Ten or twelve years ago, I was in a Virginia Beach hotel ballroom listening to a young female professor explain the “browning” of America.” This concept states that coming demographic changes will result in whites becoming the nation’s new minority. This would change future political outcomes, potentially in favor of Democrats.
“This will NOT go over large,” I thought, wondering if the professor knew she was speaking to an audience of mainly middle-aged and retired white men from conservative rural areas of America. Today we would call most of those areas “Red States.”
At the time, Barrack Obama was president. I never dreamed then how massive the white backlash would be to Obama’s presidency, expanding minority populations, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, plus immigration as it has been practiced. I would have never guessed at the time that the backlash would propel Donald Trump to two terms in the Oval Office. I also did not foresee the huge price we would all have to pay from Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
Mass deportation is the fever dream of Trump’s racist advisor and thin-skinned snowflake Stephen Miller who falsely claimed during a recent White House event that undocumented immigrants are taking advantage and costing American taxpayers “hundreds of billions” of dollars. David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, put the lie on that blatantly fake claim with a report released earlier this year. The Cato Institute was founded in 1977 by David and Charles Koch, whose politics are just to the right of Genghis Khan.
If this war on mainly dark-skinned people continues, more people (including those who have a legal right to be here) will self-deport or be deported, taking their earning abilities and tax revenue with them. Fewer people from other countries will want to visit the U.S. for fear of being hassled. None other than Chancellor Friedrich Merz advised his children and other young Germans against studying and living in the United States due to a challenging “social climate” and dismal job prospects for highly educated individuals. Good grief! Even some white northern Europeans no longer want to come here?
MAGA cultists want to send most “illegals” home, wherever that’s supposed to be. They ignore that we all descend from immigrants, many of whom came here when there were no immigration laws to violate.
Bier’s report highlighted the positive effects immigrants have had on government budgets from 1994 to 2023. His report showed immigrants generated a fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion over 30 years, and proved the average immigrant is much less a drag on government programs than the average American-born person.
In 2023 alone, immigrants paid $1.3 trillion in taxes while receiving only $761 billion in benefits, resulting in a net surplus of over $500 billion for that year, Bier’s report revealed. Immigrants create less crime and are more likely to be employed than the average American, and they contribute to a higher per-capita income despite earning lower hourly wages, Bier claims. Increased immigration is linked to a larger healthcare workforce, which can lead to better health outcomes for the elderly and reduced reliance on nursing homes, Bier’s report shows.
In particular, immigrants have helped Pennsylvania grow in population. “So what?” I hear MAGA cultists proclaim.
Here’s what. The Keystone State is projected by PoliticsPA to lose another representative in Congress after the 2030 census. Pennsylvania has lost one representative in each of the three last censuses due to slowing population growth. States with faster growth and more immigrants have taken those seats.
Pennsylvania has around 13 million residents, with population growth of just over 1 percent over the last ten years. Population is projected to grow by just 1.6 percent through 2050, a significantly lower rate than the projected national average of 20 percent for the same period (USAFacts, pasenategop.com).
Pennsylvania faces several hurdles to greater growth—declining birth rates, the Covid pandemic, brain drain among young people, and continued aging amid those who remain.
The slowing population growth is negatively affecting rural areas, according to the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, which formed a special commission in 2024 to address the problem. With the loss of one more congressional representative, rural legislative districts will be forced to cover even more square miles. With fewer representatives in Congress comes fewer government benefits for Pennsylvania.
There are solutions to stop Pennsylvania’s declining population growth, but it will take bipartisan efforts at all levels. We can start by insisting on immigration reform that would make room for more immigrants. At the very least, we should demand Trump end his terror campaign on the undocumented and fire Stephen Miller, our new diva of mass deportation.
Duane Kanagy writes for Gettysburg Democracy for America (DFA), an independent, non-partisan political education and advocacy organization based in Adams County (www.gettysburgdfa.org). He is a retired business communicator who lives in Gettysburg.