Population Explosion on Horizon, Group Warns : Future: Economic distress, greater immigration to follow, Population Institute says.

WASHINGTON —  Billions of young people are entering their reproductive years, threatening to worsen economic distress in developing countries and stimulate even greater immigration, a private population group said Friday.

“Failure to address the population problem may be the ultimate global blunder,” Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute, said.

“No amount of guns or fences or soldiers . . . will stop the hungry masses of the Southern Hemisphere from reaching the United States,” Fornos said in releasing the report: “Moving On: The Global Migration Phenomenon.”

But although immigration has given the Western United States a population growth rate equal to the record levels of Africa, new arrivals are not a problem for this country only, he said.

India is currently building the world’s longest fence to block immigrants from Bangladesh, France is contending with arrivals from Africa, and migrants from the former Soviet bloc are seeking new homes.

“People who are impoverished are going to find a way to make a new life for themselves,” said Fornos.

Economic pressure for movement will increase in coming years, he said, with 3 billion people around the world currently entering their prime reproductive years.

Almost all the world’s industrialized countries are experiencing immigration problems, Fornos said, adding: “One of the great byproducts of immigration is social disintegration.”

Nations have a sovereign right to control their borders and there is nothing wrong with some type of identity card--such as a tamper-proof Social Security card--establishing the right to work, said Fornos, himself a native of Germany who said he arrived in the United States as a stowaway and was deported three times before winning citizenship.

“People need education and the means to control fertility; . . . family planning is one of the best cures for the immigration problem,” added Fornos, whose group advocates family-planning efforts worldwide.