Its simple. Just look at 50 year marks starting with 1790.

1790 to 1840 - 4M to 17M for a bit over 4x growth
1840 to 1890 - 17M to 63M for a bit under 4x
1890 to 1940 - 63M to 132M for a bit more than 2x
1940 to 1990 - 132M to 248M for quite a bit below 2x

So you can see that the baby boom caused by soldiers coming home from the war in 1945 has yielded unprecedented growth in this country. It's been in all the papers. Don't you believe the MSM?

Almost all of the Famine Irish settled in the cities and in 1847 Boston, for example, with a population of 115,000 Anglo-Saxon Protestants, absorbed 37,000 Irish Catholics. In 1847 alone New York add 52,000 Irishmen to its population of 372,000.

The thing that is unusual is that the growth is predominantly from a single, non-English speaking, linguistic group.

Actually, from a per capita standpoint, the Mexican immigration is nothing compared to the German migrations of the early 19th Century. Few of those immigrants spoke English, either. Indeed, until the early 1950's, I believe that German was one of the two official languages of the state of Pennsylvania. And localized minorities, such as Chinese and Italians, had their own era of large-scale immigration.

The U.S. population is on target to hit 300 million this fall and it's a good bet the milestone baby...

This has horrible implications on energy usage in a well developed economy like that of the United States.

Well, yes, energy use will grow. But the U. S. uses proportionally less energy for each additional point oF GDP growth. This is in contrast to China which uses proportionally more.

It is good to see the US growing, unlike some countries like Russia where depopulation is occuring. Some worry about overpopulation, but the economic and political effects of depopulation can't be dismissed....

Being 3rd largest, that's a pretty impressive leap annually. It also means that the US economy is gonna keep on growing to sustain the growth in population. This has horrible implications on energy usage in a well developed economy like that of the United States.

In 1900 90% of all adult males reported their occupation to the census as "farmer". Now the percent of people in farm and farm-related jobs is under 15% and heading for the cellar.

Urban vs. rural is a bit of a misnomer—lots of large cities have lower populations than they did 35 years ago. But suburban population has grown incredibly. What we've seen is a sort of hollowing out of the much of the countryside as people come to urban areas for jobs and lifestyle.