Why US Population Growth Is in the Danger Zone

2022/03/31 Leave a comment

Always struck by the lack of thinking and analysis regarding options and approaches on living with a declining population. A larger population is not good for the planet from any number of perspectives, and even advantages at the country level are mixed at best.

Just as we have to do with climate change, we need to consider what a mix of curbing growth and mitigating the impacts would look like, how to manage transitions and address externalities:

The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.

U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.

What’s going on?

A country grows or shrinks in three ways: immigration, deaths, and births. America’s declining fertility rate often gets the headline treatment. Journalists are obsessed with the question of why Americans aren’t having more babies. And because I’m a journalist, be assured that we’ll do the baby thing in a moment. But it’s the other two factors—death and immigration—that are overwhelmingly responsible for the collapse in U.S. population growth.

First, we have to talk about COVID. The pandemic has killed nearly 1 million Americans in the past two years, according to the CDC. Tragically and remarkably, a majority of those deaths happened after we announced the authorization of COVID vaccines, which means that they were particularly concentrated in 2021. Last year, deaths exceeded births in a record-high number of U.S. counties. Never before in American history have so many different parts of the country shrunk because of “natural decrease,” which is the difference between deaths and births.

Excess deaths accounted for 50 percent of the difference in population growth from 2019 to 2021. That’s a clear sign of the devastating effect of the pandemic. But this statistic also tells us that even if we could had brought excess COVID deaths down to zero, U.S. population growth would still have crashed to something near an all-time low. To understand why, we have to talk about the second variable in the population equation: immigration.

As recently as 2016, net immigration to the United States exceeded 1 million people. But immigration has since collapsed by about 75 percent, falling below 250,000 last year. Immigration fell by more than half in almost all of the hot spots for foreign-born migrants, including New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco

Some of this reduction is a result of economic factors; immigration from Latin America has slowed as those economies have grown. Some of it is epidemiological; immigration declined around the world because of COVID lockdowns. But much of this is an American policy choice. The Trump administration worked to constrain not only illegal immigration but also legal immigration. And the Biden administration has not prioritized the revitalization of pro-immigration policy, perhaps due to fears of a xenophobic backlash from the center and right.

America’s bias against immigration is self-defeating in almost every dimension. “Immigration is a geopolitical cheat code for the U.S.,” says Caleb Watney, a co-founder of the Institute for Progress, a new think tank in Washington, D.C. “Want to supercharge science? Immigrants bring breakthroughs, patents, and Nobel Prizes in droves. Want to stay ahead of China? Immigrants drive progress in semiconductors, AI, and quantum computing. Want to make America more dynamic? Immigrants launch nearly 50 percent of U.S. billion-dollar start-ups. The rest of the world is begging international talent to come to their shores while we are slamming the door in their face.”

Finally, yes, Americans are having fewer babies—like basically every other rich country in the world. Since 2011, annual births have declined by 400,000. Two years ago, I wrote that “the future of the city is childless,” and the pandemic seems to have accelerated that future. Just look at Los Angeles: L.A. County recorded 153,000 live births in 2001 but fewer than 100,000 in 2021. At this rate, sometime around 2030, L.A. births will have declined by 50 percent in the 21st century.

Declining births get a lot of media coverage, with mandatory references to Children of Men, followed by mandatory references to Matrix-style birthing pods, followed by inevitable fights over whether it’s creepy for dudes like me to talk academically about raising a nation’s collective fertility. My personal opinion is that wanting and having children is a personal matter for families, even as the spillover effects of declining fertility make it a very public issue for the overall economy.

The fact that declining fertility is a global trend suggests that it’s not something we can easily reversed by mimicking another country’s politics or culture. Around the world, rising women’s education and employment seem to correlate with swiftly declining birth rates. In just about every possible way you could imagine, this is a good thing: It strongly suggests that economic and social progress give women more power over their bodies and their lives.

But I should stress that declining fertility isn’t always a sign of female empowerment, as indicated by the large and growing gap between the number of children Americans say they want and the number of children they have. There are many potential explanations for this gap, but one is that the U.S. has made caring for multiple children too expensive and cumbersome for even wealthy parents, due to a shortage of housing, the rising cost of child care, and the paucity of long-term federal support for children.

The implications of permanently slumped population growth are wide-ranging. Shrinking populations produce stagnant economies. Stagnant economies create wonky cultural knock-on effects, like a zero-sum mentality that ironically makes it harder to pursue pro-growth policies. (For example, people in slow-growth regions might be fearful of immigrants because they seem to represent a threat to scarce business opportunities, even though immigration represents these places’ best chance to grow their population and economy.) The sector-by-sector implications of declining population would also get very wonky very fast. Higher education is already fighting for its life in the age of remote school and rising tuition costs. Imagine what happens if, following the historically large Millennial cohort, every subsequent U.S. generation gets smaller and smaller until the end of time, slowly starving many colleges of the revenue they’ve come to expect.

