Are immigrants having a similar effect on European populations?
Spain recently reported a slight rise in the birthrate, but in fact, all of that was due to foreign women. I looked closely at the numbers, and although it doesn’t say it exactly in the press release, births among Spanish women actually declined. Also in the UK, there’s been a growing proportion of births to non-British women, so there’s a lot of that going on in Europe as well, but maybe not as dramatic as in the U.S. How has policy affected the trajectory of European and U.S. demographics? I certainly think the enlargement of Europe, countries’ reaction to the Schengen Agreement, and immigration within Europe has started to change European demography tremendously. There was an article recently in the newspaper describing Ireland as a “rainbow country.” So, in some sense, Europe is beginning to look a little more like the U.S. The U.S. had its own monumental demographic event in 1965, when the new immigration laws were passed. They had the effect of opening up the country to the rest
