.
Congress: Middle Class incomes drop as immigration surges http://t.co/ZrL1mo9l1bpic.twitter.com/Zjn9prx60D
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 23, 2015
The CRS report argued that the effect of this surge in immigration has been a decline in the average income of the bottom 90 percent of US taxpayers, which recently dropped below 1970 levels to $30,980 in 2013.
“It defies reason to argue that the record admission of new foreign workers has no negative effect on the wages of American workers,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) wrote recently in the New York Times, arguing for curbing immigration. “Why would many of the largest business groups in the United States spend millions lobbying for the admission of more foreign workers if such policies did not cut labor costs?”