Month: August 2024

The rise of foreign-born under Biden

I’ve posted several times about foreign-born entry trends in the Biden administration. It’s complicated because of Biden’s aggressive use of temporary visas.  I estimated in May that the total increase of foreign-born under Biden was five million. This level might be composed of a net increase by green cards of 2.5 million, two million asylum applicants, and the parole and TPS persons. (This adds to more than five million.)

Here in Pew Research’s latest take as of July 22:

Pending asylum claims: they stood at 2.1 million in Sept 2021. On June 2024, they were 3.2 million. During the Trump years, the backlog grew by about 700,000; under Biden to date,1.9 million.

Parole: through December 2023, about 500,000 new immigrants were paroled into the country through two federal programs – the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) program and Uniting for Ukraine (U4U). Groups like these have traditionally been considered part of the unauthorized immigrant population, but almost none of them appear in the 2022 estimates.

Popularly defined as unauthorized:  These are people who crossed illegally or were overstays.  In 2008, they totaled about 12.2 million.  Since 2007, the Mexican component of this population dropped by nearly 3 million, from 6.9 million to 4 million. It is not clear at all if this population has recovered from this decline by other nationalities.

Pew’s figures infer, but to do state explicitly, that what we can call irregular persons has shifted significantly to those given temporary authorization to live in the U.S. They include asylum applicants, Parolees, Temporary Protected Status ( roughly 600,000 increase under Biden), and DACA (basically no change under Biden.

 

 

Refugees in the world

From the United Nations Refugee Agency (the UN Commissioer for Refugees, or UNHCR):

“Resettlement is a process that enables refugees to relocate to another country with a legal status ensuring  international  protection  and  ultimately  permanent  residence.  Through  the  Projected  Global  Resettlement  Needs,  UNHCR  estimates  the  number  of  refugees  who  require  resettlement  in  the  following  year,  provides  an  overview  of  the  humanitarian  and  protection  contexts  that  lead  to  those  needs  and  describes  how  resettlement  is  linked  to  regional protection and solutions strategies.”

Syrians  continue  to  be  the  largest  refugee  population  in  need  of  resettlement,  with  close  to  933,000  refugees,  followed  by  refugees  from  Afghanistan  (558,000),  South  Sudan  (242,000), Myanmar (226,000), Sudan (172,000) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (158,000).

U.S.refugee admissions since 2014:

There are about 36 million refugees living outside their country today. The countries hosting the largest numbers are Iran (3.4 million), Turkey (3.4 million), Germany (2.5 million) and Colombia (2.5 million). The UNHCR asks that about 1.8 million be resettled in the next twelve months.

Where are the workers in the world?

India is overcoming China in working age (16-64) population. The rich country community is flat. China and advanced countries can increase workers only by immigration.

China’s secret population and fertility figures: Yi Fuxian wrote in Project Syndicate, “Even though everyone knows that China’s official demographic figures are systematically overestimated, the authorities have consistently cracked down on anyone who questions the data.” She estimates the India overtook China in total population in 2014, and China’s population began to decline in 2018. China did not replace its one-child policy with a selective two-child policy until 2014, before enacting a universal two-child policy in 2016.

Here is more information: China’s total fertility rate (births per woman) was 2.6 in the late 1980s – well above the 2.1 needed to replace deaths. It has been between 1.6 and 1.7 since 1994, and slipped to 1.3 in 2020 and just 1.15 in 2021. (Go here.)

Below is a graph showing the working age population ages 16-64, from 2000 through 2021. for China, India, U.S. and all high income countries. India’s working ago population has surged, China’s has not, and all high income countries’ has remained close to flat.

Here is a graph of the total world population 15 – 64, with the combined US / Euro working age population and the combined India /China working age population (from here.)

And, here is the demographic crisis in Japan and Korea.India’s fertility rate has moved to below replacement.

By the way, the Congressional Budget Office estimates growth of the U.S. population entirely due to immigration.

One thing thise shows is that of artifical intelligence empowers educated working age people to increase their productivity, the demand for these people living in India in particular will surge, as more workers with skills will be able to enter the job market.

Also go here,