June 6 marks the start of ICE’s very visible large-scale mass deportation campaign, starting in California.  It appears that the campaign, which was since interrupted (or maybe not) by the White House, pushed the public towards disapproval of the administration’s deportation policy.  Pew Research polled the public between June 2 and June 8, so it does not show the full effect of the large scale campaign, which has been visible to the public (for example, here).

That said, the poll results show a something that is an emerging pattern: a slim majority (two polls, here) has in the recent past agreed in the abstract to support Trump’s immigration policy, but when faced with the facts of administration action, a majority opposes it. Overall disapproval has already increased and will most likely increase more. However, there remains solid support among Republicans. And, polling has shown, in the 2010s, a majority concerned about the overall impact on immigration on America.

Overall disapproval is more in this poll than in other recent polls: with 42% approving and 47% disapproving. People are split (50% approve, 49% disapprove) over the use of state and local law enforcement in deportation efforts. 60% of Americans disapprove of the suspension of most asylum applications (39% approve). 54% disapprove of increasing ICE raids on workplaces where people who are in the U.S. illegally.

And 78% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents approve of the administration’s approach to immigration, including 51% who strongly approve.  81% of Democrats and Democratic leaners disapprove, with 63% strongly disapproving. Just 9% approve.

A Fox News poll on June 13 – 16 shows that only 46% of the public approve of Trump’s performance in immigration, and 53% say that the administration has gone to far in enforcing immigration laws. An equal share (39% – 39%) say that the country is safer or less safe due to the administrative actions.

Broad historical context

The underlying issue is how people value immigration as a whole. Gallup polls in 2003, 2013 and 2023 show that the gap between Democrats and Republicans on whether immigration is good for the country widened sharply in the past ten years and even more so in the past five years. There has been for some time an increase in concern that the American way of life has been compromised by immigration. (Go here, here and here).

The Hispanic approval of Republicans surged in the 2022 and 2024 elections but in the past three months economic worries appear to have erased these gains.

Background to 2024/2025

In the 2010s, Democrats had been relying on the support of roughly 90% of Black voters and 70% of Hispanic voters. This implies that per the Dems, the Republican should not receive more than 30% of the vote.

In 2016, according to Edison Research, Trump received 28% of the Hispanic vote

In the 2018 mid-term Congressional elections, an estimated 69% of Latinos voted for the Democratic candidate and 29% backed the Republican candidate. 27% of Latino voters said they were voting for the first time, compared with 18% of black voters and 12% of white voters. (This has been a trend for some time, as Hispanics are coming into adulthood at a relatively faster rate than are others.)

In 2020, Trump won 32% of the Hispanic vote. Thus, the Democrats in the late 2010s achieved its target of 70% of the Hispanic vote, but the percentage was marginally declining. (Go here.)

In the 2022 mid-term Congressional elections, Pew Research estimated that 39% of Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates, while 60% supported Democrats. This should have caused flashing red lights.

The Hispanic vote in November 2024

Trump won 46% of the Hispanic vote in November’s election. This percentage is 7% points higher than the 2022 mid-terms and 14% higher than the 2020 election. The swing was heavily among Hispanic men: per Edison Research, by 55% up from 36% for Trump in 2020.  American Electorate Voter Poll put Trump’s support among Latino men at 43%. The Navigator Research post-election survey said received 50% of Hispanic men. According to Edison Research, 38% of Hispanic women voted for Trump in 2024, up from 30% in 2020.

Edison Research wrote, “It’s worth noting that 40% of Hispanic/Latino voters named the economy as their most important issue from a pick-list of five possibilities, nine points higher than the voting population overall.”

Job approval since January 2025

As a point of reference, Biden in January 2020 started with a 73% approval rating by Hispanics, which declined slightly to 69% by the summer of 2021.

Trump’s approval/ disapproval rating among Hispanics in January was 37%/54%. By April the rating worsened to 31%/61%.  This deterioration appears to be caused mainly by economic worries.

UnitosUS reported on April 28, based on its poll, that “Pocketbook issues continue to dominate the concerns of Latino voters — cost of living, jobs, housing and health care affordability — with immigration rounding up the top five. On the economy, 54% of Latino respondents said it is worse when compared to last year; 60% believe things are going in the wrong direction, and 70% of them hold President Trump and his administration responsible.”

In sum, the surge of Hispanic approval of Republicans, dramatically evident in 2022 and 2024 voting, appears to have stalled and even reversed. And, this is due to pocketbook issues.

One important aspect of the Hispanic vote for which we do not have good information: the percentage of voting eligable Hispanics who actually vote is much lower than for whites (something like 60% vs 70%).

 

 

 

 

Spain’s population, now 47.9 million, has been growing at about .025% annually, the growth entirely due to immigration. The fertility rate declined below replacement in 1985 and is now at about 1.2, with the current rate for Spanish born women at about 1.0. The entire population will very slowly decline from now on.

At the end of the 20^th Century, about 2% of the population was foreign born. This surged past 10% in the 2000s due to economic growth – GPD growth averaged 3.3% between 2000 and 2007.

Estimates of the size of the foreign-born population today center around 15%, or about 7 million. That is made up by about Latin Americans, about 2.5 million and rising, approaching 40% of all foreign-born. One million of the seven million residents of the Comunidad de Madrid were born in Latin America.

Other major immigrant groups: Moroccans 12%; Romanians 9%. There are many British and other Northern Europeans with retirement homes. The expatriate numbers around 300,000 (British only)  formally registered but several times that number may be living in Spain informally.

