Too Many Immigrants: Los Angeles suffers from overuse -- more is expected
Thursday, March 15, 2001
By: Dan Stein

Syndicated and published inter alia in Sacramento Bee

“This is the city: Los Angeles, California,” the monotone voice of Jack Webb used to say. Today that city is a sprawling megalopolis of some 16 million people, stretching over five counties, and by 2020 it’s expected to be home to 22 million. The problem is, according to a new report by the University of Southern California and the Brookings Institution, that the region’s resources and environment cannot even sustain the current population, and the area has simply run out of room to accommodate the expected growth.

The new study, “Sprawl Hits the Wall,” concludes that, “Almost all the natural locations for urban development have been consumed.” The strain of this enormous population is taking a heavy toll on the environment. “Water pollution remains…largely untackled,” and “the Los Angeles air basin remains one of the most polluted in the nation.” And all of this is occurring even without the projected increase of “two Chicagos” over the next two decades.

If the physical and environmental problems were not formidable enough, the report notes that mass immigration has hurt quality of life in the region and can be a source of social friction. “Immigration and first-generation births have increased the number of low-skilled workers in the region, and the decline in the middle-class economy has created more low wage jobs,” the study observes.

The report goes on to propose a series of recommendations for coping with the stresses of excessive population growth, all of which have merit. However, it does not ask the most obvious question: If the Los Angeles area is running out of space, destroying its environment, and developing social fault lines that are as dangerous as any of the seismic ones that crisscross the region, why not think about limiting the growth?

Population growth in Southern California is largely a phenomenon created by government policies, and therefore it can be moderated by changing those policies. Virtually all the population growth in the Los Angeles region is a direct result of U.S. immigration policies. U.S. immigration levels are the highest they have been in history, and because the policy is designed to encourage endless chains of family migration, the impact of this record influx is disproportionately felt by just a few areas of the country.

Given the option of coping with or curtailing massive population growth, most would choose the latter. We are a wealthy and resourceful people, to be sure, and it’s theoretically possible to shoehorn half a billion people into the U.S. (but it would strain resources to the breaking point). The question voters should be asking is why would we want to, and to what end? There is a big difference between what is possible in a highly regulated, regimented and overcrowded state, and what is desirable. Most Angelinos and most Americans do not want merely to cope. Eventually the Los Angeles region’s population will stop growing - when people find it unlivable, or when the United States takes rational steps to slow the growth. The choice is really ours.

The rational approach would be to reduce substantially the current intake of more than one million immigrants a year, end the practice of granting future immigration guarantees to the extended family members of current immigrants, and establish immigration criteria that favors those whose skill levels predict a rapid and successful integration into our society and economy. The rational approach requires political fortitude, however, something neither of the major political parties can boast of these days.

The picture that USC and the Brookings Institution paint of Los Angeles twenty years hence is not a bright one. The good news is that it doesn’t have to happen. We can either plan for “smarter growth” - a euphemism for making the best of a bad situation, or we can adopt smarter immigration policies. One option will take a lot of money and a lot of luck. The other will take a lot of guts.

Anyone want to venture a guess which one our political leaders will choose?