IMMIGRATION FIGHT IS 'WAR AGAINST DEMOGRAPHICS'
posted by Michael Chihak
Latinos will have a plurality of Arizona's population by 2025 and a majority in another 10 to 15 years, a policy analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy says.
Senior policy analyst Bill Hart, who studies and researches immigration and related trends for the institute at Arizona State University, said in an interview for Friday's Arizona Week that the 2010 Census numbers show the inevitability of the Latino population growth.
"It seems sometimes that the more extreme ... are waging war against demographics and against economics," Hart said referring to anti-immigrant measures that have passed and are being considered. "You just can't do that and win."
Arizona's Latino population grew by 46.3 percent, or just under 600,000 people, in the last decade. Combined with Arizona's Latino population growth in the previous decade, Latinos have nearly tripled in number since 1990.
Hart said the growth in the 1990s was driven by immigration, including a significant amount of illegal immigration. But now, because there is a large and youthful Latino population, growth will be driven forward naturally, or by birthrate, he said.
That means economic, social and political changes for the state, and it is not fully prepared to deal with them, Hart said. In education, for example, Latinos generally are lower achievers because of economics and language, yet they soon will become the driving force in the new labor pool for the state.
That's in conflict with Gov. Jan Brewer's stated goal of building an economy based on a high-wage workforce, and a high-wage workforce is one that is educated, Hart said. He said cuts to education at all levels now being debated in the Legislature, while probably necessary to an extent because of fiscal issues, will be harmful to workforce and economic development.
Hart's interview will air on Arizona Week Friday at 8:30 p.m. MST on KUAT-TV Channel 6 in Tucson and at 10:30 p.m. MST on KAET-TV Channel 8 in Phoenix. It also will be available at azweek.com starting Friday night.
