Category: Demographics

Right and left share / differ on desired atttributes of immigrants

Researchers conducted 100 surveys of a total or 143,000 people dispersed among 36 countries about whom they preferred as immigrants.  About 70% of the surveys were conducted in Europe and U.S. / Canada. In online or phone surveys people were shown pairs or sets of hypothetical immigrant profiles with varying attributes such as education, occupation, language ability, religion, origin country, and reason for migration.

Results: Respondents consistently favored immigrants with higher education, employment, and in high-skill occupations. Language proficiency in the host-country language was strongly rewarded.

Interestingly, origin-country characteristics—cultural similarity, development level, and democratic institutions—played relatively little. role.

Right‑wing respondents put heavier weight on economic productivity factors —occupational skill and host‑country language ability— than left‑wing respondents, who valued these traits but less intensely. Conservatives also treated cultural similarity as central, strongly favoring immigrants who share the majority religion and people from Europe. Liberals gave little weight to majority religion, showed no systematic premium for European origin, and were relatively indifferent to national development or democratic status of sending countries compared with conservatives.

The article: “Which immigrants do citizens prefer? A meta-reanalysis of 100 conjoint experiments” by Marco Aviña et al. Science Advances research article on May 27 2026.

 

How does education affect the proclivity to emigrate to the U.S? The case of Mexico

The desire of Mexicans wanting to emigrate stands at about 20% of the population. That share is not greatly different from many other countries. But the share of Mexican workforce age working residing outside Mexica is high – 10%, of which almost all in the United States. Mexico is part of the American basin of workers, mostly with little formal education.

It’s unclear whether improvement in education status translates into lower propensity to emigrate.  Costa Rica’s high school graduation rate (60%) is higher than Mexico’s (40%) but Costa Ricans are more inclined to emigrate.  That said, a look at progress in education in Mexico is worth a look.

In 2000, only 20% of Mexican adults had completed what is called high school in the United States. Now, 40%. A lower education threshold also saw substantial gains, from under 70% to around 90%.

Higher education is almost entirely at state colleges. Attendence grew about 50% between 2011 and 2022.   About a half million graduate a year. (Putting that in perspective, that 500K is equivalent to somewhat less than 1% of the total workforce of Mexicans, in the U.S the annual number of graduates is about 1.5% of the work force. (But the HS graduation rate in the U.S. is above 90%.) This flows a lot more advanced educated persons into the Mexican workforce than in the past, but the absorption rate is low – to be sure, the wages are higher than for high school graduates by the quality of work is the lowest among all OECD countries. Half of college graduates are overqualified for their jobs.

If access to migration to the U.S. were easier, would college educated Mexicans wish to migrate? Would they have a better chance of getting work for which they are qualified, considering both wage and desired social status? Compared to less educated, who take many jobs Americans don’t want? The median wage of Mexican in the U.S. is $19 vs the national median wage of $27.

What unauthorized farm workers said in a survey

Farm labor particularly in the California produce industry is heavily foreign born and unauthorized. The USDA’s national crop workforce estimated as of January, 2025: “In 2020–22, 32% of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7% were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19% were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42% held no work authorization. (Go here.)

The United Farmworker Foundation issued a report in July based on a survey of 2,250 farm workers, most of them in California. The survey was conducted in mid 2025. The surveyors did not ask the legal status of respondents, but it appears that virtually all were unauthorized to be in the country

Some highlights:

Tenure in the U.S.: 80% had been in the U.S. for at least ten years;40% over 20 years. 40% had been in farm work in the U.S. for over 20 years. 65% work at least ten months a year in agriculture.

Their undocumented status’ most painful aspect is inability to visit family members in their country of origin. At the same time, 69% said that if they were deported, they would lose family attachments in the U.S. If their status were made legal, 87% would visit family members in their country of origin.

92% said that ICE was affecting their employment. 88% reported fearing detention or deportation. 61% had reduced their shopping, 29% had avoided medical attention.

