Trump making wrong case when it comes to immigration

The big immigration issue in the United States is not President Trump’s “wall.”

The big immigration issue in the United States is how much the United States needs immigration.

As the Census Bureau recently reported, population growth nationwide between July 2017 and July 2018 was the lowest in 80 years. Since 2010, the population of children actually has decreased by one percent. Births are down. Deaths are up.

Florida continued the state’s recovery from the Great Depression, joining Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico and Utah as having the fastest rates of growth. Almost 20 percent of the states lost population. Florida actually gained in the number of children. Twenty-nine states had fewer. Much of Florida’s gain, however, came from migration — people moving from other states and especially other countries. Example: Many Venezuelans with the means to leave their homeland have come here.

Brookings Institution researcher William Frey said, “Because of the recent decline in natural increase, immigration now contributes nearly as much to population growth, and is projected to be the primary contributor to national population growth after 2030 as natural increase continues to decline.

“Thus immigration — its size and its attributes — will be an important contributor to the nation’s future population that is growing slowly and aging quickly.”

Obviously, this is not the immigration debate Washington is having. Trump remains fixated on a campaign applause line, though his former chief of staff said the administration ditched the idea of a “wall” last year. His current chief of state also dismissed the idea in 2015 while a member of Congress. Yet Trump persists.

Contrary to the president’s tweets, responsible members of both parties agree that we need secure borders and updated immigration policies. Those policies, however, must assume that we will need more immigrants, not fewer. Otherwise, we risk becoming the next Japan, where analysts describe the aging population as a “dire threat” to the country’s economy.

Frey said Washington must begin “a more serious discussion of U.S. immigration policy because of the contributions that immigrants will make to growing America’s society and economy.” That discussion must focus on legal and illegal immigrants.

Numerous studies show that the economy would benefit from granting legal status to those who meet certain conditions and don’t pose a safety threat. Polls regularly show that most Americans favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who want it.

That provision was in the

2013 immigration reform bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support. It never got a vote in the House because of the same Republican obstructionists who bucked the spending deal and forced the shutdown because they want money for a “wall.”

Congress also should encourage the transfusions that legal immigration brings to the economy. According to a report by the Kauffman Foundation, immigrants started 30 percent of new American companies in 2016, up from 13 percent in 1996.

Yet the Trump administration is doing the opposite. Led by Xenophobe-in-Chief Stephen Miller, the administration wants to issue fewer visas, restrict asylum and return more refugees. Trump wants to deport self-proclaimed Dreamers who know only this country as their home. Miller has suggested making it harder for legal immigrants to stay if they use public benefits, including health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

Demographics, however, don’t lie. That Census report notes that in 2030, all Baby Boomers — like me — will be older than 65 and on our own public benefit programs.

At that point, older Americans will outnumber children for the first time. The report called the 2030s “a transformative decade for the U.S. population. Net international migration is projected to overtake natural increase in 2030 as the primary driver of population growth in the United States, another demographic first.”

As Trump fixates on the border with Mexico, more people are here illegally because they overstayed a visa and the number of illegal immigrants is down. But emotion drives this issue, not facts.

It may terrify some Americans that in the generation born starting in 2007 — “Z-Plus” — whites will be just the largest minority.

What should terrify all Americans is the prospect of too few young people supporting too many older people.