NPG's Response to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress

NPG’s Response to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress

NPG
April 30, 2021
NPG Commentary
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In response to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress, NPG releases the following statement:

As an organization devoted to the study of population size and growth, NPG takes particular interest in two themes from Biden’s presentation: immigration reform and the additional child tax credits within the American Families Plan. Both have serious implications for U.S. population growth.

Considering the chaotic situation presently on our southern border, Biden said remarkably little about immigration reform. In fact, the words “immigration” or “immigrant” only appear seven times in the entire transcript. In reference to his immigration bill sent to Congress in January, he stated: “If you believe we need a secure border – pass it.” That is almost comical to anyone who understands that the surge of illegal aliens coming into the country today is driven by the fact that Biden has more or less promised them a pathway to citizenship. If Biden truly believes in Border security, let’s begin now. Let’s stop the flow of migrants walking in caravans of hundreds, if not thousands, hoping to enter and remain in the nation until a court determines what to do with them. And let’s enforce all laws and require border patrol agents to do their job completely. President Biden, we fully agree, we need a secure border.

We also need a national consensus on what “immigration reform” really entails. Do we seal the border and all other means of entry permanently and never allow anyone else in? Of course not. Do we simply remove all barriers to entry and all rules and regulations and permit everyone to walk into the nation and stay? No country would ever do that as it is absolutely absurd. We need a balanced approach. We need to agree to some basic numbers – how many new people should we allow to enter the nation each year? NPG has long recommended an immigration cap of no more than 200,000 annually. This allows some to settle in the U.S. but also gives our nation some sense of balance and enforcement.

NPG has a longstanding reputation for promoting the concept of the “two-child family”. During Biden’s address to Congress, he talked about his administration’s expansion of a tax credit for every child in a family, as part of the American Families Plan, saying, “In March we expanded a tax credit for every child in a family. Up to a $3,000 Child Tax Credit for children over 6 – and $3,600 for children under 6.” NPG does not agree with this expansion because, as said by NPG writer (and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population) Lindsay Grant, in his work The Two Child Family: “To achieve a population turnaround, the two child family must be accepted as the place to stop. If third and fourth children are more than an exception, the demographic prospects grow dimmer. In pursuing the various ways of encouraging lower fertility, this requires an explicit effort, both by leaders and role models and through the manipulation of incentives and disincentives, to make it clear that going beyond two is socially unacceptable.”

Grant goes on to drive the point home, noting: “The human tribe, including this nation, has learned how to manage mortality – at least for the time being – without a corresponding willingness to manage fertility. The result has been a profound worldwide demographic imbalance that lies at the heart of our own environmental and social problems and that generates the painful necessity for choosing between limiting immigration and continuing the demographic explosion here in the United States.”

To our many NPG members and supporters – we offer a sincere Thank You! for your dedication and financial support of our work. Please continue to write to your elected leaders and to your local newspapers. The more we speak up on these issues the greater chance we have to turn them around and begin to see real change in America’s demographic outlook.

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