 

The Congressional Budget Office makes a new population forecast (revising one in 2024, here) which says that without immigration, the country’s population will begin to decline in 2033. A revised rate of population growth generally slows over the next 30 years, from an average of 0.4% a year between 2025 and 2035 to an average of 0.1% a year between 2036 and 2055.  This is due in part a lower of the fertility rate from 1.75 noted in the 2024 forecast to 1.6 on the long run. Net immigration, projected at 1.1 million a year, becomes an increasingly important source of population growth period without immigration, the population would shrink beginning in 2033.

This forecast makes immigration, which is more concentrated in working ages than the existing population (due to fewer children coming in), even more important in the growth of the working population. The prime age (25-54) population has been declining since about 2020. Only with immigration, which I have estimated addd 600,000 persons to the workforce, is the working age population increasing.

More detail:

The CBO estimates that pre-Biden the net immigration rate was about 920,000 per year. After three explosive years under Biden, when net immigration averaged 2.9 million (most of humanitarian parole and asylum applicants), and two last years averaging 1.75 million, the CBO projects for 2027 – 2055 at 1.1 million immigratns. This 1.1 million estimate, like past ones, are the sum of a complex sorting out of new and revised legal status, netting out to a round number of the net number of persons from abroad expected to live here indefinitely.

Estimates of the number of Americans living outside the United States are very rough and quite varied. Heitor David Pinto delved into the complex way in which one would define and an American (see note below). He does not take into account how many in his estimate may be spending part time abroad and part time in the United States. Overall, he estimates that there are about 5.5 million U.S. citizens who are living outside the country.  1.2 million citizens per his estimate live in Mexico and one million live in Canada. About 300,000 live in the United Kingdom. 280,000 live in Isreal, the equivalent to about 3% of the non-Arab population of Isreal.

Note that the organization promoting Pinto’s estimate, the Associations of Americans Resident Overseas, is most likely to favor a high estimate

How Pinto came to his estimate

The United Nations estimates that about 3 million American live outside the U.S. (go here).

Pinto started from data compiled by the United Nations for 2020 from the most recent census of every country, and updated it with U.S. census data for 2022 and with census data for the years 2010 – 2023 from some individual countries. The census data of each country shows the number of people residing there who were born in each other country so, in the case of Americans abroad, it means only people born in the U.S. Pinto then took the more detailed census data from some countries showing parents’ place of birth to estimate the number of Americans born there from a parent who was born in the U.S., and applied it to all other countries proportionally.

His analysis presents the number of U.S. citizens living abroad as people born in the U.S. plus those born abroad with at least a parent who was born in the U.S. (so it includes the so-called “accidental Americans”). He also included naturalized citizens, assuming that they have the same emigration rate from the U.S. as the rest of the U.S. population. This analysis is an admitted simplification, as it includes some people who are not U.S. citizens (those born in the U.S. from foreign diplomats, or born abroad from American parents who didn’t reside in the U.S. for enough years to transmit U.S. citizenship, or those who renounced U.S. citizenship). But there is no data available to estimate these particular cases and their numbers are thought to be relatively small. Mr. Pinto’s estimate does not include military personnel or their families.

Today there are about 3 million persons in the United states who were born in India, compared to one million in 2000.  That is a compound annual rate of growth of 5% and that does not take into account the children whom first generation indians are producing. (The annual growth rate for the entire popution was about 0.9%).

Here are some facts, drawn from 2023 by the Migration Policy Institute. They capture how Indians have a distinct advantage over other immigrants and even native born persons in terms of thriving economically.  It is very interesting that Indian immigrants are now quite visible among Republican Party ranks, just as they are among Conservative Party ranks in the United kingdom.

The distinctive profile of Indian immigrants in America today is influenced by several factors that are not readily apparent. The surge in their arrival matched the growing demand for STEM talent. As with most other recent immigrants, they have come well educated and at prime working age. In very different specific ways they are similar to the arrival of German Jews in the 1930s whose talents in science and the arts were quickly absorbed.  Who are the Einsteins and Billy Wilders among our 3 million Indians?

The educational head start: Among persons 25 years or older, 81% of Indians have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 35% of all immigrants and 36% of native born. This means that the second generation of Indians grow up in an educated household.

Income is higher: In 2023, households headed by an Indian immigrant had a median annual income of $166,200, compared to $78,700 for all immigrant-led and $77,600 for native-led households. Indian immigrants were roughly half as likely to be in poverty (6 percent) as immigrants overall (14 percent) or the U.S. born (12 percent). Poverty is an income below $30,900 for a family of four in 2023. I suspect that many Indians in poverty are actually students.

Indians have better health insurance coverage: In 2023, just 4 percent of immigrants from India were uninsured, compared to 6 percent of the native born and 18 percent of the overall foreign-born population. Indian immigrants were more likely to be covered by private health insurance than the overall foreign-born and U.S.-born populations, reflecting their strong labor force participation and employment in high-skilled jobs that often come with employer-provided health insurance.

The intergenerational factor: In 2023 their median age was 42 years old, compared to 47 for all immigrants and 37 for the native-born population. This is due to the high number of working-age adults: 81 percent of all Indian immigrants were ages 18 to 64 and 58 percent of the native born.  Behind these figures is that high number of children born to immigrants and who are now counted, of course, as native born.  Immigration is a multi-generational phenomenon – immigrants being more of working age tend to produce relatively more children.