Year: 2022

Recent changes in the electorate due to immigration

The total number of eligible voters grew from 2018 to 2022 by 3%. Let’s look at the Hispanic and Asian eligible population, which grew much faster.

First, the overall trend in the naturalized voter.

According to Pew, 9.8% of people eligible to vote in the 2020 U.S. presidential election were immigrants. This was up from 7.5% in 2008. About one third of these persons are Hispanic, one third Asian. (Go here and here.)

California had in 2020 more immigrant eligible voters (5.5 million) than any other state, more than New York (2.5 million) and Florida (2.5 million) combined. Texas and New Jersey have 1.8 million and 1.2 million immigrant eligible voters, respectively.

 

Naturalization rates among Asians eligible for naturalization are very high (often over 75%) but among Mexicans and Central Americans low (below 50%).

Eligible Hispanic voters grew by 16% between 2018 and 2022, accounting for 62% of eligible voters in that period. That makes them 14% of all eligible voters, up from 9% in 2008. The high rate of growth is due largely to the large number of Hispanic youth relative to the youth component of other ethnic/racial groups

Relative to the total eligible voter population, they are more inclined not to finish high school and less inclined to have an advanced degree. About 25% are immigrants, that is naturalized citizens.

The number of eligible Asian voters grew by 9% since 2018, to be 5.5% of the total eligible vote. They are much more inclined than than the total to have an advanced degree. 57% of them are immigrants, that is naturalized citizens.

The long term, and yery young eligible voters (18-19 years) old: note the extreme variation by region in the share of them who are Hispanic or Asian.

 

 

 

Ukraine’s demographic decline

Population decline has been baked in for over 30 years

The fertility rate is 1.2. It was last at the replacement rate of 2.1 in 1986.

From NoBrainerData:

The population of Ukraine has been shrinking since 1990, when it attained its maximum of 51.6 million inhabitants, It is estimated that between 1990 and 2022 Ukraine would have lost about 10.7 million people (more than 20% of its population), while Russia lost 1.3% of its population. The actual population size of Ukraine would be even smaller than the 43.8 million estimated by the United Nations: Only around 37.9 million. Accordingly, directly prior to the war, the demographic crisis of Ukraine caused by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the occupation of the Donbas region, and emigration and low fertility, would have caused a decline of the population of his country of more than 26% between 1990 and 2022.

Exiting due to the War

From the Center for Immigration Studies (as of October, 2022)

Around seven million Ukrainians have sought refuge across Europe since the Russian invasion, most of them women and children, since men aged 18-60 are not allowed to leave the country.

Around four million have registered for “Temporary Protection” in the European Union, a status not available for the 2.5 million who sought refuge in non-EU countries.

Permanent return doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for most who left Ukraine: Only 10 percent of returnees from abroad have stayed. Most of those who left Ukraine come from provinces that are now mostly controlled by Russian forces.

The number of refugees from Ukraine recorded in these neighboring countries are as follows (based on UNHCR’s data October 11, 2022): Some 16,000 Ukrainians sought refuge in Belarus, 2.9 million in Russia, 94,000 in Moldova, 82,000 in Romania, 30,000 in Hungary, 97,000 in Slovakia, and 1.4 million in Poland.

Desire to emigrant, before the War

Delmi Policy Brief, 2022, drawing upon a pre-war survey of Ukrainians:

The number of refugees from Ukraine recorded in these neighboring countries are as follows (figures are rounded; unless noted otherwise, all figures provided in this report are based on UNHCR’s data portal as of October 11, 2022): Some 16,000 Ukrainians sought refuge in Belarus, 2.9 million in Russia, 94,000 in Moldova, 82,000 in Romania, 30,000 in Hungary, 97,000 in Slovakia, and 1.4 million in Poland.

During the years 2007 to 2021 slightly more than ¼ 26% of Ukrainian stated that they have a desire to move to another country. This corresponds to about 12 million people. I’ve always expressing a wish to move, 47% wanted to move to the EU country. Outside of the EU, the most popular countries with the United States at 15%, Russia at 13%, and Canada at 6%. 36% said they wished to move to Germany that was followed by Poland at 15% followed by Italy at 11%.

