Interesting Brookings Institute study on Arizona’s new immigration laws.

[Xicano]

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0428_arizona_frey.aspx



Arizona’s new immigration law raises many questions. Perhaps most fundamental, as the hue and cry continues, is this: Is Arizona out of touch with the rest of America? Or, is it the precursor of things to come elsewhere? To the extent that racial and ethnic conflict underpins these developments in the Grand Canyon State, there is reason to be wary.

Demographically, there is no doubt Latinos and other immigrant minorities are America’s future, and on this, Arizona stands on the front lines. Over the past two decades the state has seen its Latino population grow by 180 percent as its racial composition shifted from 72 to 58 percent white.

Yet there is an important demographic nuance to this growth—providing context to the white backlash in Arizona in ways that could play out else where. It is the fact that the state’s swift Hispanic growth has been concentrated in young adults and children, creating a “cultural generation gap” with largely white baby boomers and older populations, the same demographic that predominates in the recent Tea Party protests. A shorthand measure for this cultural generation gap in a state is the disparity between children and seniors in their white population shares. Arizona leads the nation on this gap at 40 (where 43 percent of its child population is white compared with 83 percent for seniors). But the states of Nevada, California, Texas, New Mexico, and Florida are not that far behind. (See Table 1).

[Warpy]

1. Good, that gives me a great deal of hope

I didn't have much as first the second cohort of boomers and then the Xers came along and believed in dog eat dog capitalism, Ronnie Reagan and voting GOP.

(note that with any statistical norm there are always deviations so if you're rational enough to be on this board, don't bother flaming)

[cap]

2. already happening in Nebraska

but with American Indians...

Future is going to be old white women being taken care of by young people of color...

It's good to get along with each other. The Teabaggers don't have a good future.

[Bucky]

3. This probably means both growing Democratic power *and* future further restrictions on abortion

I work in a mostly Hispanic community and what I see with the young people is a lot of populist liberalism, strong & growing environmentalist impulses in our future voters, but a stark across the board pro-life view of the abortion debate. On average, these will be pro-life Democrats.