42% did not know their rights if approached by ICE. Only 20% said they knew their rights and how to get legal representation.

 

 

Facts about educational attainment of Asian immigrants

Asian Americans are dominating high school academic achievement.

On Advanced Placement, about 54% of Asian students in grades 10–12 took an AP exam in 2025, compared with 20% of white students, 19% of Latino students, and 12% of Black students.

93% of Asian students attend high schools offering five or more AP courses, versus 76% of white, 82% of Hispanic, 75% of Black, and just 49% of Native American students.

India is the Asian country with the highest educational attainment. Among first generation Indian immigrants 43% have a post-graduate degree, compared to 24% for all Asian Americans and 13% for all Americans.

Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean immigration has skewed heavily toward students and skilled workers, while Hmong, Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese communities arrived largely as refugees after 1975 with very lesser starting resources. Hmong and Cambodian first generation immigrants had high school graduation rates of under 25%.

Today 45% of Hmong adults haven’t graduated high school—the highest share among all 40-plus subgroups—and about 40% of Cambodians and Laotians haven’t finished.

Global low birthrates: the ultimate victory of liberal democracy?

Mexico’s and Tunisia’s birth rates are below those of the United States, which has been below replacement rate for decades. What is going on? Is the evidence suggesting that liberal democratic ideals of how one lives one’s life have spread throughout the world?

The Financial Times has looked at the sharp decline in birth rates in most countries. It finds a common thread in how people especially women anticipate how their adult lives will evolve. Parenthood has lost much of its old social force. Today, adulthood is more often defined by education, career, autonomy, consumption, and self-development. Young people, especially women, may want children in theory but delay them while trying to secure “personhood” — identity, status, financial independence, and control over life choices.

Childlessness is no longer stigmatizing. Traditional ordinary family life feels less attainable or less attractive. Community structures that once made pairing, marriage, and childrearing socially expected have weakened. The result: not just postponed parenthood, but a growing acceptance of childlessness.

The article also points to the influence of social media. “ In country after country the birth rate plunged after the introduction of smartphones, no matter what the previous trend was. The younger the age group, the more pronounced the downturn — a mirror image of smartphone usage patterns. Melissa Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, says it is “quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling”.

The FT touches on but does not pursue in the factor of declining roles of traditional social associated life, such as religion, and the rise of new associated life that is linked to self-advancement – higher education and urban work. These lines of analysis are found in a research article which the FT draws on. The article says that “the decline in fertility likely reflects a complex mix of changing norms around work, parenting, gender roles, and leisure consistent with our cohort-based conceptual framework.”

Here is what liberal democracy means to the individual, framed in an American context: People strive to enlarge their minds, express their own convictions, and resist passive conformity. Society becomes more inclusive and tolerant, as consumer society opens up visions of equality of conditions, it creates more room for more persons to express themselves more fully.

Impact of deportations on American workers

Has deportation of unauthorized persons made a positive impact on legal worker hiring and wages? Two studies conclude that the impact on native American workers is mixed, and sometimes adverse.  There is no evidence that native workers are getting a lot more jobs and a lot higher pay.

A February paper used a model which assumed that half of unauthorized workers would leave the workforce. It concluded overall that mass deportation gives native workers a small short-run wage bump, but lowers average native real wages in the long run.

In the short run, the capital stock is fixed. With fewer workers using the same capital, the model estimates very small short-term gains.  But it also predicts that more labor-saving capital will be invested.  That would reduce wages in a small way. Again,, this is the results of a model, not actual experience.

But native wages rise where (1) unauthorized workers are heavily concentrated and (2) where natives can substitute into those jobs. In some states, native farming/forestry wages rise much more: California 7.17%, South Carolina 6.69%, and Oregon 6.55%.  the model used an estimate that 35% of farm workers are unauthorized.

The paper: Cravino, Javier, Andrei A. Levchenko, Francesc Ortega, and Nitya Pandalai-Nayar. “The Economic Impact of Mass Deportations.” NBER Working Paper No. 34790, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2026.

