By 2050, communities of color will represent the majority of our population,” Kaine said. “So, of course, Latinos will help shape the future of America because you are the future of America.”
As the Pew Research Center has documented, this demographic transformation is largely the result of the changes to visa issuance policies enacted into law in 1965 that lifted the immigration controls put in place by Calvin Coolidge during the 1920s. In 1965, Ted Kennedy helped usher in policies that offered American green cards to the entire world. The demographic change that resulted is almost entirely through legal issuances of immigration visas to people from non-Western countries.
In 1970, fewer than one in 21 Americans was foreign-born. Today, as a result of the federal government’s four-decades-long green card gusher, nearly one in seven U.S. residents was born in a foreign country. The transformation has been felt across the nation. For instance, in Kaine’s state of Virginia, up until 1970, only one in 100 Virginians was born outside of the United States; by 2012, 11 in every 100 Virginians was foreign-born, according to a recent census study conducted by UVA researchers.
Pew projects that if visa issuances continue at their current record pace — as they will unless Congress passes a law to change them — “by 2065, the composition of the nation’s immigrant population will change again. … The country’s overall population will feel the impact of these shifts.” It continues, “Non-Hispanic whites are projected to become less than half of the U.S. population by 2055 and 46 percent by 2065. No racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority of the U.S. population.” ...
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