Jeffrey S Passel

Pew Research Center-immigration growth

The U.S. population is projected to grow by 48 percent by 2050, with 1 in 5 Americans being an immigrant, according to the Pew Research Center.

Under current trends, the U.S. population would increase from 296 million in 2005 to 438 million in 2050, the report states, and 82 percent of the growth would be attributed to immigrants who arrive between 2005 and 2050 and their U.S. born-descendants.

Jesus Muro, a Mexico native who migrated to California more than 20 years ago and recently relocated to Chattanooga, said he was not surprised by these figures.

“It’s incredible how the population has grown in Chattanooga,” he said. “You’re starting to see more and more people move into the area from Dalton, Georgia, Atlanta and other parts of the region.”

The report also projected that non-Hispanic whites will become a minority, comprising 47 percent of the population by 2050, compared to 29 percent Hispanics, 13 percent blacks and 9 percent Asians.

Hispanics will increase from 42 million in 2005 to 128 million in 2050, Asians from 14 million to 41 million, and blacks from 38 million to 59 million during the same period.

Carl Twofeathers Whitaker, state director of the Tennessee Volunteer Minuteman, said in an e-mail that this study shows why “we must really enforce the immigration laws in this country.”

“We cannot afford for this to happen to our country. We will become a nation of illegal immigrants who have taken over our country. It is headed that way already,” Mr. Whitaker said.

The authors of the study, D’Vera Cohn and Jeffrey S. Passel, said during a telephone news conference on Monday that they did not break down the number of immigrants by status for this report.

According to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C., out of the 1.5 million immigrants coming to the United States from 2000-2005, more than 50 percent did so through legal immigration.

Ms. Cohn said the 0.9 percent annual population growth rate that is projected for the year 2050 is lower than the 1.28 percent in the 1960s and the 1.25 percent in the 1990s. “It’s about the same as in the 1980s,” she added.

Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center, said it is important to note these are just assumptions based on patterns of birth, deaths and immigration — the three building blocks of population change — and “future changes in immigration policy or other events could substantially alter the projected totals.”

The center also reported that between 2005 and 2050 the number of elderly will increase more rapidly than either the number of children or working-age adults.

“Immigration and births to immigrants in the United States will be responsible for all growth of other age groups but will have little impact on the number of elderly, which is affected mainly by the aging of the baby-boom generation,” Ms. Cohn, said.

According to the center’s projections, the dependency ratio will increase from 59 young and elderly for every 100 people of working age in 2005, to 72 dependents per 100 people of working age in 2050.

“Which means the costs per worker to support the young and elderly would go up,” Ms. Cohn and Mr. Passel stated in the study.

In 2050, 23 percent of working-age adults will be foreign-born, Ms. Cohn said, and of those, Hispanics will make up 31 percent.

Douglas C. Bachtel, demographer at the University of Georgia, said big population increases usually occur because of migration, and “in order for migration to occur you have to have a combination of things such as jobs, quality of life, etc.”

Dr. Bachtel said the Hispanic population is tied with jobs in different industries, including agriculture, carpet industry, retail and service, construction and landscaping.

“Georgia has been able to attract a lot of Hispanics because of jobs,” he said in reference to the increase of immigrants in the state.

Mr. Passel said the changes projected in the demography of the United States have been part of its history.

“We looked different 40 years ago, and we will look different 40 years from now,” he said.