Under Trump plan, whites could stay in majority
President Trump’s proposal to cut legal immigration rates would delay the date that white Americans become a minority of the population by as few as one or as many as five additional years, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
The plan, released by the White House last month, would scale back a program that allows people residing in America to sponsor family members living abroad for green cards, and would eliminate the “diversity visa program” that benefits immigrants in countries with historically low levels of migration to the U.S. Together, the changes would disproportionately affect immigrants from Latin America and Africa.
The Census Bureau projects that minority groups will outnumber non-Hispanic whites in America in 2044. The Post’s analysis projects that, were Trump’s plan to be implemented, the date would now be between 2045 and 2049, depending on how parts of it are implemented.
(The Post’s methodology for estimating the annual impact of Trump’s proposed cuts is explained in more detail at the bottom of this story. Projecting this far into the future based entails certain assumptions that could alter the range, but demographic experts said The Post’s approach was reasonable.)
All told, the proposal could cut off entry for more than 20 million legal immigrants over the next four decades. The change could have profound effects on the size of the American population and its composition, altering projections for economic growth and the age of the nation’s workforce, as well as shaping its politics and culture, demographers and immigration experts say.
“By greatly slashing the number of Hispanic and black African immigrants entering America, this proposal would reshape the future United States. Decades ahead, many fewer of us would be nonwhite, or have nonwhite people in our families,” said Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development, a think tank that has been critical of the proposal.
Trump’s plan calls for eliminating all family-based visa programs that are not used for sponsoring either minor children or spouses. That means several current family-based visa programs would be canceled. It also calls for the elimination of the diversity visa lottery, and the reallocation of its 50,000 visas to reduce the number of immigrants already on a backlog and to go to a new visa based on “merit.”
The Post analyzed a low-end and high-end estimate for cuts to legal immigration under the Trump plan. The low-end estimate, provided by Numbers USA, a group that favors limiting immigration, suggests that about 300,000 fewer immigrants will be admitted legally on an annual basis. A high-end estimate from the Cato Institute, which favors immigration, suggests as many 500,000 fewer immigrants would be admitted. Cato bases its number, in part, on assumptions that more family visa categories will be cut.
Last August, Trump endorsed a Senate bill written by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., that would cut legal immigration levels by close to 500,000 people annually, according to estimates by the bill’s authors. The White House has not released any estimates of its own plan.
If Trump’s plan is not implemented, the white share of the population is expected to fall from above 60 percent in 2018 to below 45 percent in 2060. The Post’s lower estimates of the impact of Trump’s proposal show whites staying the majority group until 2046.
To its defenders, the White House proposal offers a reasonable compromise. Trump would move America to an immigration system based less on bringing families together or encouraging diversity and more on bringing in those with skills proven to the economy.
“It is time to begin moving toward a merit-based immigration system — one that admits people who are skilled, who want to work, who will contribute to our society, and who will love and respect our country,” Trump said in his State of the Union address last week.
But by reducing the country’s overall population, the plan would eventually reduce the overall growth rate of the American economy.
The plan could also raise the median age of the American worker. About four of every five immigrants is projected to be under the age of 40, while only half of the country’s overall population is that young, according to Census Bureau data. A demographic crunch is already expected due to millions of retirements from the aging baby boomer generation, raising concerns about the long-term solvency of programs such as Social Security and Medicare that rely on worker contributions.
The plans could have longterm ramifications for America’s political system, given that about 54 percent of all immigrants are naturalized within 10 years and thus able to vote.
Hispanic immigrants who are registered voters favor Democrats over Republicans by a 70 to 18 margin, and registered voters who are Asian immigrants favor Democrats by a 50 to 33 margin, according to the most recent data available from the Pew Research Center.
But while these effects of delaying America’s diversification would be significant, they would not fundamentally change the country’s demographic destiny. “You can shut the door to everyone in the world and that won’t change,” said Roberto Suro, an immigration expert at the University of Southern California. “If your primary concern is that the American population is becoming less white, it’s already too late.”