Speech #1040190245

Speaker. believe it will even be much worse. The alternative Census Bureau projections agree if current trends continue. the Nations population will more than double during this same time period and reach half a billion people by the middle of the next century. a little more than 50 years from now. The Census Bureau says onethird of the U.S. population growth is due to immigration. both legal and illegal. That is a misleading statistic. if U.S.-born children of recent immigrants are counted. immigration now accounts for more than 50 percent of recent growth in the United States. Post1970 immigrants and their descendants have been responsible for U.S. population increases of nearly 25 million. half the growth of those years. In other words. much of what demographers consider our natural growth rate is actually the result of our Nations large number of immigrants. Those numbers have led the Census Bureau to forecast much higher population growth over the coming decades than in the past. As recently as 1990. the bureau assumed the population of the United States would peak about 45 years from now and then decline to and level off at about 300 million. about 300 million. Mr. Speaker. by the year 2050. But as a result of unexpected rates of immigration. the Census Bureau revised its figures just 2 years ago by adding another 92 million to the number of people projected for the year 2050. But that projection is probably much too low because the bureau assumes a net immigration rate of about 820.000 a year. at least 400.000 below todays annual level. And even with that conservative assumption about immigration. the Census Bureau estimates about 93 percent. 93 percent of the population growth by the year 2050 will result from immigration that has occurred since 1991. The really frightening change in the Census Bureaus 1994 forecast is that it now assumes the population of this country will not level off a few decades from now as was thought would be the case and as recently as 1990. but will continue to grow unabated into the late 21st century. Those of us who represent communities where large numbers of immigrants have settled have long felt the effects of our Nations high rate of immigration. the highest in the world. Our communities are being overwhelmed by the burden of providing educational. health. and social services for the newcomers. With a population of half a billion or more. it will be extremely difficult to solve our most serious environmental problems. such as air and water pollution. water disposal. waste disposal and loss of our arable land.