How is America doing in terms of demographics? Our fertility rate is hovering at just below replacement level, averaging 2.09 children over the lifetime of each American woman. Of all industrialised nations, including Russia, Japan and Australia, we are the only country in which the current population has a future. Even China's fertility rate is down to 1.73, indicating a shrinking and aging populace. Why are we so different from the rest of the advanced world, which is spiraling down to non-existence?
As with most complex questions, there is no single factor from which one can divine an answer. In the past, people have had large families because they were a necessity. A family was an economic group upon which one could rely to share resources and take care of the young and the elderly. It was worth devoting one's life to caring for children, because they were expected to return that care in one's declining years. Now, as more people depend on their governments to sustain them, there's less economic incentive to have children. Government social programs take the place of the family. Creeping socialism is one of the main reasons people around the world have fewer children. They're simply not needed... so why should one "burden" oneself with raising them? One may complain about the "me first" attitude so prevalent in America today, but it's nothing compared to the "me only" lingering adolescence encouraged by a nanny-state government.
The largest differences between ourselves and most European countries lie in our adherence to religion, our more capitalist economy, and our strong national identity. Consider that Ireland, with its growing economy and the strongest overall religious faith in Europe, enjoys the region's highest fertility rate at 1.86. Approximately 88% of the Irish are Catholic, and Ireland has one of the highest church attendance rates in the Western world. However, the government controls key sectors of the economy, notably transportation, energy and the media, and Ireland is still very much a welfare state in which taxation is primarily seen as a means to redistribute income from rich to poor. America is somewhat less religious than Ireland (with an overall church attendance rate of 40%, as opposed to Ireland's 63%), but more resistant to government authority. As we accept more secularism and government control over our lives, however, we may indeed see our fertility rate plummet.
Like Europe, we are about to undergo a massive influx of immigrants. If given legal status (as now seems likely, with Congress controlled by Democrats), most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently living in the US would bring their families to America. Furthermore, those who would enter the country under the "guest worker" program would not be required to return home when their term was up; instead, they could become permanent residents and bring their families here as well.
Altogether, the Heritage Foundation estimated a likely inrush of more than 100 million immigrants over the next twenty years (over and above normal immigration totals) as a result of the bill passed in the Senate but blocked by House Republicans. The estimate was lowered to 66 million after some changes were made to the bill, but that is still a significant number -- the current population of the US is approximately 300 million. Most of those new immigrants will come from Mexico. What sort of impact will they have on our society?
Like the Irish, 88% of Mexicans are Catholic, and 55% attend church at least once a week. We can expect to see somewhat of a resurgence in the Catholic church, as well as the expected Hispanification of many aspects of society. So the churches may be more crowded, the food spicier and the music more lively -- but those are not the only positive effects we can expect.
The fertility rate among Mexicans is 2.42%, but Mexican birth rates are suppressed by an aggressive government campaign against large families. Freed of such coercion, birth rates among new Americans from Mexico may skyrocket.
The question is, how will we deal with our own tide of immigrants and a new generation of Americans? If they are segregated and encouraged to cling to their own sub-culture by "multiculturalism," as Muslims have been in France, it will only be a matter of time before they explode in a similar way. Our only choice, should the immigration bill become law, is to do what Americans always do: assimilate them.
Our own population is not dwindling, unlike those across Europe -- new immigrants will add to, not replace, our children. We will have to find a way to graft our strong streak of national pride, belief in representative democracy and traditional emphasis on self-reliance onto the proliferative new Americans.
One thing we must not do, if we want to avoid Europe's fate, is let millions upon millions of people flood into this country dependent on the kind of socialist entitlements offered by the Left. Perhaps the Bush administration's redesign of the citizenship test (over the objections of Left-wing groups, of course) to include questions about concepts like democracy and the rule of law, instead of just the colors of the flag, is a good first step.
All in all, an influx of immigrants isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just the way it's being done that rankles those on the Right... uncontrolled and spearheaded by granting amnesty to an entire class of lawbreakers. It would be far better to stop illegal immigration by building fences and enforcing our current laws, and increase legal immigration as desired. But with the only roadblock to the amnesty bill gone, all we can do is deal with things as they will be, instead of how we wish them to be. At least we can anticipate a demographic boost, even as the Islamification of Europe continues, if we take steps to bring our coming countrymen into the fold.
If we don't, we'll soon have bigger problems than struggling to pronounce the menu items at Taco Bell.
See also:
An Influx of Immigrants 1: Europe