 

Canada releases new immigration targets

On November 1, the Canadian government released its immigration plan for the next three years. This level of clarity and foresight is inconceivable for the United States. The government’s announcement in part:

Today the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, released Canada’s 2023–2025 Immigration Levels Plan. The plan embraces immigration as a strategy to help businesses find workers and to attract the skills required in key sectors—including health care, skilled trades, manufacturing and technology—to manage the social and economic challenges Canada will face in the decades ahead.

The immigration targets, in 000s:

Last year Canada welcomed over 405,000 newcomers – the most we’ve ever welcomed in a single year. The Government is continuing that ambition by setting targets in the new levels plan of 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. The plan also brings an increased focus on attracting newcomers to different regions of the country, including small towns and rural communities.

Highlights of the levels plan include:

*a long-term focus on economic growth, with just over 60% of admissions in the economic class by 2025

*using new features in the Express Entry system to welcome newcomers with the required skills and qualifications in sectors facing acute labour shortages such as, health care, manufacturing, building trades and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)

*increases in regional programs to address targeted local labour market needs, through the Provincial Nominee Program, the Atlantic Immigration Program, and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot

Data in table from here.

 

 

Australia’s educational system as an export industry

From a 2018 article (here):

Australia has managed to turn immigration into an export industry. After minerals, Australia’s largest “export” may well be educational services, represented by tuition fees paid by international students studying in Australia. It is an open secret that most of these students view an Australian degree as a back door to permanent residency. In effect, Australian universities are selling more than just a quality education. They are selling the hope of a permanent resident visa along with it.

As a result, Australia, with a population of about 25 million, is ranked fourth in the world for the number of international university students, welcoming nearly one-third as many students as the United States (population 325 million). In addition to 382,000 international university students, Australia hosts a further 248,000 junior college and high school students. And international enrollments are growing at  enormously, with about one-third coming from China.

Big role of U.S. in global work and study migration

The international migrant share of the world’s population is rising, standing at 3.6 percent in 2020, up from 3.2 percent a decade earlier, and 2.6 percent in 1960. (Go here.) The United States has 4% of the world’s population but 17% of all workers outside their country and 16% of all students outside their country.

The United States is the world’s top migrant destination: The country accounts for 5 percent of the global population but has attracted 18 percent of all migrants.  The United States has 4% of the world’s population but 17% of all workers outside their country and 16% of all students outside their country.

Put differently, the United States has more global migrants (more than 50.6 million as of 2020 according to this analysis) than the next four receiving countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined (50.2 million).

The number of international migrant workers stood at 169 million in 2019, or nearly 5 percent of the global workforce. The U.S. is host to about 29 million of them, or 17%

Close to 6.1 million students were studying outside of their country of origin in 2019, up from 4.8 million in 2015 and 2 million in 2000. In that year, 1 million or 16% were in the United States. The top five destinations for international students were the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Russian Federation. The top five sending countries of international students in 2019 were China, India, Vietnam, Germany, and France.

U.S. a Christian nation?

From Pew Research: Overall, six-in-ten U.S. adults – including nearly seven-in-ten Christians – say they believe the founders “originally intended” for the U.S. to be a Christian nation. And 45% of U.S. adults – including about six-in-ten Christians – say they think the country “should be” a Christian nation. A third say the U.S. “is now” a Christian nation.

At the same time, a large majority of the public expresses some reservations about intermingling religion and government. For example, about three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say that churches and other houses of worship should not endorse candidates for political offices. Two-thirds (67%) say that religious institutions should keep out of political matters. Only 31% of those who say that the U.S. shoudl declare itself a Christian nation think that separation of church and state should be abolished. (Go here.)

63% of Americans self-identified as Christians in 2021, down from 78% as recently as 2007. Protestants over that time declined from 54% to 40% of the entire population, while Catholics held relatively steady, 24% to 21%. (Go here.)

