Study this map really hard…and ask yourself, what the American demographic structure will look like by 2050? The United States stands to GAIN around 8 million “working-age” people, that is, people between 15 and 64 years of age. This age group is the key wage earners, producers, job creators, and business creators of any population in any country. In other words, working-age people fuel the economy.
It looks okay for the United States, doesn’t it? Eight million more working-aged people are good, right? Any country that doesn’t grow this working-age population is in big trouble economically and socially. That is why countries like China and Russia have a very foreboding future along with some European countries and why many African countries and other countries such as India and Pakistan have a much brighter future economically.
However, the 8 million additional working-age people projected in the United States are not going to come from natural childbirth. That is the dirty little secret that people on the extreme right do not want to admit, or if they do, they decry it as a “replacement.” But one true thing is that Americans are not having a lot of babies.
So…it is likely those 8 million more working-aged people are not going to be white. Population growth in the United States will ONLY come through immigration.
I alluded to this problem in a recent column that I posted called, Fear-Based Politics. In that article, I cited the birthrate in the United States at between 1.6 to 1.7 per childbearing age woman. That is not enough to sustain the current population levels. Demographers and sociologists point to a 2.2 birthrate as sustainable and if anything, we are moving farther from that tipping point and not closer to it.
What this means in plain terms, is if we added no immigrants between now and 2050, our population would begin to contract. Yep, not just zero population growth, but negative population growth. Which brings up the REAL crisis at the Southern border today.
The crisis isn’t that we have large numbers of people trying to get into the country, which has always been the case. The REAL crisis is that we have no updated immigration policy in place that deals with the current situation. That situation is a combination of both people entering illegally and refugees fleeing violence, persecution, and death in their home countries, much of which we created. These are two distinct categories of migrants and need to be dealt with differently, but humanely.
Here is the other dirty little secret that politicians either ignore or deliberately lie to us about (I’ll leave it to your discretion to determine the motive). The truth is…we NEED immigrants and lots of them. The 8 million more working-age people in the US reflected on the map aren’t going to come from native childbirth… they can only come from immigration. That is a good thing, and it is something we should prepare for now. But some do not want you to believe it.
What scares the bigots, racists, and white supremacists is that they sense or know this is true. They know that white families are not having enough kids to sustain population numbers. And they know that by the 2040s the US will become for the first time ever…a non-white majority country. It scares the racists out of their minds to think about this. The assumption in this fear is the belief that only white people can sustain a vibrant, prosperous democratic system…and, this assumption is entirely wrong.
If politicians and leaders looked at the long-term needs and trends, they would realize that what is happening at the southern border is not a crisis, but an opportunity. We can utilize the migrant population to sustain our economic growth and position, if we have the foresight to put proper policies in place to accommodate, assimilate, and bring migrants into a thriving American economy.
I know using the words “long-term” is a bit of an oxymoron when put together in a sentence with the word “politicians.” But hopefully, there are enough leaders who understand what is going to happen in the next 25 years and will see the need to build an infrastructure to include job training, education, health care programs, childcare programs, and other ways to encourage migrants to become a part of the American culture…not by becoming “white.” Rather, by adopting the values of a democratic society…multiculturalism, secularism, and religious freedom for ALL and not just some, then we can build a solid foundation for the coming generations.
Politicians and extremists on the right only see people coming to this country from a “zero-sum” game perspective. They believe that the only way for non-white people to prosper and get ahead is if they must give up something. They truly believe that the American dream is a pie with a finite portion that can only be given out to the “truly deserving real Americans.” This perspective is an erroneous premise with equally erroneous applications.
And here is another dirty little secret…those on the extreme right that want to deport all the immigrants that aren’t white and Christian, would do so to their detriment and expense. Rejecting migrants today means declining economic prosperity tomorrow. But then, the base of the Republican party has never been averse to voting against their interests.
The only ones to “win” at this game are those who make up the top 1% and people like Donald Trump...those who want to continue to accumulate more and more wealth and power at the expense of the poor white Christian Nationalists who believe what they are being told about migrants…they are dirty, disease-prone, rapists, and drug dealers. That is a lie…migrants today are no different than the migrants who came from Europe in earlier centuries looking for a chance at a better life.
And so even when common-sense immigration policy is proposed such as the George W. Bush Immigration Reform program of 2007 or President Obama’s attempts to fix a broken immigration system in 2014, or the current bipartisan plan in the Senate known as the Dignity Act, each of these attempts have been sabotaged by right-wing politicians who wanted to avoid solving the problem because it allows them to continue to use the issue to weaponize elections. Trump has put the brakes on the current effort at bipartisan immigration reform because he wants to use it as a cudgel against Biden to win the White House, ostensibly to avoid being prosecuted for 91 felony charges. How patriotic.
There is nothing patriotic or forward-looking about stopping bipartisan efforts to fix our broken immigration policy. In fact, it is anti-American. Besides being short-sided, narcissistic, and cruel, it is also dehumanizing to the people languishing at the border looking for a way into the country. Governor Abbott’s gleeful use of razor wire shows just how dehumanizing the issue can be.
The real crisis at the border is not the people trying to come here…but the politicians using the issue for self-serving and crass political purposes. Gov. Abbott, House Speaker Johnson, and candidate Trump are the crisis, not the refugees and migrants looking for a better life.
What if we had a generation of political leaders who had foresight and understanding of demographic trends and needs, and implemented policies designed to prepare for the influx of millions of people over the next 25 years?
What if we had political leaders who understood that we need to set up an immigration system that is orderly, deliberate, and welcoming to those who want to come to the US to work, start businesses, go to school, and become contributing members of a pluralistic-multicultural American society?
What if we had political leaders who listened to experts and scientists who could make recommendations on what a rational and humane immigration system would look like and moved to put it in place and didn’t weaponize the issue to score votes?
What if white Americans came to accept and understand that the country will be a little less white in 2050, and a little less Christian? But if we put the proper program in place now, those who are coming would accept the same democratic values that we currently cherish.
What if we realized that the only crisis at the border is politicians who sabotage reform and efforts to create a coherent program for adopting newcomers to the United States and that there is an opportunity at the border if we are smart enough to engage it?
For me…I may not be around in 2050…but my children and grandchildren and, perhaps great-grandchildren will be…I will vote only for leaders who understand this issue and are willing to put long-term policies and programs in place to enhance life not only for new arrivals at our border but for all Americans. They will need to reject the “zero-sum” mentality and accept a “we all win” mentality when it comes to immigration.
What if…..?