91Èȱ¬

Causes of our continuing growth?

'it may be their greater religiosity, a lingering frontier spirit or simply greater optimism about the future.'

Or unrestricted immigration and a large native Black population? Thought crime I know -- too bad it happens to be be the truth.

Is it becasue people from other countries are coming to the US just to have their baby to be a US citizen and them return but to their countries with the baby?

Why does the US have a birth rate approaching that of a developing country? Probably for the same reason that Americans have, on average, life expectancies and infant mortality rates approaching those of developing countries. It's because a significant fraction of Americans are, in fact, living in conditions similar to those of developing countries.

The Americans with the large families tend to be the poor recent immigrants lacking health insurance. I doubt that the white American middle class is actually reproducing any faster than its European counterpart, frontier spirit or not.

Why is the White House required to comment on everything that may come to pass? It is odd it feels compelled to respond as often as it does, and we now criticize it because it overlooked the 300 milliionth person born in the US?
The White House, thank goodness, is not our only source of news, and, thank goodness, nor is the 91Èȱ¬.

This post is teeming with racism. "It's certainly true that many of the new Americans are not cute little babies. Immigrants - illegal or otherwise - make up roughly 40% of the expansion." What exactly is that supposted to mean? Do you have to be white in order to be a "cute little baby"? America does not have a population control problem. How about writing about the areas where overpopulation is going to become a very real danger in the coming years, like India or Africa?

I would expect this sort of bigotry on a right-wing American blog, not the 91Èȱ¬.

The poor and less educated adults are producing more children than the middle and rich class of educated people.

If it obvious how this will play out within our society in the future.

The US has a healthy birthrate. We need workers (all kinds, as long as they pay payroll taxes) to keep our economy going! European countries are begging women to have babies and not just the upper-middle class. Don't assume a child born into a poor family will be destitute - the system isn't that broken (yet). If our education system works correctly, all children will have the opportunity for success.

The birthrate among US citizens is below replacement at 1.8 per woman. Immigration is the only reason our population is growing. America is big, but the population and jobs are very concentrated in metro areas. Immigration to these areas increases sprawl and congestion. For more statistics, see www.numbersusa.com, whether or not you agree with their politics.

One contribution to the higher US birthrate is the high rate of births to teenage mothers in the US - the highest rate in the developed world, more than double the rate in neighbouring Canada. About 1 in 10 births in the US are to teenage mothers.

It's unusually strong and sustained economic growth that's been drawing in nearly a million immigrants a year for well over a decade. Compare US population growth since 1990 with the impoverished 1930s - 1.1% today against an all-time annual low of 0.7% then - and this looks more like a success story that the Administration should be crowing about. How ironic that its own boneheaded supporters should be the reason it isn't.

But what is America really growing into? A 3rd World country, that does not embrace higher education, or the ethics of hard-work?
When different cultures came to America, they were expected to learn the language, the culture, and integrate as an asset of society...to see people mad in the streets, protesting that an illegal immigrant should be given a CA Drivers license shows just how bad people are out of touch with any sense of what this country was about.

Ervin Raab

The US has even greater capacity than the current sample of commenters imagine. The potential is unimaginable by your standards. Perhaps these comments need to be saved for 500 years from now. But probably the same comments were being tossed out there 250 years ago.

Not so Erwin: I think you'll find the new arrivals at least as open to education and hard work as the old - possibly rather more, given the behaviour of immigrant communities generally. And the GDP figures support that - no sign of joining the Third World there, though there are huge issues of wealth distribution that the American people should be addressing rather than throwing unprecedented wartime tax relief to the super-rich.

The US may have been seen by its first European immigrants as a replica England minus the royal power (grim irony - such a mercy that they can't understand!), but it soon became the Melting-Pot, the precursor of our multiethnic societies of the future. It's a winning formula that a still resource-rich land ignores at its peril, along with a culture of opportunity that seems anathema to its present billionaire frat-boy rulers.