Venezuelans at the border

Tens of thousands of Venezuelan refugees are stranded in Mexico and along paths they have taken to reach the Mexican border with the United States. This is a crisis within a broader crisis of ayslum surges,  in part due to a welcoming attitude of the Biden administration, but mainly due to the failure of recent administrations to upgrade asylum management with faster, more assured determination processes. Worth noting that Texas as sued the federal goverment to put a stop to its current reform efforts

Our refugee policy response to Afghanisan and Ukraine has been relatively inclusive. Our policy toward Vanazuealn refugees is a harsh and possibly illegal shutdown (discussed at length here).

Venezuelan refugees comprise a more world-scale serious refugee challenge than Syria or Ukraine, with as of now 25% of the country having left. This has reshaped the situation at our Mexican border: while total encounters have surged, Venezuelans have contributed mightily to the surge, and on October 12 DHS shut the door to all but a few.

Figures

For instance, from FY 2019 through FY 2022 (ending Sept 30), the total number of encounters of all nationalities at the Mexican border increased from one million to 2.4 million, or 240%. The number of those who were not from Mexico and Central America increased from 117,000 to one million, or about ten times, while the number from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala declined. Here.

In FY 2022 alone, U.S. border officials recorded 187,716 encounters with Venezuelans.

The Department of Homeland Security stated on October 12 that “unique encounters of Venezuelan nationals rose 293 percent between FY 2021 and FY 2022, while unique encounters of all other nationalities combined increased 45 percent. Panama is currently seeing more than 3,000 people, mostly Venezuelan nationals, crossing into its territory from Colombia via the Darién jungle each day.”

Total immigration court backlog for Venezuela were 6,492 in 2018 and 147,812 in 2022

DHS’s October 12 action

The agency announced that “Effective immediately, Venezuelans who enter the United States between ports of entry, without authorization, will be returned to Mexico.” It is citing as authorization Title 42, which is (before March 2020) an obscure provision which enables the U.S. to expel entrants on the grounds of preventing infection.  24,000 parole slots will be opened up. For a time line of DHS’s use of Title 42, go here.

Asylum officers and the backlog: a time line

Pre-Biden: Immigration courts encounter immense backlogs, in part due to failure of Obama and Trump administrations to obtain from Congress funding for additional judges. Ge here.

August 2021: The Biden administration says it wants to assign to asylum officers authority to interview and decide on asylum cases, rather than depend entirely on immigration courts.  It aims to hire an additional 1,000 asylum officers and another 1,000 support staff, a senior DHS official told Reuters ahead of the announcement. The hiring spree would more than double the current crop of about 800 asylum officers and could be funded either by Congress or immigration application fee increases. (Reuters),

December 2021: Asylum court case backlog reaches 54 months

March 24, 2022:  DHS issues rule.

Per the NY Times, Under the new policy, which the administration released on Thursday as an interim final rule, some migrants seeking asylum will have their claims heard and evaluated by asylum officers instead of immigration judges. The goal, administration officials said, is for the entire process to take six months, compared with a current average of about five years. The plan is to release many asylum seekers through a parole status while they go through the process, which critics say will draw even more hopeful migrants to the border. (Go here.)

April 2022: Texas AG Paxton sues to prohibit the use of asylum officers for credible threat interviews.

June 2022: DHS begins to refer approximately a few hundred noncitizens each month to USCIS for an Asylum Merits Interview (AMI) following a positive credible fear determination. (Go here.)

Want to become an asylum officer? Go here.

 

The upcoming Hispanic vote in November 2022

Hispanic support of the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 dropped 8-9% from 2016. Democrats have been relying on the support of roughly 90% of Black voters and 70% of Hispanic voters. (Go here.) Will the Hispanic Democratic vote in November be 65% or lower?

