How Intermarriage, Immigration Will Change U.S. Latinos
Among the fifty most populous nations in the world today are found four additional Western Hemisphere nations. These are accordingly in 2011: Colombia (ranked 30th with 45 million people), Argentina (ranked 33rd with 42 million people), Peru (ranked 42nd with 29 million people), and Venezuela (ranked 45th with 28 million people). By 2050, it is projected that only three of these nations will rank among the top most populous nations in the world besides those already being considered. These include Colombia (ranked 33rd with 56 million people), Argentina (ranked 35th with 54 million people), and Venezuela (ranked 47th with 40 million people). Peru will have been dropped by 2050 from among the ranks of the world’s 50 most populous nations.
Among our four selected Western Hemisphere nations the US and Canada will continue to be net-migrant receiving nations, while Mexico and Brazil (to a significantly lesser extent) will continue to be net-migrant sending nations. Thus Canada which in 2011 received 192,000 immigrants is projected to receive 225,000 immigrants in 2050. The US, meanwhile, will continue to receive large numbers of immigrants ranging from 1,120,000 in 2011 and by 2050 will have increased the projected number of immigrants received to 1,758,000, affirming the presence of a marked trend during the entirety of the period from 2011-2050 of increased migration to the US. It is clear that without said continued and increased migration during the length of this period the US would not remain the third most populous nation in the world after China and India (or India and China by 2025 and after to mid-century). By comparison Brazil’s emigrants will remain a steady flow throughout the period generating 18,000 emigrants in 2011 and the same number by 2050. Considering that Brazil is the most populous nation in Latin America this is a relatively small number of net emigrants. Brazilians are basically staying put. The largest Brazilian migration to and settlement in the US is found in the Northeast especially in the state of Massachusetts (New England).
Mexico for its part will continue to produce a larger out-migrating population but this population will continue to decrease in number throughout the period. Thus in 2011 Mexico will have generated 368,000 emigrants but by 2050 this number will be 250,000. While most of these projected Mexican immigrants will likely continue emigrating to the US, it is clear that their number will not match the much higher numbers recorded between 1995-2005, when their number per the International Data Set ranged from 415,000 to 485,000 respectively. Damien Cave, “For Mexicans Looking North, a New Calculus Favors Home,” New York Times, 5 July 2011, quoted a yet higher figure noting stating that Mexican migration to the US peaked at “about 525,000 annually between 2000 to 2004.” Whereas Mexican migration will continue to add to the US Latino population during the period, it will increasingly be less significant than the immediately preceding era of high migration following on NAFTA’s passage in 1994. Arguably if the first Great Migration of Mexicans to the US occurred during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), we could posit that the second Great Migration occurred in the post-NAFTA era (1995-2005).
Conceivably then a greater portion of the future growth in the US Mexican population will be proportionately attributable more to increased births over deaths (fertility) over the next four decades than migration. And as noted, the projected immigration trend will be occurring even as Mexico’s overall population experiences continued growth. Notwithstanding these trends Mexico will surely continue to be one of the world’s leaders in the number of its nationals who choose or are forced to migrate to survive economically, socially, and otherwise.
The pace of integration between the three North American nations and their respective economies and peoples will continue to consolidate if this scenario holds. By 2050 with several states in the West and Southwest holding majority Mexican American and Latino populations, it is conceivable that as trends develop in states like Texas and California and others there will be an accompanying trend wherein increased numbers of Mexican American and Latino federal, state, and local officials are routinely elected and appointed to the leading offices. By mid-century this will have notable effects on the quality of public policies affecting this ethnic population. The rancorous policies of the current period will be by then a bitter memory of the recent past, remembered maybe as the revanchist politics of a fast-fading and once forbidding white ethnic majority. Perhaps power and privilege not to mention opportunities will come to be more justly if not fairly distributed in our society by 2050 in these and other important regions of the country. In short, it is hoped that a more progressive and substantive politics that takes equality and fairness seriously may emerge where Latino claims are concerned. After all, demographic change carries with it considerable consequences.
With decreased Mexican migration to the US it is also conceivable that this may mean that the percentage of the US Latino population that claims Mexican ancestry will decrease from its longtime historic level of constituting two-thirds of the overall number. Continued high rates of intermarriage by US Latinos, a pattern accelerating in the post-1960s era, and increased migration to the US by Latinos from Central and South America and the Caribbean area, may contribute to this possible trend. Whether or not it comes to pass, it is clear that the rapidly growing US Latino population is contributing together with other ethnic communities with significant migration to the US to the growing ethnic diversity of the US population. All these demographic elements taken together are among the leading trends contributing to the already projected watershed moment in which whites or those of European ancestry in the US will become a demographic minority by about 2042.
Professor Roberto R. Calderón, Ph.D. from the Department of History at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.
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