As Minnesota goes (demographically), so goes the Nation
Here is a long article published originally at Brookings basically warning America that the white population is fading out, getting old, retiring and dying off and we better darn well educate the immigrants in order to replace us in the workforce.
So far, it isn’t going well as we learned just the other day that half of the Somali population of Minnesota lives in poverty.
Here are a few snips from the beginning of the story (I don’t have the time or patience to read it all!).
Refugee resettlement is named as one of the main reasons for the demographic shift in Minnesota (thank Catholic Charities,Lutheran Social Service and World Reliefrenamed Arrive Ministries for that! See here!).
Minnesota and the surrounding states of the upper Midwest are experiencing a demographic revolution. Yet that fact and its significance are just beginning to sink in, which is why many residents of the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area, whatever their own ethnicity, still refer to their community matter-of-factly as “lily white.” And while it’s true that with a 78% Caucasian population the Twin Cities are still far less ethnically diverse than other parts of the United States—among them the far West and Southeast as well as gateway cities and multicultural hubs like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and Miami—it’s also becoming less true with every passing year. One big reason: immigration.
[….]
As former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak says, “Our diversity is more diverse” than many other places because the state in general, andMinneapolis-St. Paul in particular, have been hubs of refugee resettlement for decades. The region has twice the share of immigrants from Southeast Asia as the United States as a whole (21% versus 10% of the immigrant population), and five times the share of immigrants from Africa as the nation as a whole (21% versus 4%).
Minnesota is home to Mexicans, Hmong, Indians, Vietnamese, Somalis, Liberians, and Ethiopians. Its people of color also include American-born Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and African-Americans. According to the State Demographic Center, the Asian, black, and Hispanic populations in the state tripled between 1990 and 2010, while the white population grew by less than 10%. This trend will continue: From 2010 to 2030, the number of people of color is expected to grow twice as quickly as the number of whites. As Minnesota and the region go, so goes the nation, which is also becoming ever more diversified, with an overall decline in the percentage of whites, and increase in people of color.
Read it all if you feel like it!
Got a grandchild born today? When that child is 30, America will be a very different place.
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