The Senate’s immigration bill will boost the nation’s foreign born-population up to one-in-six Americans by 2033, but will not increase the working-age population of the country, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The “size of the foreign-born population would grow to 55.9 million by 2023 and nearly 65.2 million by 2033 … [up from] less than 20 million as recently as 1990… [and] 9.6 million in 1970,” said the study.
The foreign-born population was small in 1970 because federal rules largely barred immigration from the 1920s to 1965. The current population of foreign-born people is 42 million.
The report was released the day that Senators will cast a critical vote to end or continue debate on the Democratic-led immigration-rewrite, dubbed S. 744.
The population of the United States would rise from 313 million in 2013 to 381.5 million by 2033, if the bill passes, according to the report.
Critics of the bill says the growth of the foreign-born population and the resulting ethnic and social diversity will give the Democratic Party’s ethnic and immigration interest-groups a key role in politics, and will increase voters’ demand for government managers to offset the associated social turbulence.
In 2012, President Barack Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, and roughly three-questers of the smaller Asian vote. He won only 40 percent of the white vote, which comprised 74 percent of the electorate.
The increased immigration is also fracturing the GOP, as rival groups argue over how to recruit new immigrants to the GOP’s core of mainstream voters.
A similar increase in immigration — in combination with the expanding role of Europe’s federal government — has upended politics in the United Kingdom, causing many supporters of the establishment Conservative Party to support the new United Kingdom Independence Party.
The increased diversity is also spurring federal spending on education and welfare, as immigrants try to catch up with Americans.
Throughout the nation, increased diversity has fragmented local communities and increased government spending as some government programs try to repair the social networks that are torn by the other agencies’ immigration programs.
People in more diverse communities tend to “distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television,” said a landmark study by a Liberal Harvard professor, Robert Putnam.
Other studies concluded that increased diversity worsens education, and spurs government spending.
Advocates for the immigration bill, including Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour — now a D.C.-based lobbyist — say the increased immigration influx will spur the economy and offset the retirement of the Baby Boom generation.
However, the CIS reports that the influx won’t change the ratio between retirees and workers.
“Despite all this [immigration-caused] increase in the U.S. population, S.744 would have almost no impact on slowing the aging of American society… 57 percent of the U.S. population will be of working age (18-64) in 2030,” said the report.
A June 16 report by the Congressional Budget Office concluded the initial influx of low-skill immigrants will increase unemployment and lower average wages and education levels for a decade. The reduced wages and salaries would increase the share of national income would go to owners of money and land.