Birth Rates and Immigration

[Neto]

Josh suggested grouping births to illegal immigrants into the "illegal immigrant" category, right there in the section of text I quoted above.

I'm just pointing out that such children are neither illegal nor immigrants.

It's kind of scary to think that we have public school teachers with such a poor level of reading comprehension, or lack of care about accuracy in making accusations.

Josh absolutely didn't suggest grouping births to illegal immigrants into the "illegal immigrant" category in the text that you quoted. There is a huge difference in meaning between grouping one thing with another thing vs. grouping it into that other thing. A farmer might group his chickens with his turkeys and tell you how many birds he owns, but that in no way suggests that he thinks his chickens are turkeys.

Josh suggested that he "could" group them together with encounter numbers but prefers not to "cook the books" which I agree with.

But we really aren't talking about chickens or turkeys at all here, or even birds. Josh is talking about two separate groups of people:

1. Immigrant encounters at the border
2. Children born in the US to undocumented parents.

In point of fact, NEITHER of those two groups are illegal immigrants. In fact, none of them are. So if illegal immigrants are birds then there are no birds here to see or count.

Some percentage of those immigrants encountered/detained by the border patrol are expelled, some percentage are detained for future action, and some percentage are paroled into the US pending final resolution of their cases. None of those three groups constitute illegal aliens unless they break out of detention or something.

I was simply pointing out that children born in the US are neither illegal nor immigrants so don't belong in the "bird" category either.

It is all well and good to talk about illegal immigration versus US births. But no one has presented any data whatsoever showing what the numbers of illegal immigrants are in 2023 or any other recent year. Josh certainly hasn't with the graphs above. And no one else has either.

For the love of reading comprehension! I already tried to clarify this. Josh didn't say anything about children born to mothers in the US illegally. I just suggested that it documents the presence of an illegal immigrant in the country - the MOTHER, not the child! Josh then responded, calling that "cooking the books", I suppose because it goes to a different set of statistics to get the data, and could be seen as a way to "artificially inflate" the numbers. I personally think it's a valid source of data, showing the presence of undocumented persons in the country illegally, something that could be considered by anyone who wants to see, as much as possible, the complete picture. But seeing the complete picture is impossible, so please let it rest now. Please pretend I never said anything about that, and stop attributing it to Josh, or to anyone else. I suspect that I do not feel as strongly about the presence of illegals in the country as he does, so I had no ulterior motives in mentioning this. I have met illegals before, and took more interest in them as individuals than as a symptom of a political problem. I do not do politics. And back years ago when I did, I was in favor of hiding and sheltering illegals, not in deportation or prosecution.

[Josh]

I have met illegals before, and took more interest in them as individuals than as a symptom of a political problem. I do not do politics. And back years ago when I did, I was in favor of hiding and sheltering illegals, not in deportation or prosecution.

To be clear, I mostly have had the same experiences and would do the same. My topic here was limited to being opposed to new ARRIVALS. Not proposing mass deportations or something.

What is surprising is that it is even controversial that we shouldn’t have 1-4 million illegal arrivals per year. Why can’t we all agree on that?

[Judas Maccabeus]

Do partridges self deport, otherwise known as migrate? If they do, are they migrants?

Migrants, yes. Migrant workers, no. They freeload off the fruits of the land.

But, alas, those without work permits cannot work. Therefore they should go to a place where they can work.

[Josh]

They can; they just have to find someone to hire them anyway, or else the appropriate convincing docs for a fake i9 and w4.

[Bootstrap]

This thread is about one very simple question: how many immigrants are actually coming into the country, and how does that compare to the number of births. It started with a Twitter graph that was claiming we have more illegal immigrants than births in the United States. As far as I can tell, this claim is simply false. The graph is also labeled with "Biden" and "Trump", which makes me think it may be politically motivated. Sometimes, political factions do lie to us.

In this thread, can we please focus on the subject of the thread, and look at these numbers?

People who do not enter the country or are not allowed to stay are not illegal immigrants. Therefore, the graph you found on Twitter is lying to us about the actual numbers. Border Patrol encounters do not tell us how many illegal immigrants made it into the country. They do not claim to. That's not what the number is for. So I think the Twitter graph is a blatant political lie. The label says it's about the number of immigrants in this country, but that's not the number they used to make the graph. Let's look for accurate numbers instead.

We agree on the number of births, so we have agreement on one of the two numbers. How can we find good estimates for the second number, the actual number of immigrants, legal and illegal? If you don't like the sources I provided, can you suggest a better alternative? Let's stick with the topic of this thread, please.

I provided one source. Here's how they estimate immigration levels, legal and illegal:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads ... nts-in-us/

I would prefer sources that tell you what they are doing with the numbers and why. Do you have others we should look at? I have more I can share, I currently think the Pew statistics are accurate, they are similar to other numbers I can find.

[Bootstrap]

It is all well and good to talk about illegal immigration versus US births. But no one has presented any data whatsoever showing what the numbers of illegal immigrants are in 2023 or any other recent year. Josh certainly hasn't with the graphs above. And no one else has either.

I think I have, with a graph from Pew and an explanation of how they get the numbers. And I am inviting others to do the same. Can we please focus on doing this, and not drown it out with other topics in this thread?

