U.S. immigration – dwkcommentaries

Increasing Migrant Crossings at U.S. Border Call for Legal Changes

This July more than 130,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. The fastest growth in this immigration, with 40,000 of the total, was in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which comprises most of Arizona, which was the most since April 2008. U.S. authorities attribute this increase to smugglers now guiding migrants to the border across the most remote and harsh stretches of the Arizona desert between Yuma and Tucson to avoid detection. [1]

Crossing in desert areas in the summer can be deadly, with ground temperatures well exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit at times, officials say. Such extreme conditions have led to a spike in 911 calls. Agents responding to such calls for help routinely find dozens or even hundreds of migrants in need of aid and trying to surrender to arriving border agents.

Cuba is experiencing growth in out-migration. Social-media advertisements on the island have recently increased offering door-to-door transportation to the U.S. through flights from Cuba to Nicaragua and ground travel across Central America and Mexico. Although new Biden policies require Cubans to have a U.S. citizen-sponsor for legal entry to the U.S., many Cubans do not have such sponsors and some officials say, “For ordinary Cubans, finding a sponsor who has money in the U.S. is Mission Impossible.”[2]

Another indication of this migrant pressure is the recent guilty plea by the owners of a Williamsburg, Virginia cleaning business who operated a “labor trafficking enterprise” that smuggled over 100 migrants from El Salvador, including minors, and forced them to work in U.S. under threats of violence and deportation.[3]

Recommended Changes

Andrea R. Flores, who served as an immigration policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations, says, “Until Congress finds the political will to act, the president should use his authority to relieve pressure on our asylum system and give migrants the ability to legally work once they reach the United States.”[4] To that end, she recommends the following:

“While far from perfect, the Biden administration’s parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans could serve as a model for what is possible. This policy provides safer options to people who are unlikely to meet the legal requirements for asylum, but who still have urgent humanitarian reasons to flee their homes.”
The President should “use his authority to grant Temporary Protected Status to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who lack work authorization, which would be a boon for immigrants and the communities that welcome them. A 2023 analysisby FWD.us, a bipartisan group founded by American business leaders that favors more humane immigration reform, found that T.P.S. holders contribute $22 billion in wages annually to the U.S. economy.”
“The administration should also act quickly to increase the number of appointments at ports of entry; add new countries eligible for parole; lift caps on countries with urgent resettlement needs, as it did for Ukraine; and invest resources in adjudicating asylum cases expeditiously.”

Noted commentator, Fareed Zakaria, points out the obvious: “America’s immigration system is broken.” [5]Therefore, he says the following: “The laws and rules around asylum must be fixed so that immigration authorities can focus on the small number of genuine asylum seekers while compelling the rest to seek other legal means of entry. At the same time, it’s important to note that the United States is facing a drastic shortfall of labor and must expand legal immigration in many areas for just that reason. We urgently need to attract the world’s best technically skilled people so that they can push forward the information and biotech revolutions that are transforming the economy and life itself. With unemployment rates around 50-year lows, it is obvious that we need more workers in many sectors of the economy, from agriculture to hospitality. If this is done in a legal and orderly manner, Americans will welcome the new workers.”

Therefore, he says Biden “should propose an immigration bill that is genuinely bipartisan and forces compromises from both sides. It would be one more strong dose of evidence that policy can triumph over populism.” Good luck on doing that.

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[1] Perez & Caldwell, Migrant Crossings on the Rise Again at U.S. Border,W.S.J. (Aug. 12, 2023); Miroff & Sacchetti, Border arrests surged in July, a blow to Biden immigration plan, Wash. Post (Aug. 1, 2023).

[2] Perez & Caldwell, Migrant Crossings on the Rise Again at U.S. Border, W.S.J. (Aug. 12, 2023).

[3] Paul, Laundry company owners guilty of trafficking migrants, minors for labor, Wash. Post (Aug. 13, 2023).

[4] Flores, We Know What Doesn’t Work at the Border. Here’s a Better Solution, N.Y. Times (Aug. 10, 2023).

[5] Zakaria, Immigration can be fixed. So why aren’t we doing it?, Wash. Post (Aug. 11, 2023).

Are Anti-Trumpers “the Bad Guys”?

This is the question posed in a recent David Brooks column in the New York Times.[1]

He starts out with the admission (or confession) that he is an anti-Trumper who believes that members of this group are “the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment” while the “Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians” who see Trump as “the embodiment of their resentments.”

At least for purposes of argument, however, Brooks considers whether the anti-Trumpers are the bad guys by creating the “modern meritocracy” system.

Such a system started in the 1960s “when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where . . . [the educated class] lived.”

The latter is “the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.”

“Everybody else is forced into a world down there. . . . Today middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then . . . [the modern aristocracy] blames those who lose a competition for income and status that even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.”

“Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we [members of the modern aristocracy] support policies that help ourselves. Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China. Open immigration makes our service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put downward pressure on our wages.”

“We [the members of the modern aristocracy] also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.”

“After this social norm was eroded, . . . [m]embers of our class still overwhelmingly married and had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that.”

As Adrian Wooldridge points out in his magisterial 2021 book, “The Aristocracy of Talent, ‘Sixty percent of births to women with only a high school certificate occur out of wedlock, compared with only 10 percent to women with a university degree.” That matters, he continues, because ‘the rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility in the country.’”

Brooks believes that most of our class [the modern aristocracy] are “earnest, kind and public-spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject [others].”

“It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Brooks understands that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we rode in on.”

“If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem like just another skirmish in the class war between the professionals and the workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take down the man who most aggressively stands up to them. Of course, the indictments don’t cause Trump supporters to abandon him. They cause them to become more fiercely loyal. That’s the polling story of the last six months.”

“Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, Brooks says, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.”

Therefore, for sociologist Digby Baltzell and David Brooks, “the real question is: When will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable?”

Reactions

In this column, Brooks does not provide an answer to his “real question.” Maybe there will be a future column in which he does so.

This blogger, however, believes at least part of the “real answer” for the State of Minnesota and many other states lies in the declining and aging population of rural parts of the State and the resulting negative impacts on their economies and visions of the future.[2] This problem suggests the need for more immigration to help solve the need for more labor with immigrant visas requiring the recipients to live and work in the areas with declining population.

Another part of the answer for this State and others, therefore, this blogger believes, is developing a system to promote and maintain intimate social contacts between people in the two parts of the states and thereby developing better understanding of the two sectors and programs for addressing the needs of the people in the rural parts of the states. Such a system requires everyone to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other[3] and to recognize our failings (sins) and request forgiveness from God and those whom we have wronged.[4]

Readers are invited to provide comments to this post with other ideas for answering the “real question” posed by Brooks.

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[1] Brooks, What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?, N.Y. Times (Aug. 2, 2023).

[2] See, e.g., these posts in dwkcommentaries.com: Another Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century (Jan. 28, 2023);Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century (Jan. 30, 2023); COMMENT: Developments in Africa and Italy Accentuate Douthat’s Concerns (Jan. 31, 2023); Iowa State Government Encouraging Refugee and Migrant Resettlement Feb. 1, 2023); COMMENT: National Worker Shortages in U.S. (Feb. 3, 2023); Migrant Workers Being Paid Premium Wages in U.S. Tight Labor Market (Feb. 8, 2023); More Details on U.S. and Other Countries’ Worker Shortages (Feb. 9, 2023);Your Longevity Is Important for Many Reasons (Feb. 12, 2023); Other States Join Iowa in Encouraging Immigration To Combat Aging, Declining Populations (Feb. 22, 2023); COMMENT: More Support for Immigrants’ Importance for U.S. Economy (Feb. 23, 2023); U.S. High-Tech Layoffs Threaten Immigrants with Temporary Visas (Feb. 25, 2023); U.S. Needs To Ameliorate Brutal Jobs Endangering Immigrant Workers (Feb. 26, 2023); COMMENT: Layoffs in Overall U.S. Economy Are Rare (Feb. 27, 2023); COMMENT: Many Undocumented Immigrants Leaving U.S. (March 1, 2023); Protections for U.S. Child Labor Need Improvement (APRIL 22, 2023; Wall Street Journal Editorial: U.S. Needs More Immigrants (July 25, 2023); COMMENT: Americans in Their Prime Are Flooding Into the Job Market (July 26, 2023:COMMENT: Dire Shortages of Workers in U.S. Public Sector (July 27, 2023).

[3] E.g., Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church: Presbyterian Principles: It is our duty to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other, dwkcommentaries.com (May 19, 2023).

[4] E.g., The Prayer Jesus Taught: “And forgive us for our debts as we forgive our debtors,” dwkcommentaaries.com (May 9, 2023).

Wall Street Journal Editorial: U.S. Needs More Immigrants

The Wall Street Journal on July 24, 2023, published an editorial calling for increased U.S. recruitment and admission of immigrants.[1] Here are its reasons for that conclusion.

“The U.S. has a people problem. The birth rate has been sliding for years, and it’s about to translate into a shrinking labor force. By 2040, according to a study out this week, America could have more than six million fewer working-age people than in 2022. The only way to counter the domestic trend is by attracting workers from abroad.”

According to the editorial, “’The working-age U.S. population has peaked absent additional immigration,’ writes Madeline Zavodny, in a forthcoming paper from the National Foundation for American Policy. ‘New international migrants are the only potential source of growth in the U.S. working-age population over the remainder of the next two decades.’ Ms. Zavodny is an economics professor at the University of North Florida, and her analysis is based on data from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

“At a time when some Americans view foreign workers as cheap competition, she offers a prescription for growth and vigor. In particular she notes that, although foreign-born workers accounted for nearly half the gain in U.S. employment from January 2021 through May 2023, ‘employment among prime-aged U.S.-born workers also soared during this period.’”