A May paper looked at actual labor market behavior. In areas with large increases in ICE arrests, unauthorized employment fell, but U.S.-born workers did not step into those jobs.  The researchers looked at the complementarity of work in construction – that is, the effect of total employment say in residential construction when one labor component (common laborers, roofers, etc.) that are heaving – foreign-born fall short.  The researcher estimated that native construction workers with high school or less experienced a 3% decline in affected areas. The Washington Post summarized this paper as for every six unauthorized male workers displaced, one native worker with a high school degree or less also lost a job. They estimated job losses for native workers in farming, construction, and manufacturing.

The paper: Elizabeth Cox and Chloe N. East, “Labor Market Impacts of ICE Activity in Trump 2.0,” NBER Working Paper No. 35129, May 2026.

 

Pro-deportation sentiment and “sovereignty”

Why does mass deportation remain popular? Here are some polling results and a speculation of what the Trump administration may be politically astute to push the myth of non-citizens voting.  Psychologically, many older Americans likely think that foreign-born persons are effectively “voting”, at least figuratively in how we live.

Recent polls (April and May) show continued support for Trump’s deportation campaign, which the White House says is targeted at all unauthorized persons. An April Pew poll showed that those who say that deportation has gone too far edged about 50% — yet that confirms that even after Minneapolis the deportation effort gets support. In fact, the Pew poll shows that the share of Republicans who say that Trump has do too little rose from 16% in October 2026 to 28% in April 2026.

The majority of white respondents are supportive of Trump’s policy.  Black (69%), Hispanic (65%) and Asian (58%) adults are more likely than White adults (45%) to say that deportation has gone to far.

The voting fraud issue

52% of Republicans say they are concerned that some ineligible people will be allowed to vote in November (link unavailable).

It is useful to see how the myth of non-citizens voting (and unauthorized persons in particular) has been concocted by the administration and MAGA on the foundation of a real, persistent and persuasive concern that immigration overall waters down the sovereignty of American citizens, if sovereignty is taken as a psychological state that can be seized by the visible presence of foreign-born.  A hallmark event of sovereignty is voting.  If you don’t have foreign-born peers your imagination can run wild about voting abuse.

In a 2022 survey, 43% of all Americans aged 18-29 report a friendship network with some racial or ethnic  diversity, but that percentage drops among older Americans to 37% of Americans aged 30-49, 32% of Americans aged 50-64, and 24% of Americans aged 65 or older. This means that relatively few mature white Americans have no way through social networks to discern how foreign-born persons behave. I expect mature white Americans outside traditional immigrant-rich cities grew up with essentially zero peer contact with foreign-born persons.

Thus, psychologically, many older Americans think that foreign-born persons are effectively “voting”, at least figuratively in how we live.

 

 

 

 

How have foreign-born entries fallen — and did they?

I have not posted on  reports that the number of foreign-born persons in the country has fallen, for several reasons: the reports I have seen are aggregate,  not confirmed by the Census Bureau, not tied down to categories, and it is not clear when downward trends began. Only by looking at flows by category can we really have faith in a total number. And any accounting of flows of foreign-born is at best an estimate due to extreme complexity of how the government counts, and the extreme difficulty of estimating all outflows.

It is safe to say that compared to the FYs 2024 and 2025, the inflow of foreign-born has declined by several million – but those years were abnormally high. I think that no one really knows if the total foreign-born population has declined, nor (more importantly) in what ways.

The estimable David Bier has examined some (though not all) categories. This provides important evidence giving credibility to a total decline. The Census Bureau reported in January some flows (here). Bier breaks down into finer categories.

Here are Bier’s estimates with some commentary by me.

