In most of that space there is good reason for the lack of population.

Some of the White Spaces are uninhabitable deserts,
and some are extensive national Forest and protected wilderness.

In 2006, we found a place that was sparsely populated in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas that was surrounded by National Forest.
We enjoy fertile, unspoiled land,
Hard Wood Forests,
drink and bathe in crystal clear (and ice cold) mountain Spring Water,
and produce a good deal of our own food.
Summers are hot and muggy,
but Winters are mild enough to easily heat with a wood stove.

The Internet and Sat TV has made the isolation bearable,
but we sometimes miss the amenities of the Big City.
(We moved here from Minneapolis).

It is not for everyone.
My Wife & I have no dependents,
and are blessed with good health and strong backs.
We have a compatible Skill Set that makes this Independent/Sustainable life fun (most of the time).

So far,
so good.

----Starkraven and bvar22
Living Well on a LOW taxable income
and stuff we learned in the 60s

What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?

The USA is projected to hit 1 billion by the year 2100.

Where will we be in terms of resources by then? Traditional energy sources will be diminishing, will there be a breakthrough in renewable sources or fusion or something? Anybody's guess.

Over population is usually a self-correcting problem when food and water resources dry up, disease spreads, etc. Technology will delay such events, like balloon though pressure will build until it busts and it will be ugly. I think we have 20 or so "good" years left. What I'm thinking will really get us are the Midwest and Plains aquifers going dry, no irrigation=severely reduced and inconsistent crop yields which will greatly affect the food supply and/or drive prices through the roof.

So...do you want to stop immigration?

(The US could probably guarantee a population decline by then if it stopped immigration. "Western countries" are by large suffering population decline. Putin has made it Russian policy to increase birth rates and that resulted in the first positive year of population growth in 25 years - by 20,000 people).

What is the benefit of immigration to this country when there is a severe lack of jobs for the people already here?

I would favor restrictions on immigration that were tied to the unemployment numbers in some way. With tens of millions out of work it doesn't make much sense to allow millions more in every year.

Just checking.

I'm sure 50 people have been alerted your post and will be attacking you shortly. I'm fairly agnostic on this subject and think your argument has merit.

So a stagnant population will probably equal a very flat economy.

Immigrants don't take people's jobs...

Immigrants who are illegally paid below minimum wage under the table, with no SS taxes take people's jobs.

You favor restrictions based on employment numbers...we already have restrictions! We have an entire border patrol trying to enforce those restrictions...with little success. Additional formulas for coming up with the restrictions won't change that.

I favor the tall fence/wide gate policy. Have a fence, and make it generally difficult to sneak across...but make it fairly easy to come across legally. In general, have an employer lined up in the US, who 'sponsors' an immigrant by paying for a background check...and is 'on the record' as having hired the immigrant - so wages and taxes are above board. Make the penalties for paying under the table, or even using an 'unsponsored' immigrant very harsh.

Social Security but will never be able to collext unless they become legal and pay in with their own ss number.

I know an owner of a small concrete business who had a very rude awakening when INS informed him that a worker was illegal....he had been using a fake SS number.

But there are also many more who are paid under the table...if the employer is willing to go along with it, no taxes are paid whatsoever.

My family experienced just that in the 1980's and 1990's when illegal immigrants flooded the drywall profession, busted all union shops in town and put many of our family friends out of work (fortunately, my father did not lose his job, but his wages dropped 30-40%).

who missed out on the building boom because of the same thing.

Were paid under the table....which is the opposite of what I am talking about.

I am curious to know how the immigrants 'busted' the union shops. Do you mean put the union shops out of business? Surely they didn't come into a shop a de-unionize it...did they?

My argument in a nutshell: If we persist in making almost all immigration from Mexico illegal on its very face, we should expect to see more of the same - people being illegally paid under the table for less than minimum wage, and no taxes paid. If we try something different (harsh treatment of offenders but an easy and well defined method of legal entry), we should expect less illegal activity, and less people getting paid undercut wages.

One thing I know for sure - nothing will stop people from coming here from Mexico. They are going to keep coming here. I'm just suggesting a way to make it more on our terms, and as fair as possible.

BTW, I have worked on the periphery of construction for many years. I am curious to know what state the drywall trade collapsed in. Where I'm at, in the 1990's, there was a waiting list to get drywall put up...and some guys fairly brazenly told me right to my face that they were charging a premium, because they were in such short supply (this is Kansas). In Kansas, our housing prices do not balloon and plummet like they do in other parts of the nation...because it is not predicated on rapid population growth, or even rapid growth sectors in our economy - agriculture has its ups and downs, but as a whole, it is fairly stable across the state from year to year. So I'm curious if the drywall collapse in your area was immigrant related...or related to the housing market.

My father was a member of local 444. There were many union shops in Omaha until that point in time. He had to switch a couple of times, as the shops de-unionized, until he landed at Allied Construction. They eventually went non-union and he ended up at a small family owned company that was unionized.

