New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested capitalism is the cause of nation’s declining birth rate and that immigration is the solution.
The Democrat took to social media on Sept. 22 to discuss her thoughts on current population trends in the country.
“There are quite a few countries that are really struggling because young people, under the burdens of capitalism and living in a society that is increasingly concentrating wealth among the rich, we’re not having kids. Or we’re not having kids at the same rate,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram, per Fox News.
“And we actually need immigrant populations to help balance things out. We can’t continue to fund social security, Medicare, all of this stuff without immigrants,” she added. “And it’s always been that way. Don’t act like this is some new trend or anything like that.”
The United States Census Bureau reports that the number of births “has been declining every year since 2008” (except 2014).
“Between 2000 and 2019, the number of daily births declined an average 0.39% a year,” the federal bureau wrote. “The pace of decline accelerated between 2010 and 2019, when the number of daily births dropped on average 0.96% a year.”
In 2020, the American birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year – reaching the lowest rate since 1979 with just 3.6 million babies born. This marked a sharp 4% decline in one year. One year into the global COVID-19 pandemic, national birth rates climbed for the first time since 2014, increasing by 1% in 2021.
“Mothers, ages 35 to 44, gave birth the most of any age group — with a nearly 3% increase — which comes after a trend of women hesitant about having children,” per The New York Post.
Ocasio-Cortez has made several social media statements regarding population and birth rates wherein she has touted immigration, without distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration, as the engine for national growth.
She chastised Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who flew 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusettes.
“What a lot of Republican politicians fail to understand is that not everyone shares their zero-sum, scarcity mindset,” she wrote on Twitter. “Many of us understand that immigrants and refugees are a blessing. They have so much to offer our country, & much of our growth as a nation is because of them.”
Some groups reject the claim that immigration – especially illegal immigration – is the solution to avoiding a population crisis.
“Illegal immigration is a fiscal burden on taxpayers. Mass immigration jams schools, hospitals and highways,” reports the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “The education of the children of illegal immigrants costs taxpayers millions of dollars annually. Emergency medical expenditures and incarceration costs of illegal aliens add up too.”
Others have argued that promoting immigration rather than procreation will not necessarily have domestic and global benefits.
“The US can support many, many more people. But the planet cannot,” wrote Jill Filipovic, a journalist based in Brooklyn, in July of 2021. “It’s not a hard sell, and pro-family policies don’t require a pro-natalist bent to earn support — especially when pro-natalism comes with hostility to immigration, even though immigration remains one great way to increase or stabilize the US population and benefit American citizens and immigrants alike, without overburdening the world’s resources.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments are no longer available on Instagram. She did not return a request for comment from Fox News.