From Foreign Policy's Passport blog:
The United States, currently the world's third-most populous
country behind China and India, could have the largest population in the
world by 2100, according to new projections by Joseph Chamie, the former director of the United Nations Population
Division.
There's one hitch: If the United States is to rise to first place and not fall to fourth (after being surpassed by Nigeria in
2050), it will need an eightfold increase in annual immigration -- a compelling data point to consider as the Senate takes up bipartisan legislation on immigration reform. This
graph, compiled by Chamie with U.N. data, shows two different scenarios for U.S. population growth.
One, in red, traces the U.S population to 2100 with current immigration rates
(1.2 million immigrants annually). The other, in blue, shows how U.S.
population would grow if the country increases its influx of immigrants to 10 million a
year.
You may ask: Is 10 million immigrants a year a
realistic goal? Some have expressed doubt about America's ability to continue attracting immigrants. But
Chamie is optimistic. In a recent
article for the Yale Center for the Study of
Globalization, Chamie writes,
"Global opinion polls show that many people at virtually all
skill levels would like to emigrate, and the number-one destination is overwhelmingly
the United States."...MORE
The Chamie piece at
Yale Global Online is much longer.
