Just 200,000 legal migrants a year is the number stipulated that can prevent the United States from entering a demographic crisis marked by economic, social and environmental chaos, an event predicted by the Center for Negative Population Growth (NPG).
The number that has been stipulated for consideration by the authorities is up to six times less than the number of immigrants who currently arrive annually at the U.S. with the intention to obtaining their citizenship.
Edwin Rubenstein, a researcher and economic analyst at NPG, a Virginia institution, said to the Iberian state information agency, that the US social security system is headed for a disaster, but the solution is not to increase the population but to change the system so that it can be sustained.
According to the study, the current U.S. population has reached 328 million, and the Census Bureau estimates that it will reach 404 million by 2060.
In the case of the United States, it is noteworthy that the population growth is due to immigration -legal and illegal- and that the open door policy contributed to 35 percent of the population growth in 2010 and accounted for 48.5 percent of the increase in 2018 in the midst of the most arduous restrictions.
Donald Mann, NPG president, agrees with the immigration policies promoted by the administration of Donald Trump. He thinks the nation must make enormous efforts to contain illegal immigration and change the mechanisms of legal immigration.
“Without addressing the overall number of legal immigrants permitted to enter our country annually, we are simply feeding a future demographic crisis in which America will be overwhelmed by too many people.”said Mann.
“To stop immigration-driven population growth we must set a goal to accept no more than 200,000 legal immigrants per year, including all asylees, refugees, and other special immigrant classes,” he added.
Rubenstein said that the people think the economy is good because the unemployment rate is low.
The official unemployment rate in the United States was 3.6 percent in April, the lowest in nearly half a century.
He explains that there are a lot of people who are no longer looking for a job but who would be looking for a job if there were fewer people to compete with.
And he added that in the last employment report there were 8.2 million U.S.-born people who were not even in the workforce.
At the current rate of immigrant influx, the labor force (population aged 25-64) would grow from 173 million today to 183.2 million by 2035, according to a study by the Pew research center.
If the immigrant component is substracted, the figure would be 165.6 million, said the Pew report, which analyzes the evolution and influence of immigration on the workforce.
Rubenstein stated that the solution to maintain an aging native population is not in increasing the population but in changing the system so that it can sustain it.
He pointed out that it is necessary to increase the social security tax rate on workers to pay future retirees, and to raise the minimum retirement age.
He also warned that the system could collapse unless its internal workings are changed. If immigration continues at the current pace he thinks we will be able to handle the situation for a while, but ·”the day of truth will come.”
Translated by: José Espinoza