Border Patrol arrests at the southwest border.  They have fallen drastically, by over 80%. But the decline happened in the last year of the Biden administration and declined further in the first months under Biden. This should likely be confirmed in declines in new applications for asylum. And indeed Bier says that asylum applicants by persons entering legally into the U.S, have declined by 99%. But the arrested persons had entered illegally

New applications for asylum in FY 2025, about 875,000, was close to that in FY 2024 – 900,000. However, the first quarter of FY 2026 shows only about 70,000 – which extrapolated is 240,000 for the entire FY 2026. This is consistent with far fewer illegal and legal crossings, which I assume account for the vast majority of asylum applications

Recorded evasions of Border Patrol—known “gotaways.” They also fell about 80% under President Trump. But by December 2024 evasions had fallen a lot.  The annual flow (using as always here fiscal years) had plummeted and presumably that has persisted into FY 2026: FY 2023: 670,000; FY 2024: 250,000; FY 2025: 75,000.

Refugees entering legally from abroad fell by about 90%. The number for the last 12 months of the Biden administration (though December 2025) was at an annualized rate of over 100,000; It fell sharply to an annualized rate of under 20,000 and now is capped at 7,500.

Bier does not address entries under humanitarian parole. That has pretty much stopped.

Green card entries. Immigrant visas for legal permanent residents fell by about half. Prior to COVID this in-flow was at about one million a year. Per Bier, this has even affected fiancés and married persons, as visas for them fell by 65%.

H‑1B visas have likely fallen by about 25%. The total number of the change in flow is complicated by the number of family members.

Bier says that international student visas fell by 40% from summer 2024 to summer 2025.  This would be useful data were we to relate it to the number of  international students registered in the  “SEVIS” database – about 1.5 million in 2024 – but current figures are not available. Surveys of higher education do not bear out such a decline in either total international student enrollment or in new students.

Deportations. Bier does not address.  The annualized rate of forced deportations may be in the 500,000 – 600,000 range. That may be several hundreds of thousands than in the typical Biden year. That does not address unreported voluntary deportations.

three key issues in Trump administration immigration policy

To capture in relatively few words Trump’s immigration policy, I focus here on three especially contentious fronts: birthright citizenship, refugee policy, and deportation law enforcement. Each involves not only legal rules, but competing ideas about what the United States is obligated to protect, tolerate, or exclude.

Birthright Citizenship

The birthright citizenship dispute centers on the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, which states that all persons “born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction,” are citizens. The exception has traditionally been narrow: diplomats, hostile occupying armies, and historically certain members of Indian tribes. The January 2025 Trump executive order sought to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants and to some temporary visa holders. According to the presentation, this could affect roughly 250,000 to 300,000 births annually to unauthorized persons and another 50,000 to 70,000 births to temporary visa holders, out of about 3.6 million births a year overall.

The pro–executive order argument tries to read “subject to the jurisdiction” as requiring something like allegiance or domicile, claiming that mere physical presence is not enough. This view has little support in American jurisprudence, and there is no substantial tradition of using voluntary allegiance as a legal test for citizenship at birth. The anti-order view is that jurisdiction means subjection to sovereign authority, not emotional or political loyalty. On that reading, the children in question are plainly within U.S. jurisdiction. The underlying conflict is therefore not just legal but philosophical: whether American citizenship at birth is rooted in territory, as in the older British jus soli tradition, or in parental-qualified membership and more restrictive ideas of belonging.

Refugee Policy

The modern refugee system emerged from the forced displacements of World War II and was codified in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Its core definition describes a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. A central principle is non-refoulement: refugees should not be sent back to places where they face persecution.

Against that background, Trump-era policy is a sharp narrowing of refugee admissions. Pre-Trump annual refugee targets had ranged from 45,000 to 125,000; by October 2025 the target had fallen to 7,500, with admissions effectively narrowed to Afrikaners in practice. There are several channels of what the public would regard as refugees: protection for people already inside the United States, such as asylum, Temporary Protected Status, and humanitarian parole. Trump imposed severe actions toward Venezuelans, including efforts to shut down TPS for roughly 600,000 people, close humanitarian parole for 120,000, and accelerate the processing of 300,000 pending asylum claims. Afghans and Ukrainians are separate policy cases. Refugee and humanitarian policy is not one coherent system so much as a series of politically shaped exceptions and restrictions.