Even if you’re of the dubious opinion that the U.S. would be better off with a smaller population, American demographic policy is bad for Americans who are alive right now. We are a nation where families have fewer kids than they want; where Americans die of violence, drugs, accidents, and illness at higher rates than similarly rich countries; and where geniuses who want to found new job-creating companies are forced to do so in other countries, which get all the benefits of higher productivity, higher tax revenue, and better jobs.

Simply put, the U.S. has too few births, too many deaths, and not enough immigrants. Whether by accident, design, or a total misunderstanding of basic economics, America has steered itself into the demographic danger zone

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter. He is also the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Plain English.

Source: Why US Population Growth Is in the Danger Zone

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Immigration Experts Contrast US Support for Ukrainian, Afghan Refugees – Voice of America

2022/03/28 Leave a comment

As elsewhere:

More than 3.7 million people have fled Ukraine in the month since Russia’s invasion began. United Nations officials said this kind of exodus has not been seen since World War II. And just as uncommon, some immigration attorneys say, is the quick response from countries welcoming refugees.

Ukrainian refugees are crossing mainly into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. Currently, Poland has taken the majority of refugees. Ukrainians also are trying to reunite with family members in the United States and have even arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border

Given the growing pressure on the Biden administration to find direct paths for displaced Ukrainians to come to the United States, the White House announced Thursday it would welcome as many as 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing the eastern European nation.

But is the U.S. accepting Ukrainian refugees differently from Afghan refugees, who similarly fled war in large numbers?

“Absolutely,” said Ally Bolour, an immigration lawyer in California, adding, “I really need to preface by saying that it’s amazing that the U.S. is going to let in supposedly 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.”

But, Bolour said, there is a disparity between the ways the U.S. has welcomed Afghans and Ukrainians, starting with the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation. That program provides legal status in the United States and protection from deportation for up to 18 months. It also provides work permits for people to work legally in the country.

For Ukraine, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced its TPS designation a month after Russia’s invasion.

For Afghanistan, the administration didn’t grant TPS for Afghan refugees living in the United States until about seven months after the U.S. left Afghanistan.

“I’m not criticizing the announcement that Ukrainians are getting in,” Bolour said. “It’s to show the comparison and contrast. It’s just to show that there’s a disparity.”

Humanitarian parole

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University, agreed that the U.S. was quick to announce TPS for Ukrainian refugees but noted that both Ukrainians and Afghans have to go through the normal immigration system.

“And we don’t have a good system for allowing people to come to the United States quickly,” Yale-Loehr said.

Yale-Loehr said that for Afghan refugees, the humanitarian parole process has been overwhelmed by more than 40,000 applicants, many of whom have been waiting for six months for a decision on their cases.

“I don’t see how the administration is going to be able to speed up processing with the expected flood of humanitarian parole applications from Ukrainians. And if the administration does speed it up for Ukrainians, I think there will be legitimate complaints about why they were able to do it for Ukrainians so much more quickly than for Afghans and people from other countries,” Yale-Loehr said.

Humanitarian parole is special permission given to those hoping to enter the United States under emergency circumstances. While it does not automatically lead to permanent residency, parolees can apply for legal status — either through the asylum process or other forms of sponsorship, if available — once they’re in the U.S.

Refugee resettlement is a complex bureaucratic process with strict vetting to determine whom to accept for resettlement.

But with the White House promise to welcome 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing the Russian invasion, some experts doubt the administration’s ability to process refugees faster than its current pace.

Yale-Loehr said he does not believe the administration will be able to admit anywhere near 100,000 people in the next six months.

“I think it will take a lot longer than people think to get those people here,” he added.

The process, for both Ukrainians and Afghans, begins at the United Nations, when a person is officially designated a refugee.

Once applicants pass the initial U.N. screening, they are referred to the United States. At this point, the refugees have to pass interviews, medical exams and background checks. Getting the green light to travel to the U.S. can take two to five years.

The number of refugees allowed under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was dramatically cut under the Trump administration, leaving fewer resources within the government and resettlement agencies to handle the significant increase of refugee applications and arrivals.

“The refugee resettlement agencies were devastated by the cuts that the Trump administration made. So, they’re not geared up again to be able to handle large flows of refugees yet. And it often takes a year or more for background checks for normal refugee processing. I don’t know how they’re going to speed that up,” Yale-Loehr said.

This fiscal year’s cap for refugee acceptance is 125,000 but only 6,494 refugees were admitted in the first five months mostly because refugee resettlement agencies are straining to support 76,000 Afghan evacuees, who are not counted toward the refugee cap.

Title 42 exemptions

Some Ukrainians have traveled to Mexico to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border where they hope to receive asylum in the United States.

Under current U.S. immigration law, officials at the border are expected to screen those who say they are afraid to go back to their home country because of persecution or ongoing conflict or a significant chance they might be tortured or killed.

