About 160M people would like to immigrate to the US. Here’s what that means
Timothy P. Carney
Currently, Americans aren’t reproducing at the replacement rate. So, some level of immigration will be needed in order to prevent a disastrous population implosion.
But how much immigration should we have, and on what basis should we select our immigrants?
When someone in a poorer country says she wants to become an American, it’s not nice to say no. It also makes me a bit uneasy for our government to select would-be immigrants based on the purported “value” of those immigrants. On the other hand, an immigration lottery is so arbitrary that it seems its own sort of cruelty.
The alternative, which very few people openly advocate, is open borders: The U.S. ought to let all comers come. So, how many people would that be? Approximately 160 million adults, according to Gallup’s latest global survey. For comparison, the U.S. currently has about 260 million adults. That is, if everyone who wanted to immigrate to the U.S. in 2021 did immigrate to the U.S. in 2021, the U.S. adult population would increase by about 60%.
That would be unmanageable. If New York City can’t handle a few thousand immigrants, how would it handle a few million? How rapidly could infrastructure be built to accommodate this surge of humanity?
The massive number of non-Americans who want to be Americans necessitates the not-nice conclusion that we need to control immigration.
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It tells us something else, too. By far, the U.S. is the most desired destination in the world for immigrants. Of those who would move to a new country, a full 18% said the U.S. would be their preferred destination — more than the next three countries combined. For all the propaganda in the American media about the U.S. being a horrible place for immigrants, racial minorities, and the poor, there’s nowhere on Earth where more people would rather be.