“Unemployment has been historically low, she adds, and difficulty of finding good workers will increase if the pool of working-age people shrinks.”

“The domestic trend lines aren’t good, for two big reasons. The declining birthrate is one. The other is Baby Boomers are both living longer and aging out of the work force. Anyone who imagines that a shrinking population is pleasant should spend some time in Japan and Italy. As these countries are finding, decline means fewer people to produce goods and services, as well as less innovation. Even China’s Communists now admit that owing to their pursuit of a one- child policy, they now face, as Milton Friedman predicted, a huge worker shortage that will challenge economic growth.”

“So far the U.S. has been able to compensate via immigration, which was ‘the sole source of growth in the U.S. working-age population in 2021 and 2022,’ Ms. Zavodny says. But this isn’t guaranteed. She suggests a future of competition among countries hit by the double whammy of a declining birth rate and aging society. Canada recently rolled out a new work permit to lure away foreigners in the U.S. on high-skill H-1B visas. The target of 10,000 applicants was met in two days.”

“Amid Donald Trump’s talk about a wall and Joe Biden’s chaos at the southern border, it’s hard to imagine any solutions from Congress before 2025. But Ms. Zavodny identifies labor-force trends that will have damaging consequences if they aren’t addressed. Someone needs to make the case that admitting foreign workers is good for Americans.”

In her underlying paper for the National Foundation for American Policy, Zavodny adds, “Technological change, including ongoing advances in generative AI, is unlikely to eliminate the need for additional workers. In the long run, technological progress raises labor demand by increasing productivity and incomes. In the short to medium run, domestic workers are unlikely to be sufficient to meet labor demand as federally funded infrastructure projects roll out and domestic semiconductor production ramps up. The U.S. will need workers with specialized skills that are in short supply and take years of education and training to acquire. Now and in the future, the U.S. will still need workers, and it risks not having enough of them, particularly those with desired skills, absent additional immigration.”[2]

Comment

This blog agrees with this W.S.J. editorial as evidenced by many blog posts and comments regarding U.S. immigration.[3]

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[1] Editorial: America’s Choice: Immigration or Bust, W.S.J. (July 24, 2023).

[2] Zavodny, Why the United States Still Needs Foreign-Born Workers, Nat’l Foundation for American Policy (July 2023).

[3] E.g., Posts and Comments to dwkcommentaries.com: Iowa State Government Encouraging Refugee and Migrant Resettlement (Feb. 3, 2023); Comment: National Worker Shortages in U.S. (Feb. 3, 2023); Comment: Economists Surprised by January New Jobs Data (Feb. 4, 2023); Comment: Migrant Workers Being Paid Premium Wages in Tight U.S. Job Market (Feb. 8, 2023); More Details on U.S. and Other Countries’ Worker Shortages (Feb. 9, 2023); Other States Join Iowa in Encouraging Immigration to Combat Aging, Declining Population (Feb.22, 2023); COMMENT: More Support for Immigrants’ Importance for U.S. Economy (Feb. 23, 2023); U.S. High-Tech Layoffs Threaten Immigrants with Temporary Visas (Feb. 25, 2023).

Protections for U.S. Child Labor Need Improvement

After noting that Iowa and other states are reducing child-labor protections to 19^th century levels while U.S. child labor-law violations have been increasing, a Washington Post editorial says “lawmakers and other leaders at the state and federal levels should increase [such protections].Children, including migrant youths, should be in school. . . . The Labor Department needs to step up enforcement, and Congress should increase fines for companies that hire children. The maximum fine is currently $15,000 per occurrence — a pittance. It’s also not enough to raid one factory. Often, a crackdown at one leads young workers to move to another nearby.”[1]

In addition, “the Health and Human Services Department is responsible for releasing migrant children from detention centers to “guardians” in the United States. It’s become clear that a growing number of children are not being released to relatives and are in danger of being trafficked. The HHS process needs to change. Mr. Biden can also step up enforcement of anti-trafficking laws already on the books.”

“Most of all, people who see wrongdoing should be empowered to speak up. Teachers, especially those in English language learner classrooms, can see which students are falling asleep in class because they worked all night, or notice when someone suddenly drops out. Religious leaders also are often on the front lines. Whistleblowers in the community require clear places to report child labor, and agencies that receive the warnings must follow up.”

“Nearly a century [after the adoption of the 1938 U.S. child-labor protections], it should not take more adolescent deaths for lawmakers to once again protect children from dangerous jobs.”

