Like strong Texas economic growth? Thank an immigrant
The Texas economy has consistently outperformed the rest of the nation with a healthy growth rate and low unemployment, and for this, we should thank immigrants.
Immigrants build our homes, staff our restaurants, provide domestic services and start the most businesses per capita. The Texas economy would shrink without them.
In our capitalist system, the biggest driver of economic growth is a growing population. More people mean more demand for homes, goods to fill those homes and consumables to keep them alive. More people mean more workers to fill more jobs to produce more wealth.
Native-born Americans, though, have not given birth to enough children to maintain the population since 1971, according to U.S. Census data. The only reason the U.S. population has grown—and the economy with it—is from immigration.
Texas has the fastest-growing population in the United States. While we have more children per capita than most other states, immigrants are an essential factor.
International immigrants made up 104,976 of the 187,545 people Texas added between July 2017 and July 2018, according to Census estimates. Most of them are concentrated in the big cities, including San Antonio and Houston.
Houston is truly a city of immigrants. A quarter of its residents were born in another country, and 44 percent of children have a foreign-born parent. Houstonians speak 145 languages, and a third of children over the age of 5 speak a language
other than English at home.
In San Antonio, 44 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home, but only 14 percent are foreign-born.
The city estimates only 85,000 people do not have documentation out of a population of 1.5 million.
White supremacists want the government to reverse these trends and make the U.S. a non-Hispanic white nation. They claim the U.S. will suffer from growing diversity, but the economic data suggests otherwise.
Four of the 10 fastestgrowing cities in the nation are in Texas. People do not move here because the state offers generous social services; everyone knows the Texas Legislature is stingy that way. People move here because there are jobs and opportunities.
Texas was the first state to bounce back from the Great Recession, powered by the energy industry, high technology businesses and imports and exports with Mexico. The Texas unemployment rate dipped below 4 percent a year before the rest of the nation did.
If Texas were a country, it would have the 10th largest economy in the world with a gross state product of more than $1.6 trillion in 2017.
Like the rest of the country, Texas has more job openings than it has people looking for work. To grow economically, we need more immigrants, not fewer.
What’s happening in Texas is indicative of the rest of the nation. Nativeborn Americans are getting older and having fewer children; the birth rate among native-born Americans hit a 30-year low in 2018.
Minorities accounted for 92 percent of population growth between 2010 and 2018, with Latinos comprising just under half of the nation’s overall growth. In 2020, nonwhite and Hispanic white children will outnumber Anglo children nationwide.
Immigration and international trade are the driving forces behind Texas’ wealth.
Mexico recently became America’s largest trading partner, with billions of dollars in goods traveling along Interstate 35. The Port of Houston’s exports are increasing trade annually.
To see what would happen if the U.S. were to close its doors to immigrants, look at Russia or Japan.
The Soviet Union was the second-most-powerful nation on Earth, and Japan had the second-largest economy in the 1980s.
The populations of both countries are shrinking along with their global importance.
Immigration is essential to maintain the population and drive economic success. Take away migration and GDP growth would lose at least a point, and the U.S. economy would look a lot more like Europe’s.
America’s demographics are changing as a result of immigration.
Greater Houston is 37.3 percent non-Hispanic white, 36.5 percent Hispanic, 17 percent African American and 7.5 percent Asian. By all accounts, this is what the entire nation will likely look like by 2045.
This is when the U.S. will live up to our founders’ promise that America will be a nation based on ideas and merit, not blood and class; a place where people are judged by their work, not the circumstances of their birth.
The U.S. is not a white nation, it is an immigrant nation.
Immigrants have always been the nation’s backbone. They keep our country vibrant, and anyone who denounces them is anti-American.
Immigration is essential to maintain the population and drive economic success. Take away migration and GDP growth would lose at least a point, and the U.S. economy would look a lot more like Europe’s.