Runaway Immigration Makes America Poorer, Less Democratic

January 21, 2022

By Dale Wilcox

While immigration to the United States with virtually no regulation has been sold to the public as a noble obligation with little downside, the reality is starting to emerge. We are now seeing the damage such recklessness causes to our society and the health of our democratic republic.

On an episode of his show that aired earlier this month, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson articulated how mass immigration has diluted the voices of the American people. Carlson noted that the population of the U.S. has grown by over 130 million people in just over 50 years, a rapid, and unsustainable level of population growth.

Carlson added that the population growth over the last 53 years is more than the population of the entire West Coast combined, and it is time for Americans to think long and hard about how many people we want in the country.

“The size of your population matters very much. The size determines a nation’s character. It often determines its fate,” Carlson said. “Even if every single person who snuck across our southern border this year goes on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, it would still be worth worrying about the effects that mass immigration have on our total population numbers. So the question is, how many people is too many?”

“How many people is too many?” is perhaps the most important question facing our country right now.

When European immigrants came to Ellis Island, the U.S. had low population levels, and lots of room. America could afford to be the land of opportunity for a reasonable number of foreigners while still maintaining those opportunities for the people already living here. That is no longer a luxury that we have.

The population growth of this country has fundamentally transformed it, and not for the better for many people. Americans own homes and businesses at lower rates than ever, and wages have been stagnant for over 40 years. Since mass migration became the norm in the U.S. over the last few decades, America’s urban centers have become particularly overcrowded, as evidenced by the surge in homelessness that has now reached crisis levels in sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

Walk around any major U.S. city, and you will see communities of homeless people in “tent cities,” a term that has sadly become part of our national lexicon. Drugs pouring over the border have facilitated an overdose crisis, which is killing young, vulnerable Americans en masse. This past year, fentanyl became the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.

In addition to the disastrous socioeconomic consequences facing many Americans, the civic and cultural consequences of mass immigration are being brought to bear. The more a country’s population grows, the bigger and more unaccountable its government becomes. As America has become bigger, our government has grown with it, and many people serving the nation in public service positions have become detached from the reality of the people they serve.

“The Athenians invented democratic government, but at its peak, Athens only had about 8,000 voters,” Carlson added. “So past a certain scale, democracy can’t function very well. The concept of the citizen becomes too abstract.”

The U.S. currently has the third largest population in the world, and most of the countries of comparable size tend to be dictatorships such as China, Russia, and Pakistan. Others such as India and Indonesia are extremely overcrowded, with much of their populations living in poverty, deprived of the resources necessary to live a dignified life. Similarly, the bigger the U.S. becomes, the poorer and less democratic we will become.

This is why our leaders need to pump the brakes on our rapid population growth. Our country has grown so big that we cannot meet the needs of many people who live here. Given that reality, it makes little sense to continue importing millions of citizens from other countries on an annual basis. It’s time for America to get our own house in order.

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

Also published at: Dale L. Wilcox, Runaway Immigration Makes America Poorer, Less Democratic, American Thinker, January 21, 2022.