But reaching the border does not guarantee immediate access into the U.S. because of the Title 42 guideline, which is a pandemic-related policy that mandates the rapid expulsion of migrants as a public health precaution. However, the Biden administration has agreed to allow U.S. immigration officials to use discretion toward Ukrainians at the border and decide on a case-by-case basis

“They just made an exception for Ukrainians as part of our foreign policy. I don’t think there’s anything in the legal framework that necessarily would have exempted Ukrainians from Title 42. So, I think they just made a foreign policy decision that they were about to let Ukrainians cross but not Russians or Afghans or people from other countries,” Yale-Loehr said.

As reported by the San Diego Tribune, Ukrainians have walked to the San Ysidro Port of Entry to request asylum and were allowed entry into the country.

Support from the American public for Ukrainian refugees and Afghan refugees also differs.

In March, a YouGov poll of 1,500 Americans showed that 54% of respondents are in favor of admitting Ukrainian refugees and 25% opposed.

For Afghan refugees, about 42% support welcoming Afghans.

Another poll, from Pew Research Center, showed that Democrats are more supportive of admitting Ukrainian refugees to the U.S. than are Republicans: 80% of Democrats said they supported admitting Ukrainian refugees, while for Republicans, the number was 57%.

A State Department spokesperson told VOA via email the U.S. commitment to Afghan refugees will not “wane as we open our doors to Ukrainians.”

“We are proud to have welcomed more than 75,000 Afghans in the United States since Kabul fell in August 2021. We continue to welcome Afghans through Operation Allies Welcome, including more than 600 who arrived within the past two or so weeks. Our commitment to resettling Afghans – particularly those who served on behalf of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan – remains steadfast,” a State Department spokesperson said.

Source: Immigration Experts Contrast US Support for Ukrainian, Afghan Refugees – Voice of America

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US Special Immigration Program Refers More Than 5,000 Afghan Refugees to Canada – Voice of America

2022/03/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

The U.S. State Department has referred more than 5,000 Afghan refugees who were seeking admission to the United States to a parallel program in Canada, where waiting times for permanent residence are shorter.

State Department officials confirmed to VOA those referred to the special immigration program are not simultaneously going through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

“We are working with Canada to refer up to 5,000 refugees to Canada, independent of our ongoing efforts for U.S. resettlement,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.

On the Canadian side, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said Afghan refugees referred by the U.S. are coming to Canada from third countries, where they have been located since they fled Afghanistan.

Masuma Haidari, 37 and a software engineer in Afghanistan, is one of the people benefiting from the partnership between the two countries. She was able to leave Afghanistan in August 2021 and lived in North Macedonia for more than six months.

Private organizations helped her leave Afghanistan and find her way through the program that led her to Canada.

Haidari told VOA she was about to get the keys to her first apartment in Calgary, Canada.

“It’s not bad,” Haidari said. “The government helps us with money and we (must) manage to cover all costs.”

But with her background in software engineering and having worked for the Afghan government, she hopes it will be useful in her new Canadian life.

“I think that the technical experiences will be useful in Canada. I will try to [transfer] my degree, my education and also I will be ready to find a job in the IT industry,” she added.

Though Haidari is able to start a new life, thousands of people are still hoping to leave Afghanistan.

Rescue efforts

U.S. military veterans, former intelligence and defense officials and others have dedicated their time to rescue those still in Afghanistan through newly formed groups like Operation North Star, which is all volunteer, or Task Force Pineapple, which is a public-private partnership.

Getting people out of Afghanistan is just part of the problem.

According to the Operation North Star website, they have almost 500 Afghans in third countries and more than 2,000 Afghans in safe homes in Afghanistan. Equally challenging has been guiding the Afghans through the complex process to resettle in the United States, including finding safe homes, leaving Afghanistan, finding a third country, applying to a refugee program and arriving in a new country.

The U.S. immigration system includes a patchwork of complex laws for regulating the flow of refugees seeking to enter the United States. The U.S. manages a strict vetting process to determine who to accept for resettlement and the process can take two to five years.

Slow U.S. processing is prompting some private groups to look elsewhere for a permanent home for the evacuees, with immigrant-friendly Canada emerging as a favored destination.

So far in Fiscal 2022, which began October 1, 2021, 133 Afghans were admitted into the U.S. through USRAP. In Fiscal 2021, that number was 872. Through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for those who served as interpreters and translators or were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government, the U.S. admitted 1,545 refugees in Fiscal 2022.

Jordan Kane, a volunteer at U.S.-based Operation North Star, said it has been difficult to secure U.S. refugee status for Afghans who have been recommended for relocation by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or a designated NGO. After the referral, it still takes at least two years for applicants to arrive in the United States.

“Thousands of Afghan refugees who had secured limited referrals to the U.S. resettlement process were given an option to be switched over to the Canadian process, with women leaders fleeing Taliban threats receiving preference,” Kane told VOA.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions program was dramatically cut under the Trump administration, leaving fewer resources within the government and the resettlement agencies to handle the significant increase of refugee applications and arrivals.

Resettlement in Canada

Once the U.S. identifies Afghan refugees who meet eligibility and admissibility requirements, they are then accepted for resettlement to Canada.

