New research which shows that there are 55 million Latinos in the US has highlighted the fact that legal immigration remains the single greatest threat to America’s future as a First World nation.

According to the latest “Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States” issued by the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic population has tripled since 1980, and one-third of them are under 18.

The vast majority of these under-18s are of “Mexican origin,” and most were born in the United States to immigrants. Hispanics represent over 17 percent of the total US population and 21 percent of all millennials, said Pew.

Some 32 percent of all Hispanics are under the age of 18, compared to 26 percent of all blacks, 20 percent of all Asians, and 19 percent of whites.

Since 1960, the US’s Latino population has increased nearly ninefold, from 6.3 million then to 55.3 million by 2014.

Current projections from the US Census Bureau are that it will reach at least 119 million by 2060.

The foreign-born Latino population has increased by more than 20 times over the past half century, from less than 1 million in 1960 to 19.3 million in 2014.

While the US-born Latino population has increased sixfold over this time period, there are about 30 million more US-born Latinos in America today (35.9 million) than there were in 1960 (5.5 million).

The share of the population that is Hispanic has been steadily increasing over the past half century. In 2014, Hispanics made up 17.3 percent of the total US population, up from 3.5 percent in 1960.

Between 1980 and 2000, immigration was the main driver of Latino population growth as the Latino immigrant population boomed from 4.2 million to 14.1 million.

However since 2000, the primary source of Latino population growth has swung from immigration to native births. Between 2000 and 2010, there were 9.6 million Latino births in the US, while the number of newly arrived immigrants was 6.5 million.

During this period, 60 percent of all Latino population growth was due to births, rather than immigration. So far, the present decade is on track to repeat this pattern, with 3.9 million Latino births in the US between 2010 and 2014, compared with just 1.4 million newly arrived Latino immigrants.

Among Hispanic eligible voters, 44 percent are millennial Hispanics—the single largest cohort of Hispanic eligible voters. And among the nation’s millennials, Hispanics are a greater share than they are among all American adults—Hispanics make up 21 percent of all US millennials versus 15 percent of all adults in 2014, the report said.

The figures are therefore clear: if legal immigration is not addressed by the US government in the next few years, then no matter what the outcome of the 2016 presidential election might be, America will vanish under a Third World flood before the middle of this century.