May 10, 2006

An Analysis of Today’s U.S. Census Data on Number of Children Under 5 Who are Minorites

Today's report:

Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities
Hispanic Growth Fuels Rise, Census Says

...makes it sound as if the invasion of the U.S. by illegal immigrants is already successful and irreversible.

Hispanics are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group. They accounted for 49 percent of the country's growth from 2004 to 2005, the report shows. And the increase in young children is largely a Hispanic story, driving 70 percent of the growth in children younger than 5. Forty-five percent of U.S. children younger than 5 are minorities.

It sounds as though within decades, the majority of Americans will be of Hispanic origin. Fortunately, the facts are not quite so extreme.

The U.S. Census data is here. There are Excel spreadsheets for each of several different ethnicities. Combining the data from these spreadsheets provides the following:

(Note: the U.S. Census site contains additional data not included in the above table. Specifically, there is data for people of various combined ethnicities, e.g. "Black or African American Alone or in Combination". However, it is not immediately evident whether residents of combined ethnicities are double-counted across different spreadsheets. For example, is someone of combined Asian and Black ethnicity, counted twice, once in the "Black or African American Alone or in Combination" spreadsheet, and again in the "Asian Alone or in Combination" spreadsheet? For this reason, and because the numbers involved are small enough not to affect the point I am making in this post, the numbers for those of combined ethnicity are not presented in the above table.)

As shown, children of Hispanic origin are 23% of those under 5 who are not of combined ethnicity. So we are nowhere near a U.S. that has effectively been taken over via illegal immigration from Mexico.

At the same time, a comparison of those of all ages who are of Hispanic origin -- 14% -- to those under 5 who are of Hispanic origin -- 23% -- shows the tremendous growth in the Hispanic population.

Look at the number of those of all ages who are of Hispanic origin -- 42.7 million. Compare that to the estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in this country -- I've heard numbers ranging from 11 million to 22 million -- and it is apparent how tremendously disproportionate, is the number of Hispanics who are here illegally.

To protect our way of life, and our economic well-being, it is essential that we control the border and halt illegal immigration. We must require assimilation of immigrants, and implement a reasonable and effective guest-worker program.

The spreadsheet used for the above calculations can be downloaded here.