“As government-assisted refugees, Afghan refugees become permanent residents upon arrival and have access to the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP),” according to Jeffrey MacDonald, communications officer at IRCC.

The Canadian government provides temporary housing and up to 12 months of income support.

“Monthly income support levels for shelter, food and incidentals are guided by provincial or territorial social assistance rates where the refugee resides and vary depending on family size, configuration and city of residence,” MacDonald said in an email to VOA.

One refugee, whose case was transferred to Canada, is identified for security reasons only as “Farishta.” She was a women’s rights activist and prosecutor in the office of the Afghan attorney general.

“The Canadian program under which Farishta is applying is unique,” Kane said. “Like the U.S., Canada has a program for resettling Afghans who worked for them, who are mostly male military interpreters. However, unlike the U.S., Canada also has a program for admitting other groups of Afghans targeted by the Taliban, including female leaders, which is great.”

The Women at Risk Program recognizes the women and girls particularly vulnerable in refugee situations and prioritizes their resettlement to Canada.

“But Canada shouldn’t be the only country looking out for women like Farishta,” Kane said, adding, “the U.S. and other NATO allies need to copy this program to make sure we are not leaving Afghan women behind.”

The Canadian government has committed to accept 40,000 Afghan refugees. Included in that number are the 5,000 people being referred through the partnership with the United States. From August 2021 to March 2022, the country has admitted 8,815 under all available refugee categories.

Canada has a biometric verification process that refugees must complete before they enter Canada, according to Oliver Thorne, who is the executive director at the Vancouver-based Veterans Transition Network.

“Although these are Afghans that risked their lives to support and in many cases, save the lives of Canadian soldiers, our government policy will not allow them into Canada without biometric verification,” Thorne told VOA.

Thorne said the Canadian government policy needs to align with the urgency of these evacuation efforts and allow for biometrics to be done after arrival in Canada.

“Without this, evacuations will proceed at a trickle pace, leaving brave and deserving Afghans at risk of reprisals from the Taliban,” he added.

MacDonald, of the IRCC, responded that the biggest hurdle “is not the processing capacity of the government of Canada, it’s situational and environmental factors on the ground in Afghanistan. These are challenges that we are working on every day, there’s no lack of effort on the part of the government of Canada.”

Nevertheless, the private groups credit Canada for taking in a number of Afghans who might not be eligible for resettlement elsewhere. Most countries are offering visas to a limited number of Afghans who worked directly for them, refugee advocates said.

As for Farishta, she had hoped to resettle in the United States, Kane said.

“The United States was Farishta’s first choice, because she has more friends there, but she considers Canada to be a great option. … Two reasons for this: she, like many educated Afghans, speaks fluent English already. Second, Canada has more generous resettlement benefits than the U.S.,” Kane said

Source: US Special Immigration Program Refers More Than 5,000 Afghan Refugees to Canada – Voice of America

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Mora: What can we do about Latino undercount in 2020 census?

2022/03/14 Leave a comment

More on the undercount:

On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau released a long-awaited report estimating the 2020 census undercount. Given the challenges of conducting a census in a pandemic, undercounts had been expected by many experts and the report bore them out: The overall total population was deemed accurate, but white people and Asian Americans were overcounted, and other groups were undercounted, especially Latinos. In fact, the undercount rate of Latinos — at 5% — represents a staggering 300% increase compared with the 2010 census.

This is not a new problem. Latinos have been a “hard to count” population for decades. Analysts at the Census Bureau know their counts may miss those who have lower incomes, experience housing instability, speak languages other than English and distrust or fear the government — all qualities present in Latino communities, which include high percentages of immigrants and whose members face discrimination that can lead to economic disadvantage.

But while an undercount may have been expected, a 300% increase is not business as usual. Rather, it is an injustice and the culmination of a calculated attack on the census during Donald Trump’s presidency.

When President Trump was elected, the Census Bureau was in the process of changing the way it tabulates race and ethnicity. Drawing on more than a decade of research and with input from hundreds of civil rights and other organizations, the bureau had decided to allow respondents to identify their race and ethnicity in a “check all that apply” format, and to include among the options Hispanic/Latino and Middle Eastern/North African. The revised format was shown in tests to improve response rates for all groups, and especially for Latinos.

In 2018, Trump and his secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, halted the revision and demanded their own change in the 2020 census forms — a question to determine the citizenship of respondents. A lengthy legal battle ensued, ending in a 2019 ruling siding with Latino advocacy groups who had shown that a citizenship question would disparately affect Latino communities, dramatically depressing their participation and undermining the Constitution’s mandate to count “the whole number of persons in each state.”

The damage was done however. During 2019-2020, we conducted interviews with Latinos in two major metropolitan areas and found widespread distrust of the Trump administration that often led our interviewees to fear completing and submitting their census forms.