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[1] Editorial, Children don’t belong in factories or freezers—or on construction sites, Wash. Post (April 22, 2023). See also Dreier, As Migrant Children Were Put to Work, U.S. Ignored Warnings, N.Y. Times (April 17, 2023). But see Krugman, How Immigrants Are Saving the Economy, N.Y. Times (April 13, 2023) (“Recent immigrants are overwhelmingly working-age adults; according to census data, 79 percent of foreign-born residents who arrived after 2010 are between the ages of 18 and 64, compared with only 61 percent for the population at large. So the immigration surge has probably been a significant contributor to the economy’s ability to continue rapid job growth without runaway inflation.”).

More Details on U.S. and Other Countries’ Worker Shortages

This blog already has discussed the current declining and aging populations of many countries, and their impact on employment in those countries. [1]

Here are some additional articles on these subjects.

Wall Street Journal Analysis [2]

“Employers in healthcare, education, leisure and hospitality and other services such as dry cleaning and automotive repair . . . [accounted] for 63% of all [recent U.S,] private-sector job gains. .. . In January alone, restaurants and bars added a seasonally adjusted 99,000 jobs. The healthcare industry grew by 58,000, and retailers added 30,000 jobs.”

This result is helped by “more workers . . .searching for jobs: bigger paychecks and benefits, diminishing fear of getting sick, and financial worries amid high inflation.” Also “more women are flowing back into the labor force, which could help service-sector employers fill positions that traditionally have been held by women.”

Increased U.S. Immigration [3]

Last year U.S. net immigration increased by about a million people, and the “foreign-born work force grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born work force.” This “helped power the job recoveries in leisure and hospitality and in construction, where immigrants make up a higher share of employment, and where there were bigger increases in wages and job vacancies.”

This employment result happened despite the inadequate staffing of the U.S. immigration agencies, resulting in huge delays in acting on asylum applications as well as those for green cards and work permits. “One of the few industries with unlimited immigrant visas is agriculture, where the number of guest worker visas “has risen by double-digit percentages over each of the last few years, reaching 371,000 in 2022.”

Difficulties in Raising Birth Rates [4]

Echoing the pessimism of Ross Douthat of the New York Times caused, in part, by China’s recent declining birth rate and population, other Time’s authors say, “History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one. . . . That’s because the playbook for boosting national birthrates is a rather thin one. Most initiatives that encourage families to have more children are expensive, and the results are often limited. Options include cash incentives for having babies, generous parental leave policies and free or subsidized child care.”

This more recent Times article claims, “many young Chinese are not interested in having large families. Vastly more young Chinese people are enrolling in higher education, marrying later and having children later. Raised in single-child households, some have come to see small families as normal. But the bigger impediment to having a second or third child is financial, [and] many parents cite the high cost of housing and education as the main obstacle to having more children.”

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[1] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Another Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century (Jan. 28, 2023); Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century (Jan. 30, 2023); Comment: Developments in Africa and Italy Accentuate Douthat’s Concerns (Jan. 31, 2023); Iowa State Government Encouraging Refugee and Migrant Resettlement (Feb. 3, 2023);Comment: National Worker Shortages in U.S. (Feb. 3, 2023); Economists Surprised by January’s New Jobs Data (Feb. 4, 2023); Sub-Saharan Africa Is ‘New Epicenter’ of Extremism, Says UN, (Feb. 8, 2023); Migrant Workers Being Paid Premium Wages in U.S. Tight Labor Market, (Feb. 8, 2023).

[2] Cambon & Smith, Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market, W.S.J. (Feb. 9, 2023).

[3] DePills, Immigration Rebound Eases Shortage of Workers, Up to a Point, N.Y. Times (Feb. 6, 2023).

[4] Jacobs & Paris, Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden, N.Y. Times (Feb. 9, 2023).

Trump Official Says U.S. Needs More Immigrants

On February 19, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney appeared at a members-only event at the Oxford Union, the private debating society at the U.K.’s University of Oxford. [1]

He, however, was not debating anyone, but instead talking about current political issues in the U.S. One such issue was U.S. immigration.

“We are desperate — desperate — for more people,” Mulvaney said. “We created 215,000 jobs last month. We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.”

The Trump administration wants those immigrants to come in a “legal fashion.”

Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Mulvaney’s statements were very much in line with the views he often expressed as a GOP congressman from South Carolina. “Mulvaney in Congress was hugely supportive of expanding immigration, and the great thing about having him in this position is that he’s been a voice of sanity, reason and support for the mainstream economic consensus on immigration, which is that it’s good for economy,”

The Mulvaney statements echoed a recent report about U.S. immigration by the U.S. Census Bureau.[2]

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[1] Miroff & Dawsey, Mulvaney says U.S. is ‘desperate’ for more legal immigrants, Wash. Post (Feb. 20, 2020); Haberman, Mick Mulvaney Says He Often Disagrees with Trump (Just Never Publicly), N.Y. Times (Feb. 20, 2020).