In particular, I'm not interested in what anyone thinks of anyone else in this thread, let's focus on the numbers. And let's keep politics out of this thread, it's about finding accurate numbers so we can compare them to some claims that have been made.

For the love of reading comprehension! I already tried to clarify this. Josh didn't say anything about children born to mothers in the US illegally. I just suggested that it documents the presence of an illegal immigrant in the country - the MOTHER, not the child!

This was not addressed to me, but ...

Let's use American legal definitions. A child born in the United States is a citizen. In the scenario above, the mother is not. If we need new categories like "children born to immigrants in the United States", we can create them.

[Ken]

It is all well and good to talk about illegal immigration versus US births. But no one has presented any data whatsoever showing what the numbers of illegal immigrants are in 2023 or any other recent year. Josh certainly hasn't with the graphs above. And no one else has either.

I think I have, with a graph from Pew and an explanation of how they get the numbers. And I am inviting others to do the same. Can we please focus on doing this, and not drown it out with other topics in this thread?

In particular, I'm not interested in what anyone thinks of anyone else in this thread, let's focus on the numbers. And let's keep politics out of this thread, it's about finding accurate numbers so we can compare them to some claims that have been made.

For the love of reading comprehension! I already tried to clarify this. Josh didn't say anything about children born to mothers in the US illegally. I just suggested that it documents the presence of an illegal immigrant in the country - the MOTHER, not the child!

This was not addressed to me, but ...

Let's use American legal definitions. A child born in the United States is a citizen. In the scenario above, the mother is not. If we need new categories like "children born to immigrants in the United States", we can create them.

You showed a seven year old graph from 2017 showing the percentage breakdown of all immigrants in the country at that point in time. Not how many are arriving annually or monthly.

And no, it isn't so easy to just create new categories for analysis. I believe that national birth statistics are collected by the National Vital Statistics System which simply consolidates birth registration statistics from the 50 different state birth registry systems which is birth certificate data. I don't think there are any states that collect information on the nationality much less the immigration status of the parents listed on birth certificates. So such information simply doesn't exist. Immigration status is simply not on the birth certificates of any state.

[Bootstrap]

You showed a seven year old graph from 2017 showing the percentage breakdown of all immigrants in the country at that point in time. Not how many are arriving annually or monthly.

Here's what I was talking about. I don't think your description is accurate - it shows the percent present in this country by year, which does tell you something about how many are arriving. Can you do better? If so, please do.

What percent of Americans were born elsewhere? How has that changed over time?

Look at the blue line - we now are getting close to the levels of immigration we had from 1860 to 1910:



This includes both legal and illegal immigration. 77% of immigrants are here legally:

[Ernie]

China is an interesting study. Its immigration rate is negative, and its birth rate is low. Its population is aging, its workforce (and theoretically the pool of people available for its military) will shrink in the next decade, and its gender imbalance is becoming a real problem. It seems that nobody wants to immigrate into China, legally or illegally, and the people who are there don't want to have children despite increasing governmental pressure.

What do you guys think will happen in China the next few decades given these societal changes and pressures?

From what I understand, many people would be glad to move to China as permanent residents or citizens, but China has very restrictive immigration laws. I expect they will need to change this in the coming years when they can't find enough people to do their manual labor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China

https://theconversation.com/china-needs ... nts-208911

They are putting a lot of pressure on ladies to have more children but it is not working.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-w ... -xi-2024-1

[Bootstrap]

What is surprising is that it is even controversial that we shouldn’t have 1-4 million illegal arrivals per year. Why can’t we all agree on that?

There are 333 million people in the United States. 1 million is approximately 0.3003% of 333 million. That includes legal immigration - 78% of the total - plus illegal immigration, which is a whole lot less than 1 million. That's not a really big number. The percent of immigrants living here is similar to the numbers from 1860-1910, I think we survived that just fine. During that time, my German ancestors probably "replaced" a few Americans of English and Scottish descent, but nobody seems to complain about that today.

And the American population is expected to grow less than 10% by 2100, including immigration. I quoted this earlier:

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-r ... tions.html

The U.S. population is projected to reach a high of nearly 370 million in 2080 before edging downward to 366 million in 2100. By 2100, the total U.S. resident population is projected to increase by only 9.7% from 2022, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau population projections released today. The projections provide possible scenarios of population change for the nation through the end of the century.

In that link, the Census Bureau gives three estimates of American population in 2100 based on different levels of immigration:

• The high-immigration scenario increases every year and is projected to reach 435 million by 2100.
• The low-immigration scenario is projected to peak at around 346 million in 2043 and decline thereafter, dropping to 319 million in 2100.
• Though largely illustrative, the zero-immigration scenario projects that population declines would start in 2024 in the complete absence of foreign-born immigration. The population in this scenario is projected to be 226 million in 2100, roughly 107 million lower than the 2022 estimate.

Without immigration, the American population would be declining, not growing. The population would go from 333 million to 226 million. With low immigration, it would still decline, from 333 million to 319 million.

The middle scenario is based on current immigration levels, it grows from 333 million to 366 million by 2100, an increase of 9.7%.