Is your commute too long? Congress will add another 75 million people through immigration.
The Washington Post puts the grim reality more and more Americans face every day into some hard numbers:
- 9 days (225 hours): The time the average American spends commuting to and from work each year -- a new record.
- 4.3 million: The number of Americans with commutes of 90 minutes or more -- up by a million since 2010.
"Relative to 1980, the picture is even more grim: Since then, American workers have lost nearly an hour a week to their commutes, the equivalent of one full-time workweek over the course of a year."
U.S. population, 1980: 229 million
Annual immigration, 1980: 524,295
U.S. population today: 329 million
Annual immigration today (2017): 1,127,167
According to Census data, Congress will add another 75 million people through immigration policy alone between 2017-2060.
Do you think current immigration levels will make traffic and commuting better or worse?
"The most obvious reason traffic congestion has increased everywhere is population growth," concluded a Brookings report in 2004, which was the last year (except for 2013) that Congress kept immigration below one million annually.
Unless the numbers are significantly reduced, the Census Bureau projects immigration to be responsible for 95 percent of future population growth over the coming decades. If that makes you angry, don't blame immigrants (we'll be stuck in traffic), blame Congress.
Worse than an inconvenience
As The Washington Post reports, longer commute times pose serious risks for the country: "Research has shown that longer commutes are bad for workers, their families, their employers and the economy as a whole. People with longer commutes tend to be less physically active, with higher rates of obesity and high blood pressure as a result. Longer commutes are associated with higher rates of divorce, and the children of fathers with longer commutes tend to have more social and emotional problems. On the employer side, longer commutes are linked to higher rates of worker absenteeism."
Congress would significantly improve the situation with reasonable reductions in annual immigration.
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