[2] U.S. Needs Immigration To Keep Growing and Maintain Prosperity, dwkcommentaries.com (Feb. 16, 2020).

U.S. Needs Immigration To Keep Growing and Maintain Prosperity

A new report by the U.S. Census Bureau examines the impact of different levels of immigration on the growth, age and racial diversity of the U.S. work force.[1]

The report concedes, “International migration is difficult to project because political and economic conditions are nearly impossible to anticipate, yet factor heavily into migration movements into and out of a country. While we make no attempt to predict future policy or economic cycles, we do recognize the uncertainty surrounding migration and the impact that different migration outcomes could have on the future population.” Therefore, the Bureau “produced three alternate sets of projections that use the same methodology and assumptions for fertility, mortality, and emigration but differ in the levels of immigration that they assume: high, low, and zero immigration.”

The report’s summary stated, “Higher international immigration over the next four decades would produce a faster growing, more diverse, and younger population for the United States. In contrast, an absence of migration into the country over this same period would result in a U.S. population that is smaller than the present.”

“Beyond influencing the number of people in the population, immigration patterns over the next four decades will also shape the racial and ethnic composition of the population. In 2016, Asians were the fastest-growing racial group in the nation, and immigration was the primary driver behind the growth in this group. If immigration increases, the Asian alone population could grow by as much as 162 percent between 2016 and 2060 and go from 5.7 percent of the total U.S. population to 10.8 percent. The future size of this population is particularly sensitive to immigration. Under a scenario with no immigration, the Asian alone population in the United States would decline over time, representing just 4.5 percent of the total population in 2060.”

“Regardless of immigration, the population is expected to continue to age between now and 2060. Low fertility rates coupled with large cohorts of baby boomers reaching their ‘golden years’ are expected to shift the age distribution of the population so that the share of the population aged 65 and older exceeds the share of the population under the age of 18. The timing of this shift, however, will vary depending on the amount of immigration that occurs. High immigration levels will delay this milestone more than a decade relative to scenarios with lower levels of migration.”

“Over the next four decades, the population is expected to increase from its 2016 level in two out of the three alternative scenarios. In the high scenario, the population will increase by 124 million, reaching 447 million in 2060. In the low scenario, the 2060 population is projected to be 376 million, representing an increase of 53 million people. Under a zero immigration scenario, the population is projected to increase until 2035, at which point the population would peak at 333 million. After that, the population is projected to decline through 2060, when it could reach a low of 320 million.”

“The share of the population that is White alone is projected to decline in all scenarios of population projections between 2016 and 2060. For the high, middle, and low scenarios, the number of residents classified as White alone actually increases from the 2016 values, but these increases are outpaced by increases in the other racial and ethnic groups. “

“The population aged 65 and older is projected to surpass the population under the age of 18 in size in all immigration scenarios. The date at which this occurs is earliest in the zero immigration scenario (2029), followed by the low immigration scenario (2031), and then the high (2045). By 2030, more than 20 percent of the U.S. population will be aged 65 and older. In the high scenario, this milestone is reached in 2028. For the low scenario, it occurs in 2026; and in 2025 for the zero scenario.”

Conclusion

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, reviewed the report and concluded, “We desperately need immigration to keep our country growing and prosperous.The reason we have a good growth rate in comparison to other developed countries in the world is because we’ve had robust immigration for the last 30 to 40 years.”

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[1] U.S. Census Bureau, A Changing Nation: Population Projections Under Alternative Migration Scenarios (Feb. 13, 2020); Lang, U.S. population will decline faster without steady immigration, Census report says, Wash. Post (Feb. 13, 2020).

Implications of Reduced U.S. Population Growth

As noted in a prior post, “on December 30, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its official population estimates for 2019 showing, as expected, a slowdown in overall growth of population and reduced population in 10 states: New York, Illinois, West Virginia, Louisiana, Connecticut, Mississippi, Hawaii, New Jersey,Alaska and Vermont. In addition, the Census Bureau stated, “U.S. population is expected to grow 6.6% in the 2020s, a slide from 7.5% growth this decade” and “urban and rural areas across the country will divide further in the deceleration.”

The slow growth of U.S. population, as discussed in the prior post, is due to several factors: (1) the “U.S. fertility rate—the number of children each woman can be expected to have over her lifetime—has dropped from 2.1 in 2007 to 1.7 in 2018, the lowest on record.” (2) “Death rates, already rising because the population is older, have been pressured further by ‘deaths of despair’—suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related illness.” (3) U.S. immigration “has been trending flat to lower” and is subject to anti-immigration policies of the Trump Administration.

