When immigrant children are under siege, so is the future of elderly white people
But the opposite happened in
Because the Trump administration has unleashed
They fear their children will be used to track them or others down -- and subject them to deportation if they failed to get all their i's dotted or their t's crossed on their immigration forms, or for some long-ago infraction.
Yet immigrants, whose children make up 12 percent of the school population, shouldn't be the only ones scared here.
The aging, mostly-white population -- here and around the nation -- that will need immigrant children working and paying into Medicare and
This isn't a matter of opinion as much as it's a matter of math.
In 2016, the
Most of the decline had to do with more people dying than being born, and in a third of the states, more white people are dying than are being born.
In
As Baby Boomers continue to age, that trend is expected to continue -- which is why demographers such as
But since xenophobia is a bigger sell for the Trump administration than math or practicality or hope, then it's likely that the raids will persist. And if they force immigrants to keep their children out of school, well, then, that means a chunk of new Americans won't be able to support the old ones.
That makes no sense.
"Americans have been in deep denial about the growth rate of our country," said Nat Irvin II, a futurist and the Woodrow M. Strickler Executive in Residence, Professor of Management Practice,
"We simply don't pay attention to these things. We're stuck in this time warp, looking at the
Another irony, Irvin said, is if the children of immigrants aren't educated, and they can't get jobs, then the older people who they would normally support by paying into the system could wind up supporting them.
There's also another irony -- and tragedy.
White people aged 55 and older overwhelmingly supported Trump in the presidential election -- and many supported him because of his anti-Latino and anti-Muslim rhetoric, as well as his pledge to build a wall between the
But that America no longer exists, and the tragedy is that a lot of old white people will wind up suffering if immigrants and their children continue to be painted as their enemies, when they may well be their salvation.
"The real problem here is that we don't like the way the immigrants look," Irvin said. "When there were more Europeans coming, we were happy... But every generation or so we get an influx of immigrants, and we forget that we're a nation of immigrants.
"But the math never forgets."
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