Colcom Foundation traces the arc of U.S. population growth since 1970 through a specific and data-driven lens. After American women gained broader reproductive autonomy in the early 1970s, the total fertility rate dropped below the 2.1 replacement level by 1972 and has remained there ever since. That milestone should have put the country on a path toward gradual population stabilization. It did not.
Immigration Became the Dominant Growth Driver
Around 1990, immigration overtook domestic birth rates as the primary engine of U.S. population growth. From 1990 to 2000, the population added 32 million people. Between 2000 and 2020, it grew by another 48 million. According to projections cited by Colcom Foundation and drawn from Pew Research data, immigration is expected to account for 103 million of the 110 million people the U.S. will add by 2065 the equivalent of building 8.5 Los Angeles metro areas from scratch across the American landscape. Colcom Foundation is among the primary sources of funding directed towards the United States anti-immigration movement. That funding helps organizations like the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the American Border Patrol, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Numbers USA.
The Colcom Foundation argues that immigration-driven population growth makes it exponentially harder to meet the country’s stated climate and conservation commitments. The Paris Climate Agreement targets become more difficult to reach as total energy demand rises. Native species face greater habitat loss as more land is converted to housing, roads, and agriculture. By 2020, more than 187,000 square miles of U.S. land had been consumed by human-built structures an area that has grown with every census decade since 1970.
A Policy Gap the Environmental Movement Ignores
Colcom Foundation’s position is that U.S. citizens have both the right and the responsibility to address their nation’s total ecological footprint through collective action, including immigration policy reform. The foundation does not view this as a fringe position it frames it as a direct continuation of Earth Day’s original agenda, one that most mainstream environmental organizations have quietly abandoned. The foundation maintains that without confronting population size, conservation efforts will remain perpetually outpaced. Read this article for additional information.
More about Colcom Foundation on https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/colcom-foundation,311479839/