An editorial in the Washington Post notes that this may cause a positive reduction in the demand for resources. However, the reduced population growth “may mean less economic growth and a diminished support base for a large retired cohort” as well as a warning that “starting a new life in the United States has come to seem less attractive, both to prospective parents already living here and to prospective arrivals from abroad.”[1]

This, said the Post, “is a warning” that “the need for more [immigration] is real,” which “this country cannot afford to ignore.” [2]

Lower population growth is not the problem in rural America. Declining population is its problem. This situation recently was examined at the Regional Economic Conditions Conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis by Beth Ford, the CEO of Land O’Lakes, the Minnesota-based, member-owned agricultural cooperative.[3]

She said this population problem was exacerbated by problems in the agriculture economy. “Consolidation was happening across agriculture because of oversupply.” The average age of farmers was rising, and it is awfully difficult for young want-to-be farmers to get into the business, resulting in widows owning 60% of Iowa’s farmland. Many dairy farmers are surviving by taking jobs off the farm. Conventional corn and soybean farming will continue although the farming incentive structure will have to change over time. “Farmers are raising wages for help, but can’t find people who want to do the work.” Consolidation of farms continues because of economies of scale. The rural communities where farmers live are struggling to survive. Under these conditions, government subsidies for agriculture are necessary.

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[1] Editorial, America’s dip in population growth is a warning we shouldn’t ignore, Wash. Post (Jan. 4, 2020)

[2] Recent letters to the Post disagreed with the conclusion that lower population growth was a problem. Instead, one letter argued that a “decreasing population would naturally buy the United States more time to use the limited amount of resources we have, to find a bipartisan plan of attack against climate change and to create legislation to protect the environment.” Another letter said that “slower population growth provides an opportunity for us to lift up the next generation so we can have a healthy, skilled, productive workforce” by focusing resources and attention on “the 13 million children trapped in poverty.” (Letters to Editor, Slow population growth is a good thing, Wash. Post (Jan. 9, 2020).

[3] Belz,Land O’Lakes CEO calls for investment in rural America , StarTribune (Jan. 9, 2020).

Additional Support for U.S. Needing More Immigrants

This blog previously has argued that the U.S. needs more immigrants, not fewer.[1] Additional support for that argument is found in recent news about U.S. population data, U.S. low unemployment rate and need for more workers and the examples of some U.S. communities welcoming immigrants.

U.S. Population Data[2]

There are two inter-related sets of U.S. population data that reflect the need for more immigrants: low U.S. native-born birth rate and foreign -born membership in the U.S. work force.

In 2018, the number of babies born in the U.S. was 3.79 million, the lowest in 32 years and the fourth year in a row that this number declined. Similarly the U.S. general fertility rate—the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44—fell to 59.0, the lowest since the start of federal collection of this data. These statistics reflect fewer babies born to teenagers and unmarried women, lower Hispanic fertility rates and the increase in women obtaining college degrees.

Moreover, the total fertility rate—the estimated number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime—has generally been below the “replacement” number of 2.1 since 1971. This could mean (without immigration) a declining overall population and workforce too small to support a growing number of retirees and older people. Such support, of course, includes paying for the Social Security and medical benefits for senior citizens.

This decline in the native-born population has been counter-balanced by increases in the foreign-born who are members of the U.S. labor force. In 2018, there were 27.2 million foreign-born workers, representing 17.5% of the total work force, which is the highest percentage since 1996 when these records were first kept. This segment includes those who now are U.S. citizens, immigrants and those here temporarily. Moreover, the data shows that the foreign-born workers are becoming better educated and more likely to be Asian.

“The top overall reason for people to come to the United States is for employment,” said Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Shortages of Workers in U.S.[3]

In Minnesota, for example, “factory officials — especially those in rural areas — say severe worker shortages are increasingly impeding their growth and profits. A March survey indicated that nearly 50% of such officials said “their inability to find qualified workers had hurt growth. . . .a rise of 14 percentage points from 2017.“

It is not just Minnesota that is experiencing this situation. The director of a recent survey of the nine-state mid-America region says, “finding and hiring qualified workers remained the chief threat to manufacturing economy for the region. … Of surveyed factory managers, approximately 44.7% identified labor shortages as the greatest threat to company success in the next 12 months.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial makes the same points on a national level. It says that “there is little evidence” for the belief “that lower-skilled immigrants undercut American workers,” but on the contrary “U.S. workers, taxpayers and businesses would benefit from more immigrants of all skill levels.”

This editorial also attacks the concept of a merit-point immigration system, recently put forward by President Trump. It says that such a system “is vulnerable to political meddling and will discriminate against less-educated strivers who also boost the U.S. economy. Merit systems don’t measure entrepreneurship and would keep out many less-skilled workers who start small businesses like the neighborhood dry cleaner. The plan also doesn’t increase or streamline guest-worker visas, which are crucial to reduce the incentive for illegal immigration.” Moreover, “Low-skilled immigrants are contributing heavily to the nation’s entitlement programs and sustaining Rust Belt communities that otherwise would be losing population. More immigration will be vital to maintaining the “safety net” as the U.S. fertility rate last year fell to a 32-year low.”

