Immigration 2026
Immigration has been one of our great national recurring debates for most of the time our country has been independent. It is even more so now, because of the current program of attempted mass deportation, and because of the means being used to make that happen. I am uniquely qualified to comment on immigration because I came home from a third-world country (Mexico) to America as a young man. We should not view illegal immigration as merely our problem. It is a worldwide problem, but it is really rather simple: the poor of the world are coming to the lands of the rich. I too was poor, and I too came to the land of the rich. The advantage I had was, through the happenstance of birth, I was entitled to come. I was born in California, but grew up in Mexico. Had I been born in Mexico, and grown up in California, I could have been deported.
There are currently about 8.3 billion people on this earth. Millions of them would that they had been born in California, or anywhere in the United States. Most, if not all, of those millions would like to come to America. If we opened our borders to all comers, we would be inundated. When I came home to the United States in 1965, our nation’s population was about 194 million. As of mid-2026 it is about 349 million. Our population has increased, in just over 60 years, by about 155 million, which is more than the population of Russia, Brazil, or Japan, or about as much as Germany and Great Britain put together. Essentially, in about 60 years, we have added a couple of good-sized countries to our nation.
The size and growth rate of our population are two of the most important factors in whether we should limit immigration. The first time America limited immigration was in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Until then there were no limitations. Between 1820 and 1860 millions of Irish and Germans came to America. America was in 1860 a nation of about thirty one million people, with vast open spaces awaiting settlement. There was ample room for the huddled masses of the old world. Now, the population has grown twelve-fold, and the desirability of mass immigration is necessarily entirely different.
/When will we have too many people? We learn to cope with what we have, but that does not mean that the size of our population is ideal. If it had been possible to limit the U.S. population, I would have drawn the line at about two hundred million, which is about what it was when I came home to the U.S. I have always tried to be responsible personally. Good citizenship requires conforming your personal conduct to what is good for the nation, and even what is good for humanity in general. Overpopulation was a concern when I was young, just as it is now. I have often thought that, had I to do it over again, I might have as many children as my parents did. I was second to the youngest of seven children. If my parents had stopped at only two children, I would not exist.
Personal responsibility has its limitations. It does no good to act responsibly to limit the size of one’s family if most other people do not also exercise restraint. My mother used to say that all the wrong people were having children. I never thought of her as a racist when I was growing up, but then I had no reason to think about it. I was growing up in Mexico, and the closest contact I had with racism was the other kids calling me “Gringo.”
In a broad sense, Mom was right that all the wrong people were having children. Until recently, the poor countries of the world had higher population growth rates than the rich countries. When I came home in 1965, the population growth rate in Mexico was 3.5%. Those who could least afford bigger families were the ones having them. Now in 2026 fertility rates in most of the world have gone down dramatically. In North America, including Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, fertility rates have declined below or at the rate necessary to replace populations. That is also the case with every area of the world except Africa, where the average fertility rate is almost double the replacement rate.
The issue now is whether to attempt to bring fertility rates back up above replacement levels, or to welcome the decline, that is to accept declining fertility rates as an answer to overpopulation. As of 2019, there were 55 countries that had policies designed to increase fertility rates, to encourage more births. Most of those were countries with fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1. China (the second most populous country), Russia, Japan, and most of Europe are in this category. There were 69 countries with the opposite policy, that is to discourage more births. These include countries with fertility rates well above the replacement level, such as Nigeria and Pakistan, and countries at or near the replacement level, such as Mexico, India (the most populous country), and Indonesia.
So what we see is that the countries with declining fertility rates and populations mostly want to increase fertility rates and population growth. Conversely, the countries with high fertility rates and growing populations want to decrease fertility rates and population growth. In other words, who is down wants up, and who is up wants down.
In light of the size of the world population, there should be no controversy or dilemma regarding whether countries with high fertility rates should attempt to bring those rates down. The hard question is whether countries with low fertility rates, and declining populations, should attempt to bring their fertility rates back up.
Clearly, declining fertility rates are detrimental in some ways. Economically, they make it difficult, and will eventually make it impossible, fully to fund, national retirement programs. The smaller generations of young workers will not be able to support retirement programs such as Social Security and Medicare for older larger generations of retirees. Over a long time, the problem will be less severe. The older, larger generations will die away, and the generations may become more uniform in size so that the younger generations – the workers – may be better able to support the retirement income of the old. The problem remains what happens in the decades that are likely to pass before the older, much more numerous, generations have died away, and the numbers of each subsequent generation are roughly equivalent.
Even then, the more uniform younger generations are not likely to be able to support retirement benefits for the old to the same extent as now. The amount of social security benefits has always depended on the workers’ generations being substantially larger than the retirement generation. Unless and until that ratio is restored, retirement benefits need to diminish. Whether that happens by raising the age of retirement, reducing benefits, or both, will need to be worked out.
This all means that the only way to preserve the current level of retirement benefits is for the population constantly, and permanently, to increase so that, forever and always, each generation is larger than the last. There are only two ways to do that. The first way is to persuade the citizens to have more children, that is, to increase the fertility rate. The second way is immigration.
