Now, Doing It For MY Grandchild
I'm on my laptop and Shirley is at the wheel as we hurtle up the New Jersey Turnpike to meet our first grandchild.
Since 1991, I have given presentations at colleges, speakers' forums and political gatherings across the country, on video, DVD, internet and TV, urging an immigration policy that will allow our country's grandchildren to enjoy the same natural benefits and individual liberty of our nation as we have enjoyed.
Always before, I was doing it for other people's grandchildren. Now, I'm also doing it for my own.
218 MILLION WHEN MY SON WAS BORN
This is how we are failing the generations of Americans who follow us.,
There were 218 million Americans when the father of my new grandson was born in 1976. Just a few years earlier, a large, bi-partisan, multi-year national commission recommended that the U.S. move quickly toward a stabilized population for the quality of life of succeeding generations.
We appeared to be on our way to topping out at around 250 million.
I -- and many others -- have devoted our careers to achieving that goal.
310 MILLION GREET MY GRANDSON
But, alas, my grandson has been born in a country of 310 million!
This has happened because I -- and my many allies -- have failed to bring about any reduction at all in the bloated immigration numbers forced on us by Congress year after year after year without end. We have won dozens of battles year after year in stopping amnesties for millions of illegal aliens and increases in legal immigration.
Some 14 years ago, President Clinton's task force on sustainability concluded what had been concluded berfore my son was born -- that the United States could not be a sustainable society without stabilizing its population and that immigration must be reduced dramatically for that to happen.
What does sustainability mean?
At its essence, it means that we as individuals and as a society live and have policies that allow our grandchildren to live with the benefits that we enjoy -- and that our grandchildren's grandchildren enjoy the same.
It means that we do not act today in a way that forecloses the futures of the seventh generation that follows us.
Any of us who were adults in 1970 in a country of 205 million know that many aspects of our individual liberty and natural heritage simply aren't possible today in a country of 310 million. Most still exist. But many do not.
WHERE ARE WE HEADED WHEN MY GRANDSON IS 30?
I can find out what our politicians have in store for my grandson by going to our NumbersUSA special feature, CHANGE THE NUMBERS. http://www.numbersusa.com/change/immigration/numbers/
Using the interactive feature on that page, I move the vertical LEGAL immigration slider to the 1 million average since 1990. I can also move the ILLEGAL slider to the 700,000 average of the years before the recession and where it will surely go back once the economy picks up and if Congress doesn't pass the SAVE Act.
Realize that this is what the status quo of immigration policies gets us. That is, these are the numbers we face if we win and defeat all amnesties and "comprehensive immigraiton reform
What CHANGE THE NUMBERS shows is that when my grandson turns 30 and perhaps has a son of his own, there is likely to be 408 million Americans!!!!!
Almost all of that will be the result of immigration policies we have not been able to improve over the last two decades.
(I encourage all of you to use CHANGE THE NUMBERS to do the same kind of projections for any of your own loved ones. A very handy tool.)
MORE FORCES THAN EVER DEMANDING MORE CROWDING FOR OUR GRANDCHILDEN
Make no mistake that the elite leadership throughout American society is hell-bent on ensuring that my grandchildren and yours will live with the radically altered opportunities of a nation with twice as many people in it than when I graduated from college in 1970. And most of them want to get there at a faster pace than we are currently on.
Unless Congress finally reduces immigration numbers, the projections based on Census Bureau data show that when my grandson is 60, the United States will have crossed the half-BILLION mark (500 million) and headed past 600 million should he live to 90.
Will any generation and any Congress stop this madness?
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA