Yet, as Republican and Democratic lawmakers do battle over environmental restrictions on water in the American west, the effect on water availability caused by one particular factor—mass immigration—has remained obscure.
“Even with improvements in water use, the water supply is going down,” Jeremy Beck, of NumbersUSA, a nonprofit that aims to lower immigration levels, told The Epoch Times. “That doesn’t mean the Southwest is going to run out of water. It means they’re going to have to make some tough choices.”
Those choices could include increased investments in seawater desalination plants and pipelines to pump the desalinated water across hundreds of miles of desert.
Internal migration within the United States has been another factor, accounting for 56 percent of the state’s growth during that period.
NumbersUSA also projected that Arizona’s population will increase by another 3 million people by 2050, “joining Phoenix and Tucson together into a single mega-city.”
While population growth can stem from a natural increase, future population growth in the United States is likely to be fueled by immigration, both legal and illegal.
Of course, as NumbersUSA’s analysis of Arizona shows, internal migration within the United States has been another source of pressure on the Southwest’s resources.
There are also some indications that immigration, and particularly illegal immigration, is picking up under the Biden administration.
“There’s no question that the added demand of population will put increased stress on the water system,” Beck said. “These decisions will not get any easier with another 3 million people in Arizona and another 30 million in the American Southwest.”
Hultgren didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
On the ground, farmers are among those worst affected by water shortages.
“We didn’t put any cotton in the ground, because we didn’t have any water,” she said.
According to Caywood, she has to pay for water as part of her county tax bill whether or not her farm gets any.
A spokesperson for the San Carlos Irrigation and Drainage District confirmed this.
“If we don’t make the payment, we could lose our farm,” Caywood said.
For her part, she doesn’t tie the drought to population growth. Yet, as development booms near her farm, she still worries that her new neighbors, who she said are moving in from other states, want to push out farmers such as her.
“They’re building houses like crazy,” she said, stating that homes near her have been the subject of bidding wars. “They want to put a waterpark in!
“They don’t even give it a second thought that we’re running dry. It’s very, very disheartening to know that we’re in such a serious drought, and yet, there’s this continued building and building and building.”
In California’s Central Valley, things aren’t much better.
Melon farmer Joe Del Bosque told The Epoch Times he has “seen that a lot of changes” in water access since his family arrived in the area during the 1950s.
During the 1990s, environmental regulations slashed water allocation to his farm.
“We adapted to that by using more efficient irrigation systems and changing crops,” Del Bosque said.
“There were several years when we had no water,” he said, stating that he survived by purchasing water from farmers in other water districts.
He said the combination of drought conditions and environmental regulations has created uncertainty for him and other farmers. Cities, he noted, also vie for water resources.
Another California farmer, Don Cameron, agreed that population growth, alongside other factors, has strained the state’s capacity to store and utilize water.
“We know that the water system in California was built a long time ago, when there were under 20 million people in the state,” he told The Epoch Times. “Now you’ve got 40 million, and you’re stressing the system.”
Although immigration, as well as immigration-driven population growth, have become increasingly partisan issues, there was greater bipartisan consensus against unrestricted and high levels of immigration in the recent past.
Former Democratic Rep. Barbara Jordan, the first African American woman elected to the House of Representatives from the south, chaired the bipartisan, nine-member U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in 1995.
The Jordan Commission recommended a reduction in legal immigrants from roughly 830,000 per year to 550,000 per year.
It also sought to limit the chain migration of family members by prioritizing spouses and children younger than 21 and doing away with family-based admission of adult children and siblings.
Today, however, aggressively pro-immigration rhetoric has become increasingly mainstream, including among liberal and left-wing commentators who simultaneously advocate strong action on environmental issues.
Beck, of NumbersUSA, thinks this seeming disconnect may be an example of magical thinking.
“I would suspect that it’s a reflection of our increased polarization and partisan divide,” Beck said. “It makes it very difficult to have a robust and honest discussion.”
