While native-born Americans have apparently chosen to have fewer and fewer children since the “Zero Population Growth” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and with the “legalization” of abortion in Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 1973, America’s population has nevertheless increased dramatically during the past few decades.
This is due to a startling fact: Three-fourths of the population increase in the United States since 2000 has been due to immigration, legal and illegal.
“If current trends continue, immigration will add another 100 million people to the United States in the next 50 years,” according to a report by Negative Population Growth, Inc. (NPG). According to NPG, the country is projected to process the largest number of legal immigrants in U.S. history, over 10 million. This is in addition to the millions of foreigners who enter the country illegally.
What is driving this?
According to Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, most of the legal immigration is a result of rules which provide a virtual open door for parents and spouses of U.S. citizens.
This basically happens in one of two ways. First, these new “citizens” are often the children of illegal immigrants. Because it is the official policy of the United States to keep families together, these parents get to not only stay in the country they entered illegally, but eventually become citizens themselves. It is estimated that as many as 400,000 children are born annually in the United States to illegal aliens. This makes them “natural born citizens,” at least according to a fairly recent interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Then, when these “citizens” reach their 21st birthday, they can petition for legal status for their parents.
Vaughn said that this also “opens up an opportunity for sponsorship of more family members,” which can then lead to even more immigration.
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Another avenue of such “chain migration” is through the spouses of citizens. From 2000 to today, the number of such spouses legally allowed into the United States has increased from 196,000 to 415,000. The report from NPG explained, “This category also can trigger chain migration, as the new spouses can qualify for citizenship and the right to sponsor their family members more quickly than other immigrants.”
Generally speaking, spousal immigration has not produced much controversy. Unless the marriage is a fraud, the majority of Americans have understood when a military member returns with a bride from a foreign country. Other examples have been noted among members of the diplomatic corps, and those working in foreign countries. Another way such marriages happen is with students or workers who marry American citizens.
Recently, however, this familiar pattern of foreign spouses has changed. About two-thirds have already been living in the United States, many as illegal aliens.
In her recent best-selling book ¡Adios, America!, neoconservative pundit Ann Coulter traces much of the leftward trend we are experiencing in the United States to the 1965 immigration law authored by Senator Edward Kennedy. This legislation snuffed out quotas for immigrants from countries that had traditionally populated America — England, Ireland, and Germany — and added “family reunification policies.” Passed during the heyday of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” its purpose, Coulter asserts, was largely to improve the fortunes of the Democratic Party by creating an ever-expanding underclass inclined to vote Democrat. She cites as evidence that the Democrats have received a majority of the white vote only once since 1948.
As Democrat consultant Patrick Reddy boasted, “It will go down as the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.” While many immigrants are conservative on issues such as abortion and the like, political data indicate that social programs are often more important in determining how these individuals vote.
If the Negative Population Growth report is correct, then we can expect an increased leftward tilt to American politics in the years ahead.
Steve Byas is the author of History’s Greatest Libels, a challenge to the unfair attacks upon many historical figures, from Christopher Columbus to Clarence Thomas. He is a professor of history at Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College in Moore, Oklahoma.
