Demographics are back in the discussion again.
It’s no secret that the nation’s shifting demographics will create new electoral dynamics in America. Breitbart reports that mass legal immigration, which adds 1.2 million foreign nationals to the American population annually, is creating an electoral landscape that will be unfavorable to Republicans in the next few decades.
Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen report:
The single biggest threat to Republicans’ long-term viability is demographics.
The numbers simply do not lie. America, as a whole, and swing states, in particular, are growing more diverse, more quickly. There is no way Republicans can change birth rates or curb this trend — and there’s not a single demographic megatrend that favors Republicans.
Certain reports show that the foreign-born voting population is projected to make up approximately ten percent of the voting populace by the 2020 presidential election. In other words, one out of every ten voters will be born outside of the U.S.
America’s legal immigration levels, which have hovered around 800,000 to 1.5 million admissions per year for the last three decades, have made the Hispanic voting population swell to unprecedented numbers. A first in American history, Hispanic Americans will be the largest voting minority in a national election in 2020, overtaking African Americans.
The Atlantic senior editor Ronald Brownstein conducted research revealing that about 90 percent of House congressional districts with a foreign-born population above the national average were claimed by Democrats during election season.
In the same token, less than ten percent of House Republicans represent districts with foreign-born populations greater than 14 percent.
This trend holds with the U.S. Senate as well. Republicans control 30 Senate seats in 20 U.S. states with the smallest foreign-born populations. On the other hand, Democrats hold 32 Senate seats in the 20 U.S. states with the largest percentages of foreign-born residents.
For the GOP’s electoral survival, bold immigration reform is needed. That means tightening up pathways to citizenship, ending chain migration, and going towards a merit-based system of immigration.
The stakes are too high to keep the current immigration system intact, especially in the context of the welfare state. Such mass migration patterns could produce toxic social outcomes and lead to potential political instability for future generations.
That’s why immigration is the #1 issue for most Republican voters.
Not only will Trump need to obviously secure victory in 2020, but he will need strong support on immigration reform in both chambers of the U.S. Congress.
The fight to bring real immigration reform to D.C. is just getting started.