U.S. Communities Welcoming Immigrants[4]

Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist and a Minnesota native, recently visited the city of Willmar, population of 19,610 (2010 census) in the southwestern part of Minnesota. Historically it was a largely white, Lutheran, Scandinavian town.

Now the town’s diversity is seen at its high school, which has students from 30 countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The languages spoken there include English, Arabic, Somali, Spanish and Karen (the language of an ethnic group from Myanmar). Visiting the school, Friedman saw “a Benetton ad of races, creeds, colors and clothing.” To assist this mixture the school has “Spanish-speaking and Somali-speaking cultural liaisons [who] work with teachers, students and parents, so families can learn how to advocate for their kids, what the rules are and just how the local culture works.”

The school’s principal, Paul Schmitz, summed up its challenge and mission this way, “Sustainable democracy in the world depends on the United States being a beacon of democracy. And that depends on how well we manage democracy in a pluralistic society.” And that depends on healthy public schools, because “the only shared experience we have any longer in America is through public education.”

Businesses in Willmar have donated money to “create an entrepreneurship program for area schools, through which selected kids begin their day by visiting or working at local businesses. There they have to come up with a business plan for a start-up, get it approved by a local banker, raise or borrow seed money themselves and work on the project instead of attending school for first part of each morning. . . . [One of the] Somali students . . . had started a company that makes short videos!”

Other Willmar collaboration occurs between a local community and technical college (Ridgewater College) and the K-12 schools, the local chamber of commerce, economic development commission and a community foundation. An example of that collaboration is the “Community Integration Center, which some Somali social entrepreneurs opened in 2017 to teach Somalis English and Minnesota culture and to teach Willmarites Somali and Somali culture.”

In short, Friedman discovered a successful community in Willmar because it needed workers to fill jobs, it embraced the immigrants and it has a critical mass of community leaders (business people, educators, philanthropists and social entrepreneurs). As Dana Mortenson, CEO of World Savvy, a global education organization, said, Minnesota towns that are rising are those “that . . . need a trained work force with a good work ethic and . . . [that embraces] a redefined sense of community.”

More generally in Minnesota immigrants are slowing or halting or reversing population declines in 15 rural Minnesota counties. One such county [next to Willmar] is Stevens County, population of 9,726. Its county seat of Morris (5,286 population) has a large Latino contingent who were drawn here for employment by agribusinesses involved in dairy and beef cattle farming. A professor at the town’s University of Minnesota-Morris started evening English-language courses for the newcomers that now operates twice a week at five levels of proficiency. This program also raises money to buy English books for the students and hosts events for long-time residents to meet the newcomers. The local library has books and library cards in Spanish. The newcomers organized a soccer tournament in the town.[6]

Conclusion

The objective reasons for wanting more U.S. immigration are clear—we need more workers. We also need younger workers who will help pay for the increasing costs of an aging native population. Rural areas with aging and declining population for their survival need immigrants.

These changes will be immensely aided by communities that welcome change and increasing diversity and develop ways to facilitate the assimilation of new people from different parts of the world with different lagnuages, customs, skin colors and religions.

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[1]See, e.g.,these posts to dwkcommentaries: “America’s Farms Need More Immigrants,” (Mar. 22, 2019); Businesses Need More Immigrants (Mar. 24, 2019); Trump Erroneously Says U.S. Is “Full,” (April 9, 2019).

[2]DeBarros, & Adamy, U.S. Births Fall to Lowest Level Since 1980s, W.S.J. (May 15, 2019); Freeman, A Historic Shortage of Americans, W.S.J. (May 15, 2019).

[3] DePass, Minnesota Manufacturers say worker shortages hurting growth, StarTribune (May 15, 2019); Slaughter, Immigrants for the Heartland, W.S.J. (April 28, 2019); Editorial, Trump’s Immigration Progress, W.S.J. (May 17, 2019).

[4] Friedman, President Trump, Come to Willmar, N.Y. Times (May 14, 2019); Rao, In Minnesota counties losing population, immigrants slow the decline, StarTribune (May 12, 2019).

[5] Friedman’s account of visiting Willmar is reminiscent of his fond reminiscences of growing up in the successful integration of Jewish citizens with the existing Christian community of St. Louis Park, Minnesota and then the current intergraton in his home town of Latinos and Somalis into the exisitng white and African-Ameican population. (See Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, chs. 12, 13 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2016). See also, Reactions to Tom Friedman’s “Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations,” dwkcommentaries.com (Mar. 13, 2017).