The easier public policy answer might appear to be to pass laws to encourage bigger families. The problem is that many countries have done that without much success. The bigger problem with it is that it would be harmful even if it were successful. The alternative of trying to reverse population declines is catastrophic compared to the alternative of coping somehow with the mismatching sizes of the generations until the older generations become smaller as the larger generations fall away with time.
The catastrophe resulting from ensuring that populations always increase, is because at some point – some number of world population – the Earth passes, or has already passed, its carrying capacity, and the resulting damage to the Earth becomes irreversible. Human population and consumption are limitless, but the Earth’s resources are limited. The finite cannot support the infinite.
My response to the dilemma between whether to go up or down, that is whether to encourage or discourage population increase, is affected by my childhood. By the time Mom took us to Mexico, when I was nine, we had already traveled around Arizona a fair amount. Whenever I think back on those travels I am picturing “Old Arizona.” It was a time when most Arizona roads were backroads. It is still possible to find roads in Arizona that feel like backroads. Where you pass another car only occasionally, and sometimes you’re alone on the road with the Arizona scenery, not needing to share it with anyone else besides your passengers. In 1959, most Arizona roads were like that. A town on the map might consist of only a gas station on the side of a hill, with an empty road behind and ahead. Old Arizona was a road where other drivers going by from time to time, would usually wave and smile, probably because they were happy to see another soul.
In 1959 the population of Arizona was about 1.2 million, In 2026, it is about 7.5 million, over six times more. I miss Old Arizona. That is perhaps nothing more than a nostalgic look backwards at a world that no longer exists. However, my outlook on population is also forward looking. At the same time that I regret that a childhood past is forever gone, I look ahead with a fervent wish that America never become so crowded as India or China. America and China are about the same size geographically. Imagine an America with four times as many people! It may seem a given that there is no chance of that kind of crowding in America. Actually, however, until recently when America’s reputation as the shining city on the hill became tarnished by brutality and cruelty in an expensive program of mass deportation, that kind of population explosion in America was all too possible. If America ever allowed one tenth of the people who are legitimate asylum cases to come to America, our population could easily double in fairly short order.
If ever-increasing population should not, and cannot, happen by increasing fertility rates, should it happen by immigration? While increasing fertility rates is probably neither viable nor desirable, increasing population by immigration is clearly possible. In fact, it is tried and true. The fact that our government is presently engaged in an enormous undertaking of deporting masses of long-time immigrants may temporarily dampen the enthusiasm of additional would-be immigrants. That effect is not likely to last.
Immigration has the advantage that it does not necessarily increase world population, even as it increases American population. Immigration also offers a number of direct benefits. Without immigration, natural increase will supply many fewer soldiers to fight the nation’s battles. That will change the comparative power of nations. For instance, the fact that most European nations have fewer military age young men will alter the balance of power compared to nations that have increasing numbers of young men. Although the fertility rate in the U.S. is below replacement level, the U.S. has been, until 2025 a magnet for immigrants. What the U.S. has lacked in natural increase by births, has been more than made up in immigration.
Another benefit of immigration is enhanced national security. If America will no longer welcome “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” those masses will often continue to suffer under poverty and repression, and growing more and more tired may supply the forces to attack America. If however America welcomes them they may supply the soldiers to defend freedom in America and abroad.
America needs to remember that people are a resource, often a crucial resource, that is wasted if refused. The resource is not just in infantry, it is in any and all occupations and in all walks of life. If we turn away those resources, other nations will often claim and profit from them. Aside from their inherent value, immigrants are often more valuable to a nation than comparable citizens. Immigrants try harder.
Although immigration provides many benefits to America, those benefits must be weighed against the detriments. Overcrowding is as unacceptable within our borders as without.
If ever-increasing our population, whether by encouraging more births or by immigration, is impossible or unacceptable, the nation will have to accept the consequences. One of those consequences will be reductions in Social Security benefits. Retirees in the U.S. are powerful because they tend to vote more than the young. Whether young or old, we all become accustomed to benefits long enjoyed, and are jealous to preserve them. It is one of the inherent weaknesses of democracy that the citizens tend to vote themselves lower taxes and higher benefits, without regard to whether their grandchildren will be able to pay for the inevitable shortfall. As I write this today, the national debt has surpassed forty trillion dollars.
It is another inherent weakness of democracy that the voters will often support policies counterproductive to programs they cherish. For instance, mass deportation will weaken the financial underpinnings of Social Security. To the extent that the current crusade of mass deportation is successful, the number of workers supporting the Social Security system will be diminished and the system will be thereby weakened. That unlimited future immigration is neither a realistic nor desirable way to save Social Security benefits does not mean that longstanding and productive workers providing current support to Social Security should be hustled away in shackles. That is just knocking one of the supports out from under the system now. That we cannot support the system in the long term does not mean that we should abruptly and unnecessarily weaken it now.
By immigration, we can for a time avoid the consequences of less numerous generations of the young. We cannot realistically avoid those consequences by natural increase. And we cannot in the long term avoid those consequences even by immigration.