Immigration is essential to America’s health, otherwise we would be losing population and heading to a downward economic spiral. According to Census Bureau figures published Thursday, international migration accounted for about 84% of the country’s roughly 3.3-million-person increase between 2023 and 2024; without it, the U.S. population would be without a shadow of a doubt stagnating.
In fact, newcomers pushed our populace growth to nearly 1%, its fastest rate in 23 years, proving that political calls by Donald Trump and others to close our borders are dumb as well as wrong.
Incoming First Pal Elon Musk has long been preoccupied with birthrates in the highly developed nations, adopting the line that these countries are headed to a sort of extinction. Just Saturday, he was back on the topic, using his social media megaphone to warn that “Japan and many other countries face population collapse.”
There are a number of public policy interventions that could conceivably help the crisis as Musk envisions it. There could be big increases in housing for would-be families who can barely keep their heads above water in small or shared houses and apartments. There could be safety net fiscal policies like an expanded child income tax credit and child care subsidies to make the decision to have children seem financially feasible in the long run.
Yet, the No. 1 policy solution to a declining working-age population and its strains on the economy and the social safety system is the one answer that Trump and Musk won’t embrace: immigration.