Selected news coverage of

Shaping Florida: The Effects of Immigration 1970-2020

The Miami Herald
Sun-Sentinel

Florida Faces Growth Crisis, Study Warns
By Andres Viglucci
Miami Herald, January 19, 1996; p. B1

MIAMI — Florida's population growth, fueled in part by high levels of immigration, threatens to overwhelm the state, a Washington think tank said in a report released Thursday in Miami.

The study by the Center for Immigration Studies concludes that immigration accounts for almost a third of the growth in Florida's population, and it recommends federal action to halt illegal immigration and "sharply'' reduce legal immigration.

If population growth is not curbed, the report said, Florida could be home to 22 million people by 2025, compared with 14 million now. The byproduct would be strained government services, even more crowded schools, accelerated loss of wetlands and logjammed roads.

"This is something everyone who lives in Florida has to be concerned about," said Mark Krikorian, the group's executive director.

But even if immigration were stopped cold, Krikorian said, it would not put an end to problems of crowding in Florida, because the population would continue to increase.

"Stopping immigration is no silver bullet,'' he said. "We would bring about no Eden in Los Angeles or Miami if we suddenly were to keep these foreign hordes out.''

Critics, including some leading academics in the field, quickly took issue with the study's use of statistics and its conclusions.

"A lot of it is based on false premises,'' said Stuart Anderson, an analyst at the conservative Cato Institute in Washington, which is pro-immigration. "It doesn't really add much to helping understand the issues.''

Anderson said the study concentrates on problems associated with growth while ignoring the benefits. The report points out that 40 percent of Florida's immigrants have arrived since 1980. In that same period, each Floridian's income has risen nearly 23 percent, a figure higher than the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

"If the premise is correct that immigration, and the population growth associated with it, is a negative force, then why do we have such obvious indicators of well-being?'' Anderson said. "We believe that on balance, immigration is a good thing.''

Billed as an analysis of immigration's effects on the state, the 15-page report concentrates mostly on the consequences of fast population growth on schools, transportation and the environment.

One projection in the study estimates that a new school must be built every five days for the next 25 years to keep up with population growth.

The study acknowledges that people moving to Florida from other states are the main factor behind the rise in population. Even if there had been no immigration from 1960 to 1990, its authors said, Florida's population still would have doubled in that period, mostly because of Floridians having babies and new arrivals from the rest of the country.

But its authors say nothing can be done about that, while laws can be passed to restrict immigration.

"You can't tell people in other states you can't move to Florida -although sometimes I wish you could,'' said Leon Bouvier, a visiting scholar at Stetson University. "I wish we could put up a billboard in Jacksonville telling people how bad Florida has gotten.'' Though Krikorian said the center has no political agenda, its board of directors includes one common member with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a controversial group that has called for a halt to most legal immigration into the country. Bouvier has also done reports for FAIR.

Krikorian said his center is "on the same side of the issue'' as FAIR but that there are no formal links between the two.

Report Calls for Further Immigrant Restrictions
Group Says Foreigners Fuel Excessive Growth
Sergio R. Bustos
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), January 19, 1996; p. 1B

MIAMI — It's no secret that Florida's population is growing, more than twice as fast as the national average, fueled primarily by the continuing migration of people from abroad and from other parts of the United States.

But the only feasible way of controlling that growth, according to a report released Thursday by the Washington-based Center For Immigration Studies, is to stem the tide of foreign immigration.

"If Florida is to have any hope of achieving a sustainable population in the future, it must see to it that not only illegal immigration is halted but that legal immigration is reduced sharply by federal action," the report states.

The center is a nonprofit research institute founded in 1985 to conduct research and policy analysis on immigration's impact on the United States. Its reports generally favor curbs on immigration.

In its 16-page report — "Shaping Florida: The Effects of Immigration, 1970-2020" — the authors analyze U.S. Census data to argue that the number of immigrants allowed into the United States, and particularly into Florida, must be reduced.

They estimate that 30 percent of Florida's population growth between 1990 and 1995 was from immigration. Of the 1.2 million increase in population, 350,000 people were foreign immigrants.

The areas feeling the greatest impact: Miami, the rest of Dade County and its neighbor to the north, Broward.

But the tide of immigrants has swept through much of the state, the report says. Hispanics now make of 14.2 percent of the population in West Palm Beach and 15 percent in Tampa. Foreign-born residents make up more than 10 percent of the population of Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

While the report's authors acknowledge that the bulk of growth comes from other parts of the country, they say it's more feasible to limit growth by controlling foreign immigration.

"While state government policies may be able to ... discourage migration from other states, it is foreign immigration which can be most directly shaped by government decisions," the report states.

Leon Bouvier, a demographer and one of the report's authors, said the state's fast-growing population has cause increased crime, traffic, school crowding and damage to the environment. Florida is growing at twice the rate of the national average, which is 1 percent.

"There's been a real decline in the quality of life in Florida," he said. "We need a sustainable, rational immigration policy in this country."

The report said Florida's estimated population in 1995 was 14.2 million. About 1.7 million are foreign-born and an estimated 415,000 are illegal immigrants. Immigration advocates immediately criticized the report for containing "false claims and spurious conclusions."

"If you look at the study objectively, they blame immigrants for every social ill in Florida," said Judy Mark, a spokesperson with the National Immigration Forum in Washington. "But they show no linkage between those problems and immigrants."

Mark said the center's research is biased and supports the same beliefs as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which advocates a five-year moratorium on immigration.