Deportation and Law Enforcement

Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates in the interior, while Customs and Border Protection is responsible for the borders. ICE’s central role is removing unauthorized persons, but its practical reach is limited by court backlogs, detention space, state and local cooperation, and the distinction between civil and criminal violations.

The legal distinctions matter. First-time unlawful entry is a misdemeanor; repeated unlawful entry is a felony. Simply being present in the country without authorization, such as after a visa overstay, is generally a civil infraction, though one with major consequences. Smuggling and document fraud are felonies. These categories shape who can be detained, prosecuted, or removed and on what grounds. ICE has in the past removed roughly 300,000 to 400,000 people annually and held around 35,000 in detention. Reaching deportation goals on the order of one million annually would therefore require a major expansion in arrests, detention, court processing, and cooperation from states and localities.  Deportations since January 2025 may be in the 600,000 range, but many uncounted may have left on their own. The total number of vulnerable persons may be around 14 million, but the precise number is impossible to estimate and the legal battles are many. Were the administration to deport one million, that will require arresting many persons who have been year for some time and are employed often for years.

Contested court battlegrounds in enforcement include access to private property, the difference between administrative and judicial warrants, detention without habeas corpus, border turn-backs, and the role of state and local participation under programs such as section 287(g). The broader point is that deportation policy is constrained not only by law and civil liberties, but by the sheer limits of bureaucratic capacity.

 

Global migration since WW II in 400 words

Mass rebalancing of population via migration, an altered wealth-and-people equilibrium, a world where technology is making the movement of peoples easier than ever, wars and demographic trends have driven world migration since WW 2. Government policy has been largely deficit. Japan, for instance, is trying to increase immigration in the face of cultural resistance. U.S. policy is captured. by vested interests. Public dialog has been poor in transparency and vision.

Global Migration in the Modern World

Global migration has become one of the defining forces of modern life.  There are many forms of movement: voluntary migration for opportunity, forced migration through slavery or expulsion, domestic migration within countries, circular migration for work, and flight from war, persecution, state collapse, and natural disaster. Since 1945, major displacing events have included postwar upheaval in Europe, the partition of India, the Korean War, the Vietnam refugee crisis, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Rwandan genocide, and more recent conflicts in places such as Syria, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Venezuela.

Why Migration Has Expanded

Migration has grown not simply because people are desperate, but because movement has become more feasible and more rewarding. The share of the world’s population living outside its country of birth has risen from about 2.5 percent in the 1960s to 3.7 percent in 2026. At the same time, remittances have surged, higher education has expanded dramatically, and international students now number about 7 million worldwide. Transportation, communications, global banking, and diaspora networks all make it easier for migrants to move, remain connected, and support families back home.

Channels of migration have evolved: Germany with Turks, France with North Africans, Spain: with Northwest Africa and Latin America, Britain with the Caribbean, United States with the Caribbean basin. Within these channels are narrower ones, such as the migration of educated, talented and politically adept Indians with roots in East Africa into both the U.K. and the U.S.

Policy, Demography, and the Future

Migration is inseparable from aging societies and weak workforce growth in many advanced countries. Fertility rates are now below replacement in most of the world outside Sub-Saharan Africa, with Bulgaria and South Korea standing out as facing severe futures. Countries such as Japan, Germany, Canada, and the United States face labor shortages or demographic strain.  The U.S. – Indian transnational IT workforce grew since the 1980s.  Canada is the best model of an advanced country which as promoted immigration for economic growth as well as being a generous settler of refugees.

Yet immigration policy often remains confused, politically distorted, or poorly designed. The central challenge, then, is not whether migration will continue, but how states will manage it in a way that balances fairness, national cohesion, and human need.