Still, this industrial might and cultural uniqueness has not spared Michigan’s two pleasant peninsulas from the same process of mass immigration and demographic change that the rest of the United States and broader Western world is undergoing. Michiganders are rapidly losing demographic security in their state and if we do nothing, they will be pushed into minority status by a large and growing post-1965 immigrant population.
In 1960, just before the passage of the now infamous 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that threw open the borders of the United States, Michigan was about 90% White American and 10% African American. The state was just coming through the demographic changes wrought by the Second Great Migration of African Americans to Northern cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee; and the people of Michigan were entering a new demographic settlement that should have been stable. Barely 5% of the state’s population was foreign-born, and Michigan was both among the most homogeneous states in the country and one of the most homogeneous societies in the world at the time.
Things have changed not just because of the Federal government’s immigration policies, though. Michigan’s state government has been enthusiastic about mass immigration and has only been stopped from going all in on sanctuary policies, licenses for illegals, and other such ridiculous policies by Michigan’s voters. Still, this hasn’t totally prevented pro-immigrant policy-making. For example, the “Newcomer Rental Subsidy” offers a wide range of immigrants and “refugees” a government benefit of $500 a month for up to a year to pay for rent. This is not a benefit extended to Michiganders. If a Michigander seeks help paying their rent, the state government directs them to contact a non-profit. The governor has also requested Michiganders help house “new residents” (people Biden allowed over the border), and has set up a population growth council that focused heavily on immigration as a solution to the state’s demographic deficits.
The combination of decades of Federal and State immigration policy has led to several notable developments in the state. Both Dearborn and Hamtramck Michigan are now governed by Muslim majority city councils, and Dearborn has even renamed a street after alleged Hezbollah supporter Osama Siblani. This controversy was so heated that the Muslim mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, told a Heritage American resident of the city that if he didn’t like the new street name he could leave.
Dearborn city council meeting gets heated over renamed street
This has all been against the will of Michiganders, only 21% of whom approved of Biden’s handling of immigration but more than 50% of whom now approve of Trump’s tougher immigration policy.
Between 1960 and 2025 the Heritage American (White) share of Michigan’s population fell from 90% to 72% and the foreign-born population has begun to expand in earnest. Nearly half of the state’s registered population growth since 1960 has been due to immigration.
The demographic and (some of) the social decline of Michigan can be modestly reversed through a mix of state-level policy and concerted cooperation with federal authorities. The first step is to deal with illegal immigrants in the state, of which there are an estimated ~100,000 (plus their children). By removing all welfare benefits for illegal aliens, passing mandatory E-Verify laws, and enforcing extant federal laws such as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 that fines employers for employing illegals, the state can rapidly entice this population to self-deport to other more illegal-friendly locales (or preferably, their home countries). These policies should also be combined with widespread and mandatory state and local law enforcement cooperation with ICE and other federal authorities to speed up the detention and deportation of illegal aliens.
The next step is to deal with the very large legal immigrant population in the state, many of whom will have committed fraud to enter the country, gain legal status, and in many cases citizenship. 70% to 80% of immigrants admitted to the United States each year are admitted on the basis of family ties, not for work or school. This means that a large portion of people who have acquired US citizenship did so via fraud either through deceit or by welfare dependence which we shall address below. The proof for this is best demonstrated by a 2008 incident wherein the U.S. State Department discovered, through DNA testing, that over 80% of individuals admitted into the U.S. as a family member of a “refugee” were not related to that individual. The US government has since mandated DNA testing for refugees who request their family members come to the US, but this DNA testing mandate has not been put in place for any other category of family reunification. Further proof is found in the data of the Center for Immigration Studies which shows that 53% of immigrants including 50.2% of naturalized immigrants are dependent upon the welfare state, in violation of American law and moral expectation.
Yet more proof of how unfit many of our new “fellow Americans” are can be found in the recently executed Operation Twin Shield in which immigration officers visited more than 1,000 legal migrants in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area and found that a staggering 44% had committed some form of fraud, crime, or otherwise posed a national security threat to the American people. Furthermore, the federal government has found that USCIS needs much better enforcement of H1B verification, that as many as 20% of H1B suspects investigated are involved in program violations or fraud, and it suspects that the number is even higher but, due to a lack of enforcement, we simply do not know. It is time for states to step up and begin investigating and enabling federal investigations into massive fraud in our legal immigration system.
Were Michigan to provide support and resources to the federal government to conduct a similar, much larger, operation in the state (including reviewing naturalizations), then it is entirely within the realm of possibility that of the 640,000 legal immigrants in the state, some 320,000 have committed a similar fraud, crime, pose a national security threat, or are welfare dependent in violation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. A further 30,000 children of immigrants can be added to this count, as they would need to depart the country with their now visa-deprived or denaturalized parents.
Were these policies to be implemented comprehensively, Michigan could see a decline in its foreign-born population from 7.7% today to roughly 3% post-remigration. The overall state population would decline from 10.08 million to 9.73 million and the White/Heritage American share of the population would increase to 75%, a 3-point increase on the current demographic.
Building further on this success would require voluntary paid remigration programs, which White Papers proposes here. If the U.S. were to implement such a program to allow the 47-61% of immigrants and their descendants who say they want to leave to do so the White share of Michigan’s population would jump to about 83% assuming minimal African American departure. If African Americans took the opportunity to voluntarily depart, the share of the Heritage American population would increase to the about 90%
The demographic decline of Michigan is a policy choice that state and federal lawmakers have made for far too long. Americans can decide to reverse this decline. Remigration is the start of that process and the foundation from which the revival of our nation can begin.
