THEY ASKED THE WRONG PEOPLE

• Lindsey Grant
• August 1, 1997
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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THEY ASKED THE WRONG PEOPLE
An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Booknote) 
by Lindsey Grant
August 1997

The NRC has released the executive summary of a report on the economic, demographic, and fiscal effects of immigration. It had been requested by the Congressionally-mandated U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (CIR). The New York Times headline was “Report Says Immigration is Beneficial to U.S.” The media picked up that interpretation, and the net impression on the public probably has been to underline the one idea: “beneficial.”

That was not an accurate characterization. In fact, the report confined itself to the three specific issues cited in its title, which were the questions put to the NRC by the CIR. Moreover, its conclusions were by no means so uniformly favorable as the press suggested.

Demography

The central — and usually forgotten — issue raised by mass immigration is “how many Americans does it lead to?” The panel performed the calculations and came out with projections similar to the Census Bureau projections. Their middle projection shows annual immigration “at current levels” (which I believe they understate at 840,000) leading to a population of 387 million by 2050, two-thirds of that increase being the result of post-1995 immigration. The projection, they point out, leads toward an increasingly multiethnic society, unless ethnic lines become blurred.

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