Jeb Bush: 'Immigrants Are More Fertile'

Jeb Bush may regret letting this slip out. While talking about the need for immigration reform at a Washington conference today, the former Florida governor put forth that immigrants can help solve the problem of America's declining worker population ... because they're more fertile. Politico has the quote:

• "We’re going to have fewer workers taking care of a larger number of people than the country has a social contract with, to be able to allow them to retire with dignity and purpose. We cannot do that with the fertility rates that we have in our country. Immigrants are more fertile and they love families and they have more intact families and they bring a younger population."

Interestingly enough, Bush would have been right if he had used the term "birth rate" instead. NBC News points out these two bits of data:

• Per the National Center for Health Statistics, of women ages 15 to 44, the birth rate is 87.8 births per 1,000 foreign-born women and 58.9 for US-born women.
• Per Pew Research Center, 23% of US births were to foreign-born mothers in 2010, though only 13% of the population was foreign-born.

(More immigration reform stories.)