My wish for the New Year is that people around the world, particularly political and organization leaders, will recognize that all causes are lost causes unless we stop population growth.

According to Time magazine's recent estimate, 3 million illegal immigrants entered this country in 2004. In recent years, annual legal immigration has averaged 1 million, in addition to hundreds of thousands of "temporary" workers. Furthermore, those foreign-born newcomers and people living in this country, natives and immigrants, will have children born on U.S. soil. How many jobs does the United States need to create, houses to build and social services to provide just to meet the needs of additional people added to this country every year? Where are we going to find the unlimited amount of water and energy to support unabated U.S. population growth?

Promoters of mass immigration argue that this country cannot reduce immigration, the driving force behind the U.S. population increases, before we solve global poverty. But there are billions of people in the rest of the world who live in poverty. In addition, about 75 million are added every year worldwide, and they also need to be fed and educated.

Realistically, what are the chances that the United States can successfully empower 10 percent of poor people abroad in 50 years -- within the lifetimes of today's college students? By then, according to a projection by the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States could exceed 500 million people - - half of India's population.

America's pro-open-border advocates, as well as many European leaders, want us to believe that population growth is needed to boost the economy. Increasing the birth rate was an official policy decades ago in many European countries with low fertility, such as France. Today, however, many of those born under this policy are unemployed. They are a tax burden, not taxpayers. Another example is Germany, whose official unemployment rate is at least 9 percent, which means that there are more workers than jobs available. In the meantime, religious and ethnic tensions between natives and newcomers in many European countries are on the rise.

For the sake of the poor in both America and abroad, leaders in this country should first take measures to stop population growth in the United States by giving fiscal incentives to parents to have no more than two children and by reducing immigration to a level that would not adversely impact those who are here legally. Potential parents, native and immigrant, should be reminded of the energy and resources required to raise happy, healthy and educated children, including ever-rising costs for a college education. Adults of child-bearing age should also be warned of the potential difficulties in raising children alone in the case of divorce, death of a spouse or changing economic circumstances.

The United States should also urge leaders worldwide to focus on stabilizing populations in their own countries. Once migration to this country is reduced, tens of billions of dollars could be saved every year in services to immigrants. Part of those savings from public and private entities could be used to help foreign countries stop their own population growth. This aid should be tied to the success of foreign governments in reducing the fertility of, and improving life for, their own citizens.

The United States has the means but not the will to reduce immigration. We simply cannot afford to continue to serve as the safety valve for unsustainable population growth in other countries.

Clearly, stopping population growth here and abroad will not solve all the problems, but continued rapid population increases make problems -- environmental, social, fiscal and economic -- much more difficult to solve.

Yeh Ling-Ling is the executive director of Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, a national nonprofit based in Oakland.