*My progressive opinion column for the month of August, with my deepest thanks for y’all being here and reading. Published the first week of the month, posted here with a little lag time outta respect for our struggling but oh so necessary 4th estate.
Listen up, folks! I’m seeing too many old people hereabouts of late, and it’s depressing. Yes, yes, we will all, if we’re lucky, achieve the ‘gift’ of old age; many happy returns, as in, can I give this aging nonsense back? No? But seriously, folks, despite aging’s personal inevitability, something’s got to give.
It’s simply not a joyful harbinger, being surrounded by all these increasingly decrepit types, a.k.a. Boomers and other even older gens, many of whom are clinging far too long to too many good paying jobs, or to homes, land, and properties they no longer fill and even in some cases don’t ever visit. Aging gracefully is a thing, and like a lot of the graces, we seem to have lost it. Yo! Boomers and Up: you’re old. Deal with it, and try, would you, to show a little dignity?
Sorry. The heat makes me cranky. There is, however, good news to be found amidst all these whitehaired grannies and grampies, which is that the absence of youth in our communities and workforce has an easy fix! Yay! It’s one that has bailed the U.S.A. out demographically, financially, and otherwise in previous eras of expansion, loss, or, as we find ourselves now per Dr. Oz, ‘under-babied.’ (Speaking of embarrassing Boomers, what a jerk.)
The simple, familiar solution? Immigration. Yup, that’s right: immigration. Increased immigration. Ease of access to full U.S. citizenship for more of our fellow humans from everywhere around the globe, but immediately and especially for DACA recipients, many of whom are now in their 40s.
What a wonderful thing immigration is, or rather, what a wonderful thing it could be, if a very vocal bunch of ignorant dummies hadn’t got their grubby little racist hands on the levers of power, including (ironically) international media conglomerates.
The U.S. – like Japan, Cuba, Germany and Italy – is facing a demographic shift marked by the twin challenges of an aging workforce and population decline, the second of which has only increased in this country due to the punishingly cruel rhetoric and even crueler exclusionary, racist policies of the current white nationalist administration.
Come to America, where – if you are brown-skinned with (God forbid!!) an accent – you might be picked up or shot by masked goons regardless of your immigration status or actual citizenship, thereafter being carted to a prison on a continent not consistent with your own origin story? Not on your life!
Census and demographic projections show that by 2030 – 4 measly years from now, Americans aged 65 and up will outnumber Americans under 18, which is terrific if you want white haired types – mostly male – continuing to dominate and run both the conversation and the world, but how’s that working out for us, so far? Not great, tbh.
As concerning, however, is the fact that our Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance trust funds are projected to be broke by 2033 due to workforce and birth rate shrinkage, except, wait! Those dates may have to be moved up due to current immigration policies further depressing both of those rates (workforce and birth) along with – as a result – our growth. This includes the administration’s policies limiting legal immigration except for (nauseatingly) white South Afrikkkaners. But they’re okay with all of that, because they hate birthright citizenship, despite it being in our constitution (a document they claim to love), when applied to American born children of even legal immigrants. It’s nuts. They’re nuts.
Furthermore, increasingly harsh anti-woman, anti-choice laws, policies, and the widening effort to punish pregnant women who miscarry, along with a failure to support new parents with family friendly policies, is not exactly encouraging a change in those birth-rate numbers. Y’think?!
Immigration and those pesky immigrants the GOP has been demonizing for years now have accounted for almost half of our labor force growth since 1995, and, in recent years, practically all of it. Practically all of it. And here’s the thing, immigrants do not just fill positions our shrinking American born population doesn’t. They also rent apartments, buy cars and groceries, start businesses, hire workers, and patronize other businesses! Gadzooks!
True story: my great-grandfather Frederick Miller, who was a farmer and newspaper publisher and editor out on the eastern end of Long Island, changed our last name from Mueller to Miller around about 1912. He did this, my grandfather told me, because no one could pronounce Mueller correctly. Even as a teenager I smelled a load of horse manure with that one. The truth is, great-gramps changed our last name because anti-immigrant sentiment – anti-German specifically, during the lead up to our involvement in WWI – was compromising his safety, livelihood, and, potentially, his children’s futures.
Anti-immigrant fervor is nothing new in this country, but we’ll get past this nonsense, eventually. We must. And quickly.