At the beginning of its term, the current administration took immediate steps to prevent immigrants from certain Asian and African countries from coming to the United States. Three years later, that ban is still in effect, and the administration added six more countries to it last month. The countries now affected by the ban include the Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar, as well as the African countries of Eritrea and Nigeria.
In light of criticism that the bans are racist and xenophobic, the United States Census Bureau has analyzed data to determine how limiting immigration will affect the U.S. population, not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of demographics.
Racial diversity
According to the Census Bureau’s findings, limiting immigration may slow down the increase of racial diversity in America, but it will not stop it. If immigration remains constant, the Bureau projects that the country will become majority-minority, meaning 51% of the population is non-Hispanic white, by 2041. If immigration were to stop completely, it would only take longer to reach that benchmark, but by 2060, the non-Hispanic white population would still decrease by 17%.
Overall population
In a zero-immigration scenario, the total population of the United States would eventually start to decline by millions of people. It would take only 15 years before the country was no longer showing positive population growth. By contrast, if immigration were to slow but not stop entirely, the population would still grow over the next four decades by 53 million people.
Age
In every scenario that the Census Bureau proposed, people over the age of 65 eventually outnumbered those under age 18. However, if immigration were to decrease or stop altogether, this would happen much more quickly, perhaps in as little as nine years.
The Census Bureau also extrapolated a high-immigration scenario in which immigration increases by 50%. In that scenario, the United States would reach majority-minority by 2041, and seniors would not outnumber children until 2045.