Obvious as this future may be, the nation has yet to really face up to it. That's the point that Dowell Myers, an urban growth specialist at the University of Southern California, makes in his provocative new book, Immigrants and Boomers. Myers suggests that, despite all the anxiety produced by the rapid growth in immigration, both legal and illegal, the number of new arrivals may have peaked already. The real issue now shouldn't be how to keep immigrants from flooding across the border; it should be how to make them as productive as possible in the generation to come.
In California, immigration has in fact been tapering off. That state was the main magnet for new arrivals after Congress liberalized immigration laws in 1965. But as its economy struggled in the early 1990s, immigrants began settling elsewhere. Their sudden and unaccustomed arrival in parts of the South and Midwest is what has made immigration a hot national issue.
Myers suggests that, just as California voters passed an anti- immigrant initiative in 1994 after the number of new arrivals there had begun to slow, politicians throughout the country are reacting to a trend that's past its peak. Birth rates in Mexico have dropped precipitously, from 6.8 per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 2000. "A decline in the number of new arrivals is now more plausible than an increase," Myers writes.
Of course, as he is quick to point out, enough immigrants have already arrived in the past 40 years to change the face of the country. By 2010, the Anglo share of California's population under age 20 will fall below 30 percent. Myers suggests that immigration trends in the rest of the nation are lagging about 20 years behind California. Gradually, he says, states with heavy numbers of immigrants will need to shift resources toward boosting their educational performance--especially at the college level.
And that will require Anglo electorates to make some difficult decisions. Although Anglos no longer comprise a majority in California, they remain more than 70 percent of the electorate. They're likely to dominate elections for decades to come. The central question of Myers' book is whether the aging boomers will sign an "intergeneration social compact" and support programs that benefit younger generations dominated by other ethnic groups, at the short- term expense of programs that benefit themselves.
The battle between health care and other services for the Anglo elderly and education for the immigrant young may be the central domestic policy debate in coming decades. Myers offers a good sketch of how those battle lines are likely to be drawn.
