Steve Camarota notes that while the political left has made a point to bring environmental concerns to the forefront of national debate in recent years, the country’s mass legal immigration policy — whereby about 1.6 million foreign nationals resettle in the U.S. every year — goes unmentioned. His Comments:
It seems almost certain that whatever environmental goal you have, having a dramatically larger population because of government policy of allowing so many people in legally, and also tolerating illegal immigration, will have important environmental implications and issues of traffic, pollution, congestion, and sprawl. It’s interesting to note that no one disputes those numbers … and yet we don’t have any kind of national debate about it.
In fact, there was a time where environmental groups were concerned about population growth,but because it’s driven by immigration, the environmental groups are generally a part of the progressive coalition or the liberal coalition within the Democratic party, they’ve dropped any discussion of population growth as a concern and simply seem to argue that we just have to manage it.
But, common sense, as well as scientific literature, suggests that population [growth] is a variable that impacts the environment. It’s not the only factor and you probably can do things to mitigate it, but it’s an important question if you’re trying to preserve environmental quality. Doesn’t adding 75 million more people make that more difficult?
