California has provided most of this capital. Medical data indicate at least 70 percent of these mothers had entered the U.S. illegally. If immigration and immigrant fertility continue apace and we do not enact the Beilenson-Gallegly bill restricting citizenship at birth to only those infants whose parents are legally here, by 2005 California will be education 1.5 million citizen children of Mexican nationals. Mexican fertility declined since the Mexican government belatedly approved a national family planning program in late 1973. If they bear 3.5 children on average, their descendants will be 3 X 1.75 over 5 times more numerous than the grandparent population.
Present fertility is over five times that level.
No country can generate sufficient modern-sector jobs at that rate. Vanderbilt University professor Virginia Abernethy has compiled data suggesting that where physical resources are demonstrably limited and out-migration infeasible, sharp fertility declines ensue. Jamaica, which has exported 10 percent of its nationals, and Haiti have displayed slower declines or none at all. In Mexico, the large number of emigrants and their high remittances, especially to rural areas, have mitigated demographic distress and muted the fertility response. Meanwhile the fertility of recent Mexican immigrants to the U.S. reflecting their largely rural origins and far-brighter prospects for their U.S. citizen children than their home villages could offer, is over four children per woman.