And now the result: A significant undercount of Latinos in the statistical base that governs political representation and many other functions of government. The 5% underrepresentation for a Latino population of more than 60 million could translate into at least $3 billion in lost funding for some towns and cities. The impact on political power is as profound. The undercount will likely mean fewer elected advocates for the kind of immigration and economic reforms that are central for Latino communities’ well-being.

In the end, the Trump administration got what it wanted. It undermined a burgeoning minority in the United States, falsifying the size and scale of the population and literally discounting them.

So where do we go from here? First, Robert L. Santos, the new director of the Census Bureau, can immediately adopt the revised race and ethnicity census question format so that all future research — including the interim surveys that supplement the decennial count — will allow Latinos to better identify themselves.

Next, Congress must establish a task force to examine the issue of Census Bureau integrity, with the goal of shielding the decennial count from overt political manipulation. The Trump administration’s behavior proves that we need a set of legislative policies that protect and reinforce the bureau’s independence and scientific goals. The decennial count must never again be held hostage to presidential whims.

Finally, Latino advocacy and community groups must organize with others to petition and pressure state legislators to use the Census Bureau’s adjusted estimates as they set policy in the coming years.

State and congressional redistricting based on the inaccurate count has already happened and can’t be undone, but the adjusted figures can help to combat some of the effects of undercounting on the way funds are allocated.

The nonpartisan work of the Census Bureau can and must be protected. Ultimately, the undercounts in 2020 affected people of color — including those who identify as Latino, Black and American Indian. The errors represent a critical issue for our democracy. They make communities invisible and trigger losses that will be felt for generations to come.

G. Cristina Mora is an associate professor of sociology and the co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. Julie A. Dowling is associate professor of sociology and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She served on the U.S. Census Bureau’s advisory committee on race and ethnicity from 2014 to 2020.

Source: Op-Ed: What can we do about Latino undercount in 2020 census?

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The millions of Americans who are ineligible be president are excluded from an important part of the American Dream.

2022/03/12 Leave a comment

While I understand the logic, unlikely that this is real barrier in practice given how politicized citizenship is the USA (e.g., Obama birther controversy, efforts to cast doubt on Kamala Harris). And the article would have benefitted at looking at how many immigrants became presidents or prime ministers in other countries such as Canada, Australia, UK and others in the last and current century:

The American Dream is the idea that regardless of where you were born and the circumstances, if you work hard, you can be successful in the United States. Dreaming of becoming President is the embodiment of this idea for many Americans. As President Ronald Reagan said: “everyone wants their dreams to come true… And America, above all places, gives us the freedom to do that, the freedom to reach out and make our dreams come true”.

However, over 20 million American citizens are excluded from this part of the American Dream if they would like to become President, because one must be a natural-born citizen of the United States to do so. In short, if you are a citizen of the United States but were not born there (a naturalized citizen) you are not eligible to be its Head of Government and Head of State. Since there are more immigrants in the United States than any other country in the world, this requirement to become President touches on the very relationship between candidacy and citizenship: why is someone who was born outside of the United States (but who holds citizenship) not eligible to become its President?

Tiers of US citizenship

More specifically, why is it acceptable for this rule in Article II of the American constitution to tacitly create tiers of citizenship in the United States? Let’s start by going to the history books of 1787. At the time, John Jay (the would be first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court) wrote to George Washington about providing “a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government”. This may have been more understandable at the time due to general fear of foreign influence and rumours of people allegedly designing a monarchy in the United States in secret that would be ruled by a foreign power. However, this rule – which assumes that loyalty is rooted in one’s birthplace – is more difficult to justify 235 years later.

Despite present day concerns of foreign interference (especially during federal elections), potential foreign threats are primarily related to how foreign actors can undermine public trust in the electoral system or spread inaccurate information; not about if a foreign power could rule the United States from the office of the President. Therefore, justifying the natural-born citizen rule based on threats of foreign influence is likely an outdated explanation, especially when considering how advanced the country’s security infrastructure is.

The US is an outlier among the G7

Furthermore, while it could be easily argued that the natural-born rule discriminates against naturalized citizens, that other political offices in the United States do not have being a natural-born citizen as a requirement, or that there are gray areas for what it means to be a natural-born citizen, one can also look to other democratic countries to demonstrate that this rule is an anomaly.

Out of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the United States is the only of these wealthy democracies with the natural-born citizen requirement to run as a candidate in an election to be the Head of Government or Head of State. This shows that out of the world’s leading liberal democracies, the United States is an outlier regarding its candidacy rules for running for one of the highest positions in the country.

Looking at the different criteria of the G7 countries, while the United States has a natural-born citizen requirement to be President, it is at least an elected position. Compare this with the various appointment processes for the positions in five out of the seven countries.

Although the comparison of ‘elected vs. appointment’ may initially be a compelling argument, it is important to acknowledge that it misses a key point: the appointment processes in the other countries do not create a hierarchy of citizens within their own state.

Simply put, in the United States, a naturalized citizen is considered to be “less” of citizen and not eligible to run for President; for the sole reason of being born outside of the country. If they moved to a different G7 country and earned a citizenship there, they would hold the same rights as any natural-born citizen of that country to become its Head of Government or Head of State (for those countries which are not constitutional monarchies).