Trump Erroneously Says U.S. Is “Full”

President Donald Trump at an April 5 roundtable on the border at the U.S. Border Patrol station in Calexico, California addressed arriving Central Americans: “Can’t take you anymore. Can’t take you. Our country is full. Our area is full, the sector is full. Can’t take you anymore. I’m sorry.” Two days later he repeated this message in the following April 7 tweet:

“Mexico must apprehend all illegals and not let them make the long march up to the United States, or we will have no other choice than to Close the Border and/or institute Tariffs. Our Country is FULL” (Emphasis added.) [1]

Trump, however, was wrong in this assertion.[2]

U.S. Needs More Immigrants

Immediately after the roundtable, U.S. Representative Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Dem., WA) rejected the contention that the U.S. was “full.” She said, “It’s just a ridiculous statement. We have agriculture industries across the country that desperately need workers. We have construction industries in California and in other places that desperately need workers, and immigration has always been not just a question of immigration policy, but who we are as a country.”

A More complete rejection of Trump’s assertion came in an article in the New York Times. It starts by saying this assertion “ runs counter to the consensus among demographers and economists.” This conclusion was documented by the following:

The U.S. is a country “where an aging population and declining birthrates among the native-born population are creating underpopulated cities and towns, vacant housing and troubled public finances. . . . Local officials in many of those places view a shrinking population and work force as an existential problem with few obvious solutions.”
“In smaller cities and rural areas, demographic decline is a fundamental fact of life. A recent study by the Economic Innovation Group found that 80 percent of American counties, with a combined population of 149 million, saw a decline in their number of prime working-age adults from 2007 to 2017.. . . Local officials in many of those places view a shrinking population and work force as an existential problem with few obvious solutions.” [3]
“Population growth in the United States has now hit its lowest level since 1937, partly because of a record-low fertility rate — the number of children born per woman.”
“The Congressional Budget Office foresees the American labor force rising by only 0.5 percent a year over the coming decade, about one-third as fast as from 1950 to 2007. That is a crucial reason that economic growth is forecast to remain well below its late 20th-century levels.”
“There are now 2.8 workers for every recipient of Social Security benefits, a rate on track to fall to 2.2 by 2035, according to the program’s trustees. Many state pension plans face even greater demography-induced strains.”
John Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group, fears a “declining population, falling home prices and weak public finances will create a vicious cycle that the places losing population could find hard to escape.”

One of the solutions to this U.S. problem is creation of “a program of ‘heartland visas,’ in which skilled immigrants could obtain work visas to the United States on the condition they live in one of the counties facing demographic decline — with troubled countries themselves deciding whether to participate.”

Washington Post Editorial

A Washington Post editorial lambasted Trump for his “full” statement. It points out that only a month before these remarks, Trump said, “‘So we’re going to let a lot of people come in because we need workers. We have to have workers.’ And the day after his ‘full’ assertion, the Department of Homeland Security nearly doubled the number of guest worker visas it would issue this year. [4]

The Post editorial then recited the following facts about why the U.S. needs more immigrants:

The U.S. “faces a shrinking native-born labor force as baby boomers retire at a rate of 10,000 daily , unemployment reaches historically low levels, and immigration continues to dwindle from Mexico, a traditional source of cheap documented and undocumented employees. In March, the Labor Department reported there were 7.6 million unfilled jobs and just 6.5 million unemployed people, marking 12 straight months during which job openings have exceeded job seekers.”
“The labor shortage is sapping growth as well as state and municipal revenue. Small businesses and major corporations have sounded the alarm as the delivery of goods is delayed by a drastic shortage of truckers, and housing prices in some markets are driven up by an inadequate supply of construction workers.”
“The deficit is particularly acute in lower-wage jobs, as more and more Americans attend college and are reluctant to take positions in skilled trades and other jobs requiring manual labor. Home health aides who care for the sick and frail are in extremely short supply, as are workers in retail, restaurants and farms. The problem is exacerbated by a fertility rate — the number of children born per woman — that is the lowest since the 1930s. The impact of that decline until now has been partly offset by immigration.”

In short, the Post says, Trump’s “political strategy is a prescription for long-term economic anemia and declining competitiveness.”

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[1] Kim & Perry, ‘Our country is full . . . . So turn around, Trump warns migrants during border roundtable, Wash. Post (April 5, 2019); Trump, Tweet (April 7, 2019).

[2] Irwin & Badger, Trump Says the U.S. Is ‘Full.’ Much of the Nation Has the Opposite Problem, N.Y. Times (April 9, 2019). This blog also frequently has discussed the U.S. need for more immigrants. See, e.g., “America’s Farmers Need Immigrants” (March 22, 2019); Businesses Need More Immigrants (March 24, 2019); U.S. Construction Industry Needs More Immigrants (April 3, 2019).

[3] The Economic Innovation Group has published a report on the facts of U.S. population and its impact on economic growth with fascinating U.S. maps showing various population facts. (Economic Innovation Group, From Managing Decline to Building the Future: Could a Heartland Visa Help Struggling Regions?, at 9-10 (April 2019). )

[4] Editorial, The country isn’t ‘full’—and Trump knows it, Wash. Post (April 12, 2019).