Working Immigrants

Adding “and they are very visible”, this is what a Minnesotan said commenting on refugee settlement in the state, especially St. Cloud, the Minnesota’s 10th-largest city, said in a conversation about an influx of Somali refugees. The city increased in population by 33% over the last 30 years, thoroughly 70,000 people. The share of nonwhite residents grew to 18% from 2%, mostly with East African immigrants from Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, and the numbers of Somalis are estimated to grow.

Only 6% of Minnesota Republicans (vs. 66 % of Democrats) want the state to increase its intake of refugees from then (2018) current level of about 1,000, and 47% (vs 7% of Democrats) want a temporary suspension of refugee intake.

50% of poll respondents in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional district (NE part of the state) in 2018 answered “yes” to this question: “Has discrimination against whites become as big a problem as discrimination toward blacks and other minorities?

The foreign-born population in 2017 was 45.6 million, or about 13.8% of our total population. The pie chart below shows four segments: naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, persons in temporary protected status, and unauthorized..

A few observations: Asians with green cards are more likely to become citizens than persons from Mexico and Central America….the unauthorized population has declined in the past ten years (12.2 million in 2007, 10.5 million in 2017), gotten older (over 60% in U.S. for at least ten years)….5 million children born in the U.S. have at least one unauthorized parent, but births to unauthorized parents have declined sharply since a peak in 2006.

From various reports from Pew Research, including here

The Guardian reports from the southern side of the Gateway International Bridge separating Brownsville, Texas, from Matamoros, Mexico. “A mysterious set of documents known collectively as “La Lista” holds enormous power over hundreds of migrants stranded outside a tiny immigration office. On that list is a number assigned by Mexican authorities that determines if migrants pass through or stay behind, prosper or have journeyed in vain, or in the case of Martinez and his daughter Valeria, risk their lives trying to circumvent its order.

Nowadays at Matamoros, like at other main border crossings, an American official will call across the bridge and tell their Mexican counterparts how many migrants the Americans are willing to interview for asylum that day, and in what form – families, or single men or women – in a process known as metering. How the Americans choose that number is anyone’s guess, people say. The Mexican official in charge of the lists then calls out a person’s number. For those chosen, it’s like winning a lottery. But the reasoning behind the Mexican process is even more of an enigma.

In the past several weeks, as more and more migrants arrive, the number of people called has dwindled to just four or five a week – coinciding with Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs if Mexico did not control the surge of migrants. On Friday, since Sunday, there had been zero people called. For those camped out, waiting to enter the country legally, some for as long as four months, the numbers and how they are chosen has become a kind of obsession, as if a divine hand is orchestrating this random and maddening system.

“People here, we talk about one thing,” says Guevara. “Our numbers and if we’re going to cross.”

There are about 47 million people in the U.S. born in another country. Let’s look at where in Asia they come from. The chart below shows the largest sources: China, India, Philippines, Vietnam and Korea. (other sources with slightly less immigrants than Korea are Japan and Pakistan. Together they account for about 20% of foreign born in the U.S. today. Contrast this with 1960, where there were hardly any Asian immigrants due to the racist barrier of the 1924 immigration act, overturned in the 1965 immigration act.

The U.S. is for Chinese by far the biggest destination (2.4 million), the next being Canada (700K). For India, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have upwards of 10 million Indians but these are almost all guest workers, whereas Indians in the U.S. are here to stay. The next largest permanent destinations for Indians are the U.K (800K) and Canada (600K). For the Philippines, the next largest destination is Canada (500K). for Vietnam, it’s Australia (200K). For Korea, it is China (200K) followed by Canada and Australia.

Note that these figures are for persons born outside the U.S. and do not include second and later generations,

For data, go here.

Millennials today (18 – 34) are 56% white, compared to pre-millennials (35 and older) who are 68% white. The rise of the non-white population of voting age is mainly due to Hispanics, although Blacks and Asians are also growing in numbers. The large waves of immigration to the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, especially from Latin America and Asia, coupled with the aging of the white population[1], made millennials a more racially and ethnically diverse generation than any that preceded it. (Brookings Institution, here)

This explains the current surge in the percentage of voting age persons who are non-white. Between 2000 and 2020 non-white voting age persons rise from 24% to 33% of the total:

Adding more insight, for the first time since the Census Bureau has released annual statistics, they show for 2016 and 2017 an absolute decline in the nation’s white non-Hispanic population—accelerating a phenomenon that was not projected to occur until 2023.

And, in 2014, one in five births (791,000) in the United States was to an immigrant mother, contrasted with 13% of the total population being foreign-born. Immigrant mothers accounted for half or nearly half of births in Miami, San Francisco, and San Jose, CA.

About half of Americans think that diversity makes it hard to solve the country’s problems. Many older people do not like to hear a language other than English spoken in public. And people differ on whether they want more ethnic/racial mixture in their neighborhood.

A sizable share of Americans (47%) say having a population that is made up of people of many different races and ethnicities makes it harder for policymakers to solve the country’s problems; a small share (7%) say it makes it easier for policymakers and 45% say it doesn’t make much difference.

And much more from Pew Research.