How all Americans could become eligible to be president

While this reality in the United States is discouraging for many naturalized citizens, there is still hope for potential changes. The easiest of changes would be for the Supreme Court to clarify some of the gray areas around what it means to be a natural-born citizen. One of these is ruling on whether a person born outside of the United States whose parents are both American citizens qualifies as a natural-born citizen. For example, in the latest of many debates over potential presidential candidates’ eligibility to become president, in 2016 there were discussions about whether Senator Ted Cruz was eligible, because he was born in Canada to a US-citizen mother and a Cuban US-resident father, but was naturalized at birth by a statute provided by Congress.

A more challenging change would be to allow all American citizens to run for President, since it would likely require a constitutional amendment. Additionally, amending the constitution would require either a joint resolution that is passed by a two-thirds vote or have applications from two-thirds of the state legislature that would have Congress call a convention in response. Although a difficult feat, and one which would require a substantial national campaign, it is one worth pursuing to make sure that all citizens – both natural-born and naturalized – hold the same rights and opportunities in the United States.

Until naturalized American citizens gain the ability to run for President, the freedom Reagan spoke of does not apply equally to all American citizens. Unfortunately, for any who wish to run for President, they will have to wake up from the American Dream.

Source: The millions of Americans who are ineligible be president are excluded from an important part of the American Dream.

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The 2020 census had big undercounts of Black people, Latinos and Native Americans

2022/03/12 Leave a comment

More on the census and undercounts:

The 2020 census continued a longstanding trend of undercounting Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, while overcounting people who identified as white and not Latino, according to estimates from a report the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.

Latinos — with a net undercount rate of 4.99% — were left out of the 2020 census at more than three times the rate of a decade earlier.

Among Native Americans living on reservations (5.64%) and Black people (3.30%), the net undercount rates were numerically higher but not statistically different from the 2010 rates.

People who identified as white and not Latino were overcounted at a net rate of 1.64%, almost double the rate in 2010. Asian Americans were also overcounted (2.62%). The bureau said based on its estimates, it’s unclear how well the 2020 tally counted Pacific Islanders.

The long-awaited findings came from a follow-up survey the bureau conductedto measure the accuracy of the latest head count of people living in the U.S., which is used to redistribute political representation and federal funding across the country for the next 10 years.

Other estimates the bureau released on Thursday revealed that the most recent census followed another long-running trend of undercounting young children under age 5.

COVID and Trump administration meddling hurt the count’s accuracy

While the bureau’s stated goal is to “count everyone once, only once, and in the right place,” miscounts have come with every census. Some people are counted more than once at different addresses, driving overcounts, while U.S. residents missing from the census fuel undercounting.

Disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic and interference by former President Donald Trump’s administration raised alarms about the increased risk of the once-a-decade tally missing swaths of the country’s population. COVID-19 also caused multiple delays to the bureau’s Post-Enumeration Surveythat’s used to determine how accurate the census results are and inform planning for the next national count in 2030.

During the news conference announcing the follow-up survey results, Census Bureau Director Robert Santos — who, before becoming the agency’s head, told Bloomberg CityLab that he believed the census was “being sabotaged” during the Trump administration to produce results that benefit Republicans — acknowledged “an unprecedented set of challenges” facing the bureau over the last couple of years.

“Many of you, including myself, voiced concerns. How could anyone not be concerned? These findings will put some of those concerns to rest and leave others for further exploration,” Santos, a Biden administration appointee, said during the news conference announcing the follow-up survey results.

The bureau said previously that it believes the census results are “fit to use” for reallocating each state’s share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes, as well as redrawing voting districts.

Census numbers are also used to guide the distribution of an estimated $1.5 trillion each year in federal money to communities for health care, education, transportation and other public services. Some tribal, state and local officials are considering ways of challenging the results for potential corrections that would be factored into future funding decisions.

The report the bureau released on Thursday only provided a national-level look at the count’s accuracy, and the agency says it’s planning to release state-level metrics this summer.

“There are a lot more states for us to check and review and look through,” said Timothy Kennel, assistant division chief for statistical methods, during a webinar before Thursday’s release.

Civil rights groups are looking for remedies

Still, these national-level metrics resurfaced concerns among civil rights organizations and other census watchers who have warned for years about the risk of racial gaps in the census numbers leading to inequitable allocations of political power and federal money.

In response to the bureau reporting that American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations continued to have the highest net undercount rate among racial and ethnic groups, Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said the results “confirm our worst fears.”

“Every undercounted household and individual in our communities means lost funding and resources that are desperately needed to address the significant disparities we face,” added Sharp, who is also the vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Wash., in a statement.

Marc Morial, the president and CEO of the National Urban League, which led a federal lawsuit in 2020 to try to stop Trump officials from cutting counting efforts short, said the group’s lawyers are considering returning to court to try to secure a remedy.

