Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies

cooperate and some of them drag their feet, but that is something that requires some political juice to get that going. That could help make, not a fool proof system, but close the loops.

HSNW: Many observers are concerned about the aging American workforce with statistics showing rapidly shrinking growth rates in the labor force. Some see immigration as a way to maintain productivity. Do you believe that immigration is an effective way to ensure a steady labor supply given declining fertility rates in the United States?

MK: No, that is baloney. First of all, the fertility rates are not really declining, it is steady. It was declining for a bit, and it fell to about replacement level, before Roe vs. Wade interestingly enough. So abortion has nothing to do with it. It went down a little in the 70s and then it actually went up. Basically it has been around two babies for the average woman for about a decade now.

Fertility rates are just declining everywhere in the world, that is just the heart of the human condition in the world. Everywhere in the world, women are having fewer babies.

HSNW: Does that also include the developing world?

MK: This is occurring everywhere, even in the developing world. There are only maybe a handful of countries where the fertility rate has gone up. Niger, Chad, and maybe Yemen, but that is about it. Even India and China have a fertility rate lower than ours. It is going down everywhere in the world, except for a handful of countries. Mexico’s has been going down pretty rapidly. It is about the same as ours now and is probably going to fall below ours soon.

The first point is, the idea that lower population growth and a higher average age is a universal human phenomenon and it cannot just be wished away. We have to adjust whatever social institutions that we need to adjust, and immigration is just a crutch.

Number two, immigration will not do that much because our population is already so large that if you want to affect the average age of the population you would have to have immigration way beyond current levels today to benefit from it. You would need millions more a year. But what are the benefits? The population gets a little younger with very high levels of immigration. The answer in other words is to make other kinds of changes