The Wall Street Journal reported on October 18: “In the closing weeks of the 2022 midterm cycle, survey research suggests the trends of recent years are likely to continue. In 2018, Republicans won only 25% of the Hispanic vote. This year, the four most recent national surveys of likely voters place the Republican share of Hispanic voters between 34% and 38%. In Florida, where Republican Ron DeSantis leads Democrat Charlie Crist by 8 points in the race for governor, he leads by 16 among Hispanics. In Texas, where Democrat Beto O’Rourke trails Gov. Greg Abbott by 7 points overall, he is managing no better than a statistical tie among Hispanics.”

 

In Sept 2020 I wrote: Hispanics comprise about 13% of the eligible voters and rising. From 2004 though 2018, the number of vote-eligible Hispanics rose by 66% even though the entire population of the U.S, grew by only 10%. That is an annual increase of 3% of Hispanic eligible voters, vs. an absolute decline in white eligible voters. These trends will continue for some years.

In October 2021 Ronald Brownstein wrote: “…lots of working people of all races … want opportunity … They want a way to get ahead of their own effort.” “There are things that people trust Republicans on and you have to neutralize those disadvantages by moving to the center on them, and that includes the size of government, that includes the deficit.”

Hispanic education attainment has increased.  Hispanic home buying is expected to surge.

Climate change migration: some observations about India

This is a longish post on climate change and migration. The effect on climate change upon migration at a global level is a matter of conjecture. Several hundred million people are expected to migrate internally to due climate change by 2050.

Here I fill in the picture with a few observations about India. I draw on two studies which depict the climate related stresses and discuss government programs to mainly provide economic support.

Rapid and slow onset of climate disruptions and migration

One study, co-authored by my friend Nikhil Raj, focused on two sub-state regions:

Kendrapara had been one of the most fertile and prosperous regions of Odisha state, which lies on the Indian Ocean coast southwest of Kolkata. But climate extremes, in the form of rapid-onset events, have proven that even stable ecosystems and prosperous economies can collapse. More frequent rapid onset events such as cyclones and floods coupled with slow onset events such as sea-level rise and sea water intrusion have caused loss of livelihood assets, soil erosion and land degradation.

All Kendrapara respondents reported a change in precipitation and higher temperatures over the last five years. More than half reported that environmental stressors (floods, cyclones, erosion, and so on.) have become more hazardous and frequent in the last decade.

Palamu district in Jharkhand state, west and northwest of Kolata, is one of the most exposed and vulnerable regions to slow onset climate change impacts. Over time, the climate of Palamu has shifted from sub-humid to semiarid, causing frequent and prolonged drought and frost.

Source: Social protection and informal job market reform for tackling the climate migration nexus. (IIED Working Paper Sept 2022.)

Teasing out climate-based from total internal migration.

Another study based on surveys in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh states reports. These cases examplify how climate change related migration aound the world of signficant numbers may be centered in rural areas where there is a pre-existing pattern of circular or permanent migration to cities.

The relationship between climate change stress and its impact on migration is complex to understand. It is very difficult to distinguish individuals for whom climatic factors are the sole motivation for migration because several economic and sociopolitical factors interplay with climate drivers to increase the vulnerability of a household. Separating out permanent from circular migration is difficult. Some 200 million persons are estimated to engage in circular migration.

Migration in three studied states is massive. Migration from the three states is predominantly seasonal (61.4%).  Overall, about 31% of households intend to migrate in the future. Respondents who do not intend to migrate said that the fear of leaving their family unprotected and family commitments are barriers to migration. Around 80% of the respondents said that migration improves migrants’ economic security, education and work opportunities. It also enables them to bring new ideas and practices back to the village.

Almost 94% of households reported that the main reason behind migration is economic, with most migrants moving in search of better employment opportunities. The second most frequently mentioned reason was family obligations (17.8%).

As many as 35% of respondents in Uttar Pradesh reported that they were not working in their own villages due to climate shocks. More than two thirds (70%) of the respondents indicated that drought/irregular rainfall is a significant stressor. In addition, 23% of households mentioned flood as a significant stressor, while 8.3% mentioned hailstorms. More than 70% of the households in study regions said that the frequency of droughts had increased significantly in the last 5–10 years.

Source: Connecting the dots: Climate change, migration and social protection (IIED Working Paper October 2021)