"U.S. Population Hits 300 Million"

In article entitled “U.S. Population Hits 300 Million”, Aida Akl of Washington, D.C, discusses how the U.S. is increasing in population. The U.S. Census Bureau projected that the U.S. population would hit 300 million in October of 2006. There are two main reasons for this increase in population; the birth rate and immigration are both growing.

As the years pass, Mark Mather of the Washington based Population Reference Bureau believes that there will be a major demographic shift in population due to the fact that Hispanic white women tend to have more children than non-Hispanic white women. William Johnson, a Demographer of the Population Institute, says “immigration strengthens America – if kept within manageable limits”.

The next topic that the author discusses is the problems that often come with too much immigration. Joseph D’Agostino, a demographer in Virginia, talks about how people in America feel as though immigration is happening at a very fast pace and not all of the immigrates speak English. He says “and if we can’t all communicate together with one language as Americans, it’s very difficult to see how we are going to have a cohesive society in the long term.” D’Agostino points out that there are some major problems with this scenario of many people coming into America who don’t speak English. One is that those people won’t know Americans rules of law and democracy. However, if our nation cuts down the amount of immigration and the birth rate doesn’t go up, we will not have enough workers along as the population continues to age.

William Frey of Brookings shows that a key element is to strive to make the immigrates feel comfortable, happy, and give them fair chances at jobs. If this trend of population continues, the projection for 2050 is around 400 million people, but will be completely different as far as ethnicity goes.  

I think that this is pretty neat how our nation is slowly becoming more and more diverse and less segregated. I do agree that immigrates should learn our language so they can communicate with others in our nation besides people of their own race. The opportunity that we as Americans have to learn about different cultures as people continue to move here is super unique. Do not pass up the opportunity by letting racism thoughts slip into your head. I hope that by having different races within our country, Americans will become less racial and learn to treat others the same as one would treat someone else of their same race.