Introducing the Sustainable Population and Immigration Act

by Brian Czech

A steady state economy requires, by definition, a stabilized population. If population is not stabilized, it won’t matter how much we try to conserve. Our consumption as individuals—“per capita consumption”—can only go so low before we hit the lower limits of mere survival.

Mere survival isn’t comfortable, much less fun. It precludes any political viability for keeping consumption at minimal levels. So, as a society concerned about sustainability, we strive for a reasonable level of consumption that provides wellbeing without exceeding ecological capacity.

That’s why writers like me have focused on per capita consumption for decades. But at some point, population must be dealt with, too, as it will be herein. A key consideration is where to apply this population focus in public policy.

Think Globally, Act Nationally

Ideally, population policy would be applied at the global level. Theoretically, that could alleviate the unsustainable migration pressures as well as internal growth in regions where native fertility rates are too high. The problem is, public policy entails governance, and there is no global government. Also, who are we (“we” meaning citizens of any nation) to tell people halfway around the world what to do in their own environs?

No, population policy is a matter for nation states. When a nation develops a steady-state population policy, it can then engage in demographic diplomacy. Such diplomacy may manifest directly with other nations and in pseudo-governmental institutions of regional and global scope, the most comprehensive being the UN General Assembly. The European Union, African Union, World Health Organization, and World Bank are some of the other key institutions.

At this point in history, population policy seems most promising if it starts in a relatively democratic nation with precedent-setting power. This nation would need the fiscal means to transition to a steady state economy without precipitating a political backlash.

To grasp the merits of this perspective, first imagine the leadership of a poverty-stricken nation announcing to its impoverished citizens that, in order to protect the environment, it was time to stop growing the GDP. That wouldn’t fly, and it shouldn’t. Poor countries still need GDP growth, as described in the foremost online position on economic growth.

And don’t forget, in most countries economists would be advising that population growth was required for GDP growth. In fact, they would prescribing—shockingly to the uninitiated—population growth for increasing not only GDP, but GDP per capita! That’s right; they have rationalized that, because a larger population should have a larger cohort devoted to research and development (begetting technological progress) a higher density of people results in more goods and services per person.

Due to slow-changing cultural reasons, too, we cannot expect many nations with widespread poverty—even if stereotyped as “overpopulated”—to lead the world in population stabilization, much less reduction.

Rather, the precedent-setting nation will need an economy fat enough for trimming without considerably impacting the consumption habits of the majority. This is especially the case because there will be a transition period in which population will still be growing as the nation attempts to stabilize its GDP (and therefore its ecological footprint). That means per capita consumption will decline, making it politically essential to stabilize population (and therefore GDP/capita) before the belt-tightening hits the majority too hard.

For purposes of precedent, the nation should also be large and strong, not likely to be ignored or geopolitically bullied. Population size is determined by immigration and emigration (along with births and deaths), so the precedent-setting country must be fully capable of maintaining its borders.

Finally, the country will also need a sense of its own limits to growth. Until then, it won’t have the wherewithal to stabilize population or consumption.

 A Steady State of America

In my opinion, the nation that best fits the precedent-setter criteria laid out above is the United States. While American democracy is ailing, it still operates pursuant to the basic principles of democracy laid out in the Constitution and fleshed out in statutory and case law. The United States is also one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It is notorious for conspicuous consumption but famous also for a history of conservation ethics, environmental movements, and ecological economics.

I want the United States to set the precedent of stabilizing its population intentionally, ethically, and durably, without the 20^thcentury draconian measures practiced in India, Peru, and most notably in Deng Xiaoping’s China. Sadly, recent raids of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency have been ruthless and not even designed for stabilizing population, but rather coupled with a president’s obsession with GDP growth.

Morally decrepit population management is not only wrong in a normative sense; it won’t stand a test of time, either. The U.S. should develop a population stabilization policy based on sound science and lengthy dialog about limits to growth and the need for a steady state economy.

Indeed, it has been over five decades since the United States published the 1972 President’s Report on Population, culminating the advisory work of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future under President Nixon. The Population Bomb (1968) and Limits to Growth (1972) were bestsellers. President Carter commissioned the Global 2000 Report to the President (1980), which echoed the 1972 report, but with a greater emphasis on global population.

The tide turned, though, when Ronald Reagan took over the White House in 1981. He explicitly disregarded the limits to growth. His aggressively pro-growth, supply-side economics established a foothold in politics and policy, aided and abetted by neoclassical growth theory and the fallacious notion of perpetual population and GDP growth. Dialog on stabilizing population has since been muffled.

Muffled, but not extinguished. In my opinion, there is tremendous latent concern about “too many people” among the American public. If there wasn’t, the immigration reform movement wouldn’t be nearly as loud and influential. Critics of open borders include racist and nationalist extremists—bad and ugly—but they also include many good people who simply don’t like the pace of change, especially in our rural and exurban regions. I suspect these Americans number in the tens of millions.

In other words, the more genuine desire to “make” America great “again” is not so much about skin color, foreign languages, and different garb, but rather about too many stop signs, too much competition for jobs, and too many children for the schools to handle. It’s about limits to growth: population growth and economic growth. We need to keep America great by stabilizing population, consumption, and GDP. That’s how we maintain our ecological capacity for health and happiness.

Introducing the Sustainable Population and Immigration Act

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy has been constructing a Steady State Economy Act for over five years and producing “feeder bills” on a monthly basis since early 2024. Some of the feeder bills—Salary Cap Act for example—should be politically feasible with or without the goal of a steady state economy.