“We’ve talked about voter suppression. Now we see population suppression,” Morial said on a call with reporters. “And when you tie them together, it is the poisonous tree of seeking to diminish the distribution of power in this nation on a fair and equitable basis.”

Other longtime census watchers see this moment as a chance to reimagine what the next count in 2030 could look like

Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, said the next census should be taken in a “much more modern and effective way” to address the persistent undercounting of Latinos and other people of color.

“This whole notion of coming up with a master address file and mailing everybody an invitation to participate and hoping that they respond, and if they don’t, you go knock on their doors, that’s an obsolete way now of counting the U.S. population. We need a better way. I don’t have the answer to what that better way is, but I want to work with the Census Bureau to figure it out,” Vargas added.

In addition to looking ahead to the next decade, Vargas noted a more immediate concern: how to improve the annual population estimates that the bureau produces using 2020 census data and that states and local communities rely on to get their shares of federal funding.

Asked by NPR if there are any plans to factor the new over and undercounting rates into those estimates, Karen Battle, chief of the bureau’s population division, replied the agency is “taking steps in that direction.”

“But we have to do research so that we can understand whether or not we can do that,” Battle said.

Source: The 2020 census had big undercounts of Black people, Latinos and Native Americans

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Immigration comes at a devastating cost to Black Americans

2022/03/12 Leave a comment

Not sure degree to which this concern is relevant given the growth in Black immigration, about 1 in 10 currently, projected to rise to about one-third by 2060 (Key findings about Black immigrants in the US – Pew).

Congress continues to relentlessly push immigration policies that’ll make Black Americans poorer.

That’s not their stated goal, of course. But that’ll nevertheless be the end result of their proposal to amnesty millions of illegal immigrants and boost the level of legal immigration. The lasting effects of uncontrolled, mass immigration on Black Americans are plainly obvious and have been well-documented throughout our country’s history. So how can any Black politician in good conscience advocate for a more expansive immigration policy that would continue to do us harm?

Don’t listen to those who say we supporters of immigration reduction want to put an end to it or that we’re “anti-immigrant.” They’re only trying to shut down the debate. For decades I have worked to help welcome and assimilate immigrants in Miami, a city with one of the largest foreign-born populations in the U.S.

Source: Immigration comes at a devastating cost to Black Americans

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Why it’s hard to know how accurate the 2020 census was

2022/03/10 Leave a comment

Of interest:

No census in the U.S. has been perfect.

Exactly how imperfect the national head count was in 2020 may start to be revealed in a report the Census Bureau is set to release Thursday.

While the 2020 census may now seem like a distant memory, any confirmed over or undercounts carry both near and long-term implications on how political representation and federal money are distributed in the United States.

Disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic, historic hurricane and wildfire seasons and years of interference by former President Donald Trump’s administration made it especially difficult for the bureau to try to count every person living in the country. These extraordinary challenges have also made it harder to pinpoint the tally’s accuracy.

For the next decade, any census errors would be baked into the data used to reallocate each state’s share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes; redraw voting districts for every level of government; help distribute an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal funds for public services; and form the country’s understanding of who lives in the United States.

Here’s what else you need to know to decode the Census Bureau’s upcoming data quality report:

The over or undercount of the total population masks racial inequities

After the 2010 count, the bureau’s director at the time, Robert Groves, called the tally “an outstanding census” for having a net overcount of the total U.S. population of 0.01%, which translates into overcounting by about 36,000 people.

Focusing on just that sliver of a percent, however, would mean overlooking a stark flaw along racial and ethnic lines: Decade after decade, the U.S. census has overcounted people who identify as white and not Latino, while undercounting people of color. The 2010 tally was no exception.

Civil rights organizations and other census watchers are concerned this trend is likely to have continued in 2020, perpetuating inequitable distributions of political power and federal money for another 10 years.

COVID-19 made it harder to measure who was left out of the count

Just as the pandemic disrupted door knocking for the census, it also delayed in-person interviews for the follow-up survey the bureau relies on to determine over and undercounting rates by race, ethnicity and other demographic characteristics.

That has many census watchers worried about how accurate the results of the Post-Enumeration Survey will be.

Faced with many households’ reluctance to speak with strangers at their doors and general census fatigue, the bureau extended the survey’s interviewing schedule. The shifts raised the risk of households not accurately recalling who was living at their home address on Census Day, which was April 1, 2020.

Still, bureau officials have said that despite the challenges, they believe the survey’s estimates “will produce a helpful picture.”

Quality metrics at the state level and lower would tell a fuller story

The bureau says Thursday’s report – the first of a series on the quality of the 2020 census data based on Post-Enumeration Survey estimates – will provide only a national-level look.

Counting efforts can range greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood, which means to get a fuller story on the accuracy of the 2020 tally, metrics at the state level and lower are needed.

Estimates by state are expected from the bureau this summer. However, the survey is not conducted in remote areas of Alaska. It also does not include people experiencing homelessness or those living in college dorms, prisons or other group quarters, where residents were particularly difficult to count accurately in the early months of the pandemic.

