Mass Immigration Will Only Exacerbate California's Environmental Catastrophe

What happens at the border stays at the border. Or does it?

People often think of the negative effects of uncontrolled illegal immigration in terms of the drug epidemic, rising social costs, competition for jobs and wages, and rapid population growth. However, many people fail to realize the often unspoken consequences of the Biden Border Crisis – how it impacts the environment. The environment is something that connects all aspects of life and is affected by mass immigration.

According to a recent report from USA Today, 6 million Southern California residents now face water restrictions as a result of the drought that has been plaguing the state for the past three years. In addition to the increased restrictions imposed this summer, all Southern California residents were asked to cut water usage by 20 to 30 percent. Specifically, inhabitants of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties needed to limit their outdoor water usage to one or two days a week. While the state claims to have implemented the restrictions as a result of the shrinking Colorado River and the seemingly never-ending drought, Metropolitan general manager Adel Hagekhalil put the true societal impacts into words.

“There is not enough [State Water Project] water coming from Northern California this year to meet normal demands. So we must do everything we can to lower our use and stretch this limited supply,” Hagekhalil said.

The keywords in the above statement are “normal demands.” When about 10 percent of the state’s population is illegal, it exacerbates California’s already profligate use of this vital resource to grow water-intensive crops like rice or irrigate 130 golf courses in the parched Palm Springs area.

How is our fragile environment nationally affected by surges in immigration levels? According to a FAIR study, approximately 15.5 million illegal aliens currently reside within the United States. That is more than the entire population of Pennsylvania, which currently has around 13 million people.

Natural resources in many areas of the United States are already strained by population density. Our current population stands at 329.5 million, and some 80 percent of new growth is a direct result of immigration, as the Census Bureau projects that we will reach 458 million by 2050.  At this rate, how long can our stressed environment sustain an endless flow of newcomers? With a million illegal aliens breaching our nation each year, our country’s already taxed natural resources will be strained further.

There are myriad environmental and resource issues that pose grave threats to the sustainability of our nation that must urgently be addressed. Continuing to add millions of new people through mass immigration, especially in places like California, will not solve any of them. It will only make an already dire situation worse.

When it comes to immigration-driven population growth we might want to consider the advice of the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates: “First do no harm.”