Pennsylvania has long served as one of the core states of the American nation. Its Quaker settles shaped American culture and its citizens, such as Benjamin Franklin, shaped the very formation of the American nation. The state pioneered abolitionism, being the first state to abolish slavery through legislation in 1780, and formed the core of both the abolitionist movement and the American Colonization Society.

The state was once at the center of America’s industrial might and its labor movement, such as the men who took part in the UMW General Coal strike of 1922, helped to shape the rights and freedoms that American workers came to enjoy.

Today, however, Pennsylvania’s foundational White population is rapidly disappearing below a wave of massive demographic change, almost all of which has taken place in the post-1965 era. The Black population of Pennsylvania has swollen due to immigration rather than internal migration, the Hispanic population continues to steadily increase, and the Asian population has grown numerous times over since the era of multiculturalism began.

The current situation:

In the 1960s the demographics of Pennsylvania still reflected its historical norm: 92.3% of Pennsylvania’s population was of White extraction. Even as the Second Great Migration ended in the 1970s, the state still sported a 90.3% White populace.

The effects of the 1965 Immigration Act would soon be felt, however. Between 1960 and 1990 the White population shrank by 12.7 points and the state’s White population fell below 90% of the total. By 2010 Whites were barely 81% of Pennsylvania’s population and by 2020 European