California’s dramatic growth over the past half-century has transformed its landscape. Paving Paradise examines how immigration-driven population growth has contributed to sprawling development, the loss of farmland and natural habitat, and growth pressures that increasingly extend beyond California’s borders.
By Jeremy Beck
The immigration surge from 2021-2025 was the largest in U.S. history, doubling down on a broken promise that Washington, D.C. has left unacknowledged and unaddressed for sixty years. Voters decisively backed immigration reductions in the 2024 elections. The Dignity Act flies in the face of that mandate. We have an alternative vision. And we need the citizen lobby to rise up and state our preference.
By NumbersUSA
California’s population has doubled over the past five decades,” said Leon Kolankiewicz, an environmental planner and the report’s lead author. “That growth naturally led to sprawl, as developers constructed new homes, roads, and office parks to meet demand. In fact, our analysis shows that population growth drove 91% of the total loss of open land.
“How big do we want to be?” Mass immigration is the determining factor in the size of our country, the amount of infrastructure that must be built, resources to be used, and quality of life that we live.
By Jeremy Beck
The march was the culmination of Randolph’s life’s work to advance civil rights through economic empowerment. The immigration restrictions he had successfully advocated for decades prior had contributed to a meteoric rise in Black wealth and, eventually, political power.
It might have happened very differently.
The Colorado River faces a long-term imbalance between water supply and demand. Conservation can help, but with agriculture already under pressure, limiting future population growth through reduced immigration deserves consideration as a demand-management strategy.
By Jeremy Beck
Immigration Contributes to Increased Housing Demand Illegal immigration is not the only factor in rising housing costs (“The Latest Housing Scapegoats,” July 8, 2026), or even the most significant factor, but the Dallas Fed working paper demonstrates a basic theory of economics: more people demanding homes without a corresponding increase in supply leads to higher … Continued
More than 10,000 homes on the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe still lack running water despite long-promised Colorado River water rights. As immigration-driven population growth increases demand across the Southwest, keeping those promises becomes more difficult.
America’s national parks are struggling with increasing congestion and overcrowding. Given that immigration has become the primary driver of U.S. population growth, how much immigration can America sustainably accommodate while preserving the open spaces, recreational opportunities, and quality of life that Americans cherish?
