Immigration may not alter 'aging'

Can immigration help ease the coming crunch as the baby boomers start to retire? A new report suggests that if the influx of immigrants — legal and illegal alike — continues at its current rate of roughly 1.25 million per year, it won't significantly change the nation's age.

The report, by the Center for Immigration Studies which supports reduced levels of immigration, found that raising the retirement age would have a much bigger impact on the declining working age population than adding more immigrants.

"There is a big impact on overall size," said Steven A. Camarota, the report's author.

Camarota said that if immigration continues at its current level, immigrants and their descendants will account for 63 percent of the nation's 167 million new residents by 2060.

However, that would make for 61 percent of the population of working age, compared to 60 percent if net immigration were reduced to 300,000 a year, the study says.

"The immigrant that arrives today will eventually be tomorrow's retiree," he said. "Increasing the number of workers is just going to increase the number of retirees."

The report contradicts research that has shown immigrant labor could lessen the burden on working-age Americans as birthrates have declined and the population ages.

The number of senior citizens per 1,000 working-age Americans is expected to climb to 318 in 2020, and 432 in 2040, according to recent testimony to the House Committee on the Judiciary by Dowell Myers, director of the Population Dynamics Research Group at the University of Southern California.

In her testimony, Myers said current immigration levels would reduce that rate of increase by more than a one-fourth, while reducing immigration to 751,000 per year would still reduce it by about one-fifth.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects growth in the 16- to 24-year-old age group will be flat through 2014, and that age group accounts for about half of the nation's restaurant employees, says John Gay, spokesman for the National Restaurant Association.

"It defies logic to think it wouldn't help our industry if there were more younger people," Gay said. "We have to have reasonable immigration policy in the United States."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com