Immigration Reduction in The United States - Target Immigration Levels

Target Immigration Levels

Immigration reductionists differ on the ideal level of immigration they would like to see into the United States. Some believe the numbers should be set each year at whatever level would, in conjunction with the current fertility rate and emigration from the U.S., maintain zero population growth in the country. The most prominent immigration reductionist in government today is U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo R-CO. Tancredo has authored a bill that calls for limiting annual immigration to between 30,000 and 300,000. The organization, Population-Environment Balance (PEB), has issued a Immigration Moratorium Action Plan calling for a "non-piercable" cap of 100,000 persons annually, which would be a 95% cut from current levels. Carrying Capacity Network (CCN), another small reductionist group closely related to PEB, shares that goal while repeating that it is not opposed to immigration.

There are also some who support a moratorium on immigration. The Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America claims that 43% of Californians polled said that a 3-year moratorium on immigration would be beneficial to the state (compared to 40% who said it would be unbeneficial). The America First Party calls for a ten-year moratorium, with only spouses and children of citizens allowed in. Other advocates for moratoriums include the Reform Party and 2004 Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka . Robert Locke surpasses them by calling for a negative immigration rate. He has defined this as restricting immigration to the U.S. to what he calls the "normal" (i.e., pre-1965) average flow of immigrants throughout U.S. history, combined with the deportation of all illegal immigrants.

The Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) and Population-Environment Balance (Now Defunct), two groups that both operate out of the same Washington, D.C. address, issue frequent statements that advocating for the numbers recommended by the Jordan Commission, 700,000 annually, is "counter-productive". In a National Alert the CCN warned that organizations supporting numbers higher than 300,000 undercut the movement, and they specifically criticize the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA.

Some groups not connected to the immigration reduction movement nonetheless support a reduction to legal immigration levels of around 500,000 to 600,000. In their 1997 book, Misplaced Blame, Alan Durning and Christopher Crowther of Northwest Environment Watch write that illegal immigration gets too much attention, and identify five main sources of population growth, including lack of access to family planning as well as a misguided legal immigration policy, and subsidies to domestic migration. They readily admit that immigation should be reduced by an unspecified amount, but they also show concern for the rights of existing residents. . The AFL-CIO and some mainstream environmentalist groups used to be on record favoring lower immigration numbers, although most have quietly dropped this position in recent years.