Others, though, such as the Sustainable Budgets Act, won’t be feasible any time soon; not until the United States has truly reckoned with limits to growth.

Guess which category the freshly minted Sustainable Population and Immigration Act falls into? That’s right: Such a bill has as much of a chance on today’s Capitol Hill as a polar bear has (anywhere) in the year 2500. But it’s worth putting these feeder bills out in bite-sized portions, so readers can digest the omnibus bill over time and develop a sense of steady statesmanship in domestic policy.

Furthermore, I believe a majority of Americans (not the capitalist cronies on Capitol Hill) would be in favor of SPIA, if only they had the benefit of a town hall or two on the topic. Certainly elements of the bill already resonate with large swaths of the American public.

That said, please note a disclaimer while considering the merits of the bill: SPIA advocates, starting with myself, are not calling for an end to all immigration; not now and probably ever. In fact, SPIA advocates are lukewarm about any tightening of U.S. borders prior to a concerted effort to achieve a steady state economy. (Borderland law enforcement to address violent crime is crucial at all times, of course.)

Rather, SPIA is predicated on a political timeframe in which the steady state economy has been formally adopted as a policy goal of the United States. Keep in mind, the plan is for SPIA to comprise a section (Section 7, tentatively) of the omnibus Steady State Economy Act. As such, there is no way for its prescriptive measures to take effect unless and until the nation has indeed decided to embark upon steady statesmanship.

As a feeder bill, SPIA comprises seven sections. Section 1, as usual, is used to provide the short title: Sustainable Population and Immigration Act. (The full title is “A bill to establish the principles and practices for maintaining a stabilized, sustainable population, including sustainable levels of immigration, in the United States.”)

Section 2 is in many ways the most critical component. It comprises the findings and declarations of Congress, in which Congress expresses its paradigm shift from the goal of economic growth to the goal of a steady state economy. In short order, Congress finds that stabilizing population is an essential aspect of a steady state economy. Congress then declares that (among other things) it is the policy of the United States to “allow for immigration levels, that, considering fertility, mortality, and emigration rates, result in a stabilized U.S. population.”

Section 3 provides definitions. I’ve taken the liberty to simplify the onerous terminology related to immigration, as manifest in the maze of visa categories. In the process, I invented a few terms, perhaps the most important of which is “steady-state net migration,” which entails immigration levels that countervail low fertility rates, resulting in a stabilized population.

To clarify, I am not criticizing the current catalog of visa categories maintained by the U.S. Department of State. Each category exists for a reason. But for our purposes—and for Congress’s purposes with SPIA—numerous categories can be rolled up into higher-level taxa such as “immigrant visas.”

Speaking of the State Department, the Secretary thereof is the primary agent of SPIA, along with the Commission on Economic Sustainability (a Steady State Economy Act construct). Pursuant to SPIA’s Section 4, the Commission serves as the clearinghouse for population data (drawing heavily from the U.S. Census Bureau) and the calculator of a “gross immigration allowance.” The allowance is prescribed in gradualist fashion to achieve steady-state net migration over a 25-year transition period.

Section 6 establishes the Aid-in-Place Fund, a concept percolating since 2022. The funding was envisioned to aid “the same number of people that otherwise would have legally emigrated to the USA.” The aid “would take the form of housing, health care, schooling, job training, and other living standards on a case-by-case basis.” Section 6 lays out criteria for Aid-in-Place funding including, for example, absolute poverty, emigration rates, and reproductive rights of women.

Section 7 ensures that SPIA comports with the Sustainable Budgets Act (a key component of fiscal policy in the omnibus Steady State Economy Act). A principle of sustainable, steady-state budgeting is no net gain in bureaucracy, or at least in government spending. SPIA expenses are insignificant, with the exception of the Aid-in-Place Fund. Therefore, Aid-in-Place funding is offset by concurrent reductions in Department of Defense spending.

What’s Left Out

No act of Congress can solve all problems. SPIA won’t even solve all the problems of population stabilization and immigration, much less naturalization, asylum, and family reunification. It is concerned almost entirely with stabilizing the American population, conducive to a steady state economy.

In the textbook terms of ecological economics, then, SPIA is concerned with the goal of “sustainable scale,” not so much with an equitable distribution of wealth or the efficient allocation of resources. It is focused on sustainability, yet in a way that social justice is improved (far from fulfilled) via Aid-in-Place.

Numerous other issues should be included in a comprehensive population policy. For starters, as CASSE Senior Economist Dave Shreve has proffered:

• Certain U.S. states should be funded for purposes of immigration enforcement and naturalization.
• Immigration routes should be far better established for purposes of safety and efficiency (of travel as well as enforcement).
• World Bank and United Nations programs need re-tooling toward population stabilization, especially via family planning and women’s reproductive rights.

To be clear, even the sustainability element is hardly perfected in SPIA. The SPIA focus on stabilizing population won’t satisfy those who assess the U.S. population as already higher than long-term carrying capacity. That said, SPIA does accommodate the prospects of population degrowth, depending on the reports and prescriptions of the Commission on Economic Sustainability.

With SPIA, the Steady State Economy Act is approaching 75% completion. When all the feeder bills are published, the process of rolling them up into the omnibus bill may begin. That process will surely include numerous amendments, especially additions, to address issues like the ones noted above. A primary source of amendatory issues and language will be the comments provided by Herald readers.

So, if you feel strongly about SPIA revision, now is the ideal time to register your concerns!

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Brian Czech is Executive Director of CASSE.