Reverse Immigration Will Mean Fewer Hispanics in 2010 Census Than Leaders Expect
By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I've written a column and blog posts on what seems to me a decline in, and perhaps a reversal of, Latino immigration. Here's some more anecdotal evidence of this, an article on the growing number of vacant apartments on Tucson. The housing bubble was especially large in Arizona, and so has been the decline over the past several years in housing values. In addition, the state has passed some tough laws targeting employers of illegal immigrants. The Tucson Citizen article notes that vacancy rates aren't very high around the University of Arizona (where the market is presumably students) but reach 25 percent on the heavily Hispanic south and west sides of town. If this trend is real and continues, I think there will be a lot fewer Hispanics found in the 2010 census enumeration than 2000-07 demographic trends would lead Hispanic leaders and others to expect. They're going to charge that there has been a huge undercount and will press hard for the enumeration to be altered by statistical sampling.
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Tags: immigration | census
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Reader Comments
Fewer Hispanics
Didn't the government publish a projection last year or the year before stating that by 2050 whites would no longer be a majority?
I responded to that projection by saying that it was patently flawed, and I know that time will prove me correct.
It remains to be seen what the (real) 2010 census figures will be. If it turns out to be true that the Hispanic numbers will go down, will that be in comparison to 2000? Keep in mind that, in a decade, there may have been a dramatic jump, so even a real accounting may still show an increae over 2000.
Also, I would not be surprised if African American numbers turn out to be stagnant.
Two more observations:
1) If the White House does intend to cook the census figures, will we ever know the real numbers?
2) We will certainly never know the true numbers of undocumented people, will we?
Reverse Immigration
I am a North Carolina home builder and I can tell you this is true. We use a lot of Hispanics and they are going back home in droves. They simply will not stay here and pay our rent prices when they can go home a live for 50% less. We have had sub-contractors leave with their whole families; even with kids that were born here and have never been to their parent's home country.
Ugh, not the citizenship thing again
Ted, anyone with at least one American parent is an American citizen at birth. Obama's mother was an American- nobody disputes this- and that means he could have been born on the moon and would still be an American from birth.
When one of the parents is an American, the child is an American, and the location of the birth is completely irrelevant.
Just because the illegal immigrants (ab)use the 'born inside the US' ruling to create anchor babies doesn't mean that's the *only* way to become an American citizen.
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