Children Born To Undocumented Immigrants Are Decreasing

The Republicans can see the demographic change that is happening in the United States. They know that Hispanics are the fasted growing segment of the United States population -- by far. And they know that by the middle of this century Whites will no longer be the majority in this country.

This scares the hell out of them. Their anti-immigrant and anti-minority policies have made them very unpopular with Hispanics (and Blacks), and as minorities increase their strength at the ballot box, the Republicans will see their electoral chances (especially on the national scene) drop sharply.

They could just change those policies, and start treating all people in this country equally -- but they are refusing to do that. They know it would anger the racist teabagger base in the party (who currently control the party in many states). So they have chosen a different path -- gerrymandering districts and passing voter suppression laws.

Another thing that has become a big issue for them is "anchor babies" -- babies born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. They want to change the Constitution (which grants citizenship to anyone born here), so these babies won't be able to vote when they grow up. This is just silly. Those babies only make up about 8% of the babies born in this country every year, and it is unlikely they would ever make much of an impact on our elections.

I found the chart above, from the Pew Research Center, interesting. While the Republicans hate these babies, the biggest years of births for those babies came during the years of the last Republican presidency -- and since the election of a Democratic president, those births have been decreasing.

Even if they were able to change the Constitution and take citizenship rights away from those babies, it would do very little to stop the growing influence of Hispanics. The truth is that the huge majority of Hispanic babies being born each year in this country are born to parents who are already citizens -- so changing the Constitution would not stop the demographic change that is happening.

The Republicans are only fooling themselves. Their stopgap measures might delay the demographic change for a few years, but it won't stop it. They are finally going to have to change their anti-ethnic and anti-minority policies, or they are going to be destined to become irrelevant on the political scene. They will join the Whigs as a party that used to exist.