UPDATED: U.S. population will reach 300 million next month, and is projected to number 600 million by the end of this new century, at present rates. Our population has grown from 100 million in 1915 and 200 million in 1967. New births outpace immigration as a factor, but growing immigration nonetheless means Americans of European descent will make up less than 50 percent of the nation's population by 2050, according to one expert. Immigrants are currently 12.4 percent of the U.S. population, more than ever before. Our population growth is - and will continue to be - to the South and West. And if you stood all 300 million U.S. residents in a circle, that circle's radius would be only about 2.3 miles, says a prominent demographer. All this and more in a Philly Inquirer piece today by the paper's Washington correspondent Steve Goldstein.

Immigrants keep voting with their feet for the United States, Muslims included. A legitimate worry to conservatives noting assimilation and border enforcement problems, but also a bitter pill for the ACLU and the moonbat Left. To paraphrase Sally Field at the Oscars, "they really, really like us." And not just because we're OK with Muslim ladies' swimtimes.

Samuel Preston, the eminent demographer at the University of Pennsylvania, says that our population growth "is an indicator of our success as a society" due to increased longevity and the nation's capacity to absorb migrants.

That passive-voiced "capacity to absorb" migrants gives short shrift to what attracts them here. Namely, economic and educational opportunities; plus, for some, freedom of speech, religion and political association - which are diminished or do not exist in their old homelands.

The political implications of Goldstein's story are worth chewing on. Breeders and immigrants, many of the latter Hispanic, are driving the population growth. The latter group, partly because some are illegal, but for other reasons as well, does not vote much yet. But the Bush presidential campaign won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in '04, 9 percent more than in '00, and more than double Republican presidential contender Bob Dole's 21 percent in 1996, as journalist Jim Geraghty notes in his new book about the GOP and terrorism, titled "Voting To Kill." This enhanced GOP appeal to Hispanics is more likely due to the party's social conservative leanings more than its terrorism stance, however.

As for those couples making babies in the South and West, let's remember the fastest-growing counties are in the ex-urbs, the land of cul-de-sacs which urban liberals loathe. And let's just say that having children and owning a home tend to make your politics more pragmatic and value-focused - if not more overtly libertarian or conservative.

Bottom line: long-term population growth trends in the U.S. are good for Republicans, bad for Democrats. Here's a sci-fi kicker that ought to worry Dems to death, if Algore and his doomsaying cohorts are right about global warming. The heartland dries up, and all those icky conservatives from Flyover Country move toward West Coast outposts of liberalism such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most would settle in the ex-urbs and suburbs of course, spawning huge growth battles (picture a water desalination plant for Puget Sound, among other things) and vastly changing regional political landscapes. Urban archipelagos? Maybe we ain't seen nothin' yet!

TECHNORATI TAGS: UNITED STATES, POPULATION GROWTH, BIRTHS, IMMIGRATION, HISPANICS, MUSLIMS, FREEDOM, REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS, SEATTLE, PORTLAND, SAN FRANCISCO, SUBURBS, WATER SUPPLY, GROWTH

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 17, 2006 09:20 PM