As an example, when they were building the new arena in Omaha in the late 1990's (now the Centurylink), there was a company filled with illegals who had the contract. The union contacted the sub, the general contractor and the city. Nobody did a damn thing. Finally, they got the local newspaper to write a story on it and EVERYONE claimed ignorance. The sub then swapped out the illegal immigrants to smaller jobs in town and sent their legal employees to the city job.

As someone who has lived through it, the "ups" and "downs" we experienced were most definately not tied to economic activity.

Edit to add link to a story that mentions the Omaha company (EMS) that was using the illegals. I am shocked that you work with the construction industry, but have failed to see the things mentioned in the the Denver Post study that we saw clear as day here:

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_2721613

And the community as a whole (or at least its leadership) didn't seem to care, or at best looked the other way.

My original statement on this thread was that immigrants don't steal jobs...immigrants who are paid under the table steal jobs, and it sounds like that's what happened.

I have to say that the late 1990's was a boom time in the Topeka economy. I work in housing developments, and we were doing them like crazy. As a young engineer, I went to the job site in 1997, inspected the Davis Bacon wage book...and determined I was the lowest person paid on the entire job site. It really was a great time for construction here - to include dry wall.

Now on more than one occasion, I have witnessed what unions do in a situation like Centurylink. The example I'll use is a hospital expansion project, circa 2001. There was a mix of sub-contractors...some union, some not. So one day, there was a strike. The local union sent one person, with one sign, to stand outside the gate to the job. The tower crane operator gets to the gate, sees the sign...turns around and goes home. And without a tower crane, the job is closed for the day. This started a negotiation...with some of the workers shifted around from different jobs, some of the more important electricians being reclassified to salaried positions, etc....until they worked it out.

I've seen this happen several times. Seems like the Centurylink project (which probably had public money) would have been a prime candidate for this. But if nobody in the leadership of a community gives a damn, that's a problem.

I don't think any gave/give a damn.

I read a study out of Harvard a number of years ago that studied the economic impact of illegal immigration. It stated that, as a nation, we were better off economically because of it. However, when you looked at the numbers, the rich were something like 10% better off, while the poor and working classes were something like 3-5% worse off. While those numbers are estimates, as I cannot remember them, the trend was there. Something needs to be done, as it is the poor who are getting screwed over (as they are with everything else).

"jobs Americans don't want to do." What he meant to say was, "work for which Americans would expect my base to pay a living wage."

Amazing how many things in this country benefit the top 10 or 20% while hurting the rest of us.

We do have a high standard of living, being the bottom rung here is still better than most of the rest of the world, we have an awesome country

but part of that standard of living comes from hope for a job.
If there are thought to be no jobs, immigration will slow.

(constant fertility: 490 million)
That's from the United Nations Population Division World Population Prospects, which is as authoritative as you'll get:
http://esa.un.org/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm
http://esa.un.org/wpp/Excel-Data/EXCEL_FILES/1_Population/WPP2012_POP_F01_1_TOTAL_POPULATION_BOTH_SEXES.XLS

is the west and southwest, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California. I live in Minnesota and in all but the extreme southwest corner, there is abundant water.

Scotland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

SE Michigan has almost no trees left.

The old farms that were not workable by modern methods have become forests again. Connecticut is now 70% covered by trees.

to a tour guide about fall foliage times amidst the forest blanketing the hillsides; in answering me, he mentioned that all this growth was fairly new, that all the old growth, virgin forest had been stripped clean in the 19th Century. !

Everything is clogged and falling apart around us in much of America, including the Midwest.

we are hardly overpopulated. Quite rural actually...

I'm not sure what you are trying to get at, but if this is about sustainability, we have a low population density too.

Um, ok. Whatever.

You can drive for hours and hours and never see another person. Cell phone coverage? Forget about it. There's nobody around to use it.

How few people can see Russia from their front porch!

with people, I'd just disappear into the wilderness (preferably forest - easier to hide with trees). This map will be a good tool.

TlalocW

the Nevada and Utah desert.
East of the Rockies, plains and rivers and much flatter (even those eastern hills are flat compared to the Rockies and Sierras).
East of the Rockies and West of the Sierras goods are easily transported.

It is very hard to live on rugged mountains. One just can't get any human density to speak of.

but they are absolutely wonderful places to visit...if one can even get to them.

Is how you can make out the borders of North Dakota. It's as if people see "Now Entering North Dakota," say "screw that" and turn around.

Mountains and muskeg and federally owned land. Even as big as Alaska is, only 1% of the land area is privately owned.

Come on up...

It looks like a beautiful state!

Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state. I know so many people who came up here for a vacation or were stationed here in the service who never went back to the Lower 48.

makes sense.. but as an Iowan..yep it is pretty darned bare in here..

The natural world needs space too. "Nobody lives here" is only true if you presume that humans are the only population that matters.

Last edited Mon Apr 21, 2014, 07:24 PM - Edit history (1)

are generally not going to locate their jobs or their stores where there are few workers and few potential customers. More corporatization = more concentration of people, wealth, and political power.

Not surprised.

Gotta love it. Or not.