"Population does not necessarily equal economic growth anymore," says Bill Fulton, vice president for policies and programs at Smart Growth America, a coalition of environmentalists, planners and others working to slow sprawl.

He points to Las Vegas' population boom, which created low-paying jobs that disappeared when the housing market collapsed. By contrast, he says, cities such as Pittsburgh lost population but household wealth went up.

"We're still talking about adding a lot of people," Fulton says. "We know we can't environmentally sustain those people living in sprawled locations. … Local governments are not going to be able to afford sprawl anymore."

But he didn't return because he had realized the dream of many immigrants: earning enough money in the United States to start a new life at home. He gave up on California because he became convinced that booming Brazil offered much more opportunity than the crisis-ridden U.S.

And, like many others who have increasingly made the return journey, he found that reality far exceeded his expectations.

Following a pair of recent studies that exposed man-made and climate-caused deterioration at those two iconic American attractions, environmentalists are raising new concerns about the future health of all 58 U.S. national parks in a time marked by barren budgets, rising energy cravings and warming skies.

An estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants traversed Buenos Aires' 118,000 acres in 2007, leaving tons of trash, rusting abandoned cars, biologically hazardous waste and vehicle tracks that reduced parts of the landscape to a dusty wasteland.

That hurts just about every aspect of the refuge's mission, which was established in 1985 to try to preserve the endangered masked bobwhite quail, one of seven endangered species on the refuge.

Droughts make matters worse, but the real problem isn't shrinking water levels. It's population growth. Since California's last major drought ended in 1992, the state's population has surged by a staggering 7 million people. Some 100,000 people move to the Atlanta area every year. Over the next four decades, the country will add 120 million people, the equivalent of one person every 11 seconds.

More people will put a huge strain on our water resources, but another problem comes in something that sounds relatively benign: renewable energy, at least in some forms, such as biofuels. Refining one gallon of ethanol requires four gallons of water. This turns out to be a drop in the bucket compared with how much water it takes to grow enough corn to refine one gallon of ethanol: as much as 2,500 gallons.

Water shortages, which used to be limited to the dry western states, now plague just about the entire United States. Even regions that once seemed to have limitless supplies of water are facing predictions of shortages and imposing water restrictions on residents...

Depletion of water supplies is a problem of global proportions, driven in part by climate change. But a worldwide human population boom is also driving climate change. Here in the United States, the doubling of the U.S. population during the past five decades --driven largely by massive legal and illegal immigration and the children of legal immigrants -- is putting particular strains on the water supply. Why is no one discussing the relationship between these two phenomena?

When California's budget impasse is settled, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will have to deal with the state's other big crisis: fresh water.

Gov. Schwarzenegger and other top lawmakers have already drafted plans to attack a severe water shortage in the state, which has suffered a three-year drought.

As soon as the stalemate over how to bridge California's $26.3 billion budget gap is resolved, the governor and legislative leaders plan to introduce a package of water-related measures calling for more water conservation and an estimated $10 billion bond measure to finance more fresh water storage.

The D.C. area was among the most popular regions for legal immigrants in 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Washington region ranked fourth among metropolitan destinations for immigrants in fiscal 2008, and Virginia and Maryland were in the top 10 in state rankings, according to DHS’s annual flow report.

In a high-stakes battle that could affect California's share of federal funding and political representation, immigrant activists are vowing to combat efforts by a national Latino clergy group to persuade 1 million illegal immigrants to boycott the 2010 U.S. census.

The Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, which says it represents 20,000 Latino churches in 34 states, recently announced that a quarter of its 4 million members were prepared to join the boycott as a way to intensify pressure for legalization and to protect themselves from government scrutiny.

"Deterred by immigration laws and the lackluster economy, the population growth of Hispanics and Asians in the United States has slowed unexpectedly, causing the government to push back estimates on when minorities will become the majority by as much as a decade.

Census data being released today also showed that fewer Hispanics are migrating to suburbs and newly emerging immigrant areas in the Southeast, including Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia. Instead, Hispanics are staying in traditional gateway locations such as California...."