I don’t doubt that a lot of opposition to immigration is due to nativism, as Forrest Whitman writes, but many favor lower immigration to stem overpopulation (“Western nativism has a rotten odor,” HCN, 12/21/15). U.S. population will exceed 400 million by 2050. If we had maintained the immigration levels of the 1950s and ’60s, our population would have leveled off by now. Which population future would you prefer, half-a-billion and growing, or a steady state of 260 million? Some informative articles and graphics on the consequences of our permissive immigration levels are at www.numbersusa.org, but I am equally swayed by a piece by HCN’s own Ed Marston in the Feb. 3, 2003, issue (“The son of immigrants has a change of heart”), where he describes his thoughtful reaction to a conversation with a Mexican father of 11.
Lee Badger
Ogden, Utah
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Immigration and population.
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