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| Asian Immigration Threat in America | ||||
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Walter Russell Mead notes that Asians are now the fastest-growing immigrant group:
Perhaps the most important factor in this shift is the collapse of the American construction industry, which has traditionally welcomed low-skilled workers. As construction work dries up, many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin, and others are deciding not to leave in the first place. Asian migrants, meanwhile, more frequently qualify for the higher paying, higher skilled jobs that are still relatively plentiful. The immigration shift is also driven by demographic changes in Latin America, and especially in Mexico, where birthrates have fallen dramatically and the number of new workers entering the labor force will soon begin to fall, even as economic growth is creating more and better jobs. Mexicans who twenty years ago would have moved to America in search of opportunity now like their chances at home.
Jacqueline Leo sees only a limited opportunity for the Romney campaign:
In 2008, 9.7 million Hispanics voted – before the Great Recession forced many back to their native lands as jobs in construction and other industries dried up – and Obama won 67 percent of that vote. That same year, 3.4 million Asians voted, and once again, Obama grabbed more than two-thirds of that vote against McCain. In 2010, there were 50.5 million Latinos in the U.S. according to the Census but just 6.6 million voted. In 2008, 48 percent of Asians turned out to vote — up 4 percentage points from 2004. If the same numbers turn out this year, Romney’s best shot at leveling part of the ethnic playing field is capturing 37 percent of the Hispanic vote and a whopping 65 percent of the Asian vote. …
Capturing those votes may be another big hurdle for Romney in the wake of Obama’s new immigration policy. The number of illegal Chinese immigrants coming through Arizona – yes, Arizona — increased 10-fold in 2009 according to The New York Times. For them, and thousands like them, self-deportation is a deal breaker.
The RNC, of course, is trying to kill two birds with one outreach website.
The Dish 