The numbers do not bode well for America.
America’s birthrate is now about the lowest it has ever been. The total fertility rate in 2023—the number of children American women have over their reproductive lifetimes—is estimated to be 1.784. This is only slightly above the previous low of 1.77 children per woman set in 1980, and well below the 2.1 children needed to sustain the current population.
For anyone concerned about the future of America, this is not something to celebrate.
“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future,” President John F. Kennedy once said.
Actually, they are the only future a family has, the only future a nation has.
A country whose people do not replace themselves quickly grows older and, in many ways, poorer. China’s ongoing demographic collapse is a case in point.
To make matters worse, while America’s birthrate is languishing, a tsunami of illegal immigrants is pouring into our country.
In fact, so many illegals are coming—as a consequence of Biden’s open border policies—that we are about to set another record, although not one we should celebrate.
This year the number of migrants arriving in America will eclipse the number of children born to Americans.
In 2022, 3.7 million births were recorded in America, of which some 300,000 were born to illegal migrants. Births are on track to match this in 2023.
Over the past 12 months, between those stopped at the border, those who got away, and those arriving legally, some 3.5 million immigrants have landed on our shores.
This is another sign that America not only needs to close the border, but also to get its demographic house in order.
And who was it that said that “They are not sending us their best”?
Leave aside the coyotes and criminals, the drug runners and the sex offenders, and the military-age males from China. Most of those who are fording the Rio Grande are unable to speak English and have only an elementary school education.
In the past — when we had control of the southern border — we used to speak of the brain drain. Poor countries would educate doctors and scientists, only to have them legally immigrate to the U.S. where their skills would command a higher price.
Now we have the brain drain in reverse.
We have millions of poorly educated, low-skilled immigrants competing for menial jobs. The children they bring with them require years of expensive special language instruction. According to the Federation for American Education Reform (FAIR) this is presently costing taxpayers nearly $80 billion a year and growing.
It would be far better for the next generation of Americans to be “Made in America” than imported from abroad. Native-born students — including the children of legal immigrants — come to school already equipped with the language skills and values they need to learn and succeed in America.
Beyond that, Americans should be at the head of the line for the same reason that companies prefer to promote from within — because they understand the company’s culture, speak its language and are more easily accepted by the other employees.
And what about those who come with no understanding of American democratic values and no intention of assimilating?
The chaos in American and European cities following the Hamas terrorist attacks suggests another danger.
If we want to continue the longest-running experiment in democracy on the planet — and not have our country descend into a maelstrom of warring tribes — we had better do something about it, fast.
Closing the border is easy. Easy, that is, if only we had the political will to do it. But how do we solve the birth dearth?
To bolster the birthrate, millennials and Zoomers must be encouraged to marry and have children. But to make this happen, certain obstacles have to be cleared out of the way, including a preference for cohabitation over marriage, huge levels of student debt, and the reluctance of Zoomers to “adult”, much less have children.
The hookup culture that prevails in most colleges and universities discourages the kind of committed relationships that result in marriage and children. Add to this the burden of student loans, the skyrocketing cost of housing — driven up by illegal immigration — and the heavy tax burden imposed by government, and you have a formula for barrenhood rather than parenthood.
But the primary problem is that we’ve broken the economic link between the generations.
Parents throughout history have raised children—cared for them when they were young and fragile—with the expectation that their children, now adults, would return the favor when they in turn were old and fragile.
The state has now usurped this function in countries both rich and poor. And from America to Albania, from Canada to Cuba, birth rates are plummeting.
Now I’m not proposing to push Gramma off the cliff, as the Democrats hysterically claim whenever social security is mentioned. There’s no going back. Promises made to the elderly must be kept.
But there is a way of encouraging the young to invest in children, and it’s one created by the Democrats themselves in their desire to hand out free money to everyone for no reason at all. I’m talking about student loans.
I strongly oppose the blanket forgiveness of student loans. Those who took out those loans, now totaling 1.75 trillion dollars, should pay them back. But one way of doing so would be to ask these young Americans to provide for the future of America by providing the next generation.
Postponing student loan payments of those who are willing to enter into a long-term relationship—also known as “marriage”—with the intention of having children would be a good start. And then, as those children come along, we might forgive more and more of their student loans. Couples willing to raise three or more children should have their student loan completely wiped off the books.
They should also be sheltered from paying federal income tax while their children are growing up.
After all, such couples are providing for the future of their country in the most fundamental way, by providing for the future generation, often at great personal sacrifice.
Think of it as a kind of national service.
It wasn’t so long ago—in 2007—that Americans of all ethnicities were averaging around 2.1 children.
If we want to provide for the future of America as we know it, we should get there again.
If we don’t, then we’d better decide who we want to give our country to, since we obviously don’t want it enough to populate it.
But there are many who do. And they are just beyond the gates.