In December, the bureau announced it is not planning to release new over and undercounting rates for counties and smaller local communities and needs to do more research on how to produce those quality metrics below the state level.

Source: Why it’s hard to know how accurate the 2020 census was

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Why Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants Matters for US Economic Recovery | Immigration

2022/03/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

There are 10.4 million undocumented immigrants working and living in the United States. Approximately 5 million of them are considered essential workers — serving as health care professionals and staff at hospitals, as agricultural and farm workers producing the country’s food, as delivery drivers and grocery store clerks, and in other industries that have helped keep the country afloat. Some of them are Dreamers, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, or Temporary Protected Status holders. Yet they were excluded from federal pandemic relief efforts and unable to receive stimulus checks and many do not have access to health care.

The Center for American Progress, a Corporation grantee, makes the case for the Biden administration and Congress to create a pathway to citizenship and permanent protections for undocumented immigrants as they continue to aid the country’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The author, Trinh Q. Truong, writes that creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would help ensure a robust economic recovery for all Americans. Should congressional efforts fail, Truong urges the Biden administration to take immediate executive action to promote stability in the lives of undocumented immigrants, their families, and their communities.

Source: Why Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants Matters for US Economic Recovery | Immigration

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After years of US population growth, it’s time for a pause | TheHill

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Rare questioning of the conventional wisdom of growth strategies and raising of related issues:

In the long run, no substantial benefits will result from the further growth of America’s population. The gradual stabilization of the U.S. population through voluntary means would contribute significantly to America’s ability to solve its problems.

That statement from a half-century ago was the unequivocal central finding of the groundbreaking report by the U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, submitted to the president and Congress on March 27, 1972.

However, rather than moving toward a gradual stabilization, as was clearly recommended, America’s population over the past 50 years has grown to 334 million, an increase of 123 million (about 60 percent) since 1972.

In addition, America’s population is projected to continue growing over the coming decades. According to its main projection series, the Census Bureau expects the nation’s population to be close to 400 million around mid-century.

Preceding the commission’s establishment by several years, former President Richard M. Nixon remarked that “One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population… Whether man’s response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today.”

Nixon’s observations are even more prescient today. Given climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution and congestion, population growth in America and the rest of the world remains among the serious challenges to human destiny in the 21st century.

Similarly and more recently, naturalist Sir David Attenborough remarked, “It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth, or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”

Without a doubt, America’s population growth is a major factor affecting domestic demand for resources, including water, food and energy, and the worsening of the environment and climate change. There is hardly any major problem facing America with a solution that would be easier if the nation’s population were larger. On the contrary, population stabilization would help to resolve several.

Stabilizing the population would reduce pressures on the environment, climate and the depletion of resources and gain time for America to find solutions to its pressing issues. If the United States intends to address climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, etc., it must consider how its population affects each issue.

In contrast to the commission’s central finding, some do not recognize the need to stabilize the population. Their reasons are largely based on profit, politics and power. They give little attention to the consequences of population growth on the nation’s future.

For instance, many economists contend that continued population growth is needed to fuel economic growth. Their “bigger-is-better” arguments simply ignore or dismiss the negative consequences for the country, which are threats to the wellbeing of today’s Americans as well as the long-term sustainability of the nation.

Others argue the nation would be “more happy” with more people. Slow population growth, they claim, hurts not only America’s economic growth but also the national mood. Concerns about climate change and the environment are omitted from their rhetoric.

Some advance nationalistic appeals for continued population growth, maintaining that the more patriotic one is the more one ought to believe in a large and growing America.

Another argument is the view that “America isn’t full” and can accommodate many more people, particularly more immigrants. Those advocates, however, rarely ever specify how large the population must become to be considered full nor do explain why America needs to be full.

Thousands of scientists worldwide take an opposing view. Among their major recommendations for governments to address the climate emergency is a call for the stabilization of the world population, or ideally, a gradually reduced population within a framework that ensures social integrity.

Gradually stabilizing America’s population will provide an exemplary model for other countries to emulate. Rather than racing to increase the size of their respective populations in a world with 8 billion humans and growing, nations would see America moving away from the unsustainable demographic strategy.

As American couples are having fewer children than in the past for a host of social, economic and personal reasons, the nation’s fertility rate is unlikely to return to the replacement level any time soon. And pro-growth calls for Congress or the administration to establish pro-natalist policies to raise fertility appear unlikely to be adopted.

So, with the nation’s fertility below the replacement level, stabilizing America’s population will necessarily involve substantially reducing immigration levels, estimated at approximately 1.1 million per year. If immigration levels were, for example, close to zero, America’s projected population in 2060 would be 320 million versus 405 million if immigration continued at the same pace.

After 50 years since the commission presented its central finding, it is well past the time for the White House, Congress and the American public to embrace the gradual stabilization of the population, which is essential for ensuring the country’s vitality, prosperity and sustainability.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Source: After years of US population growth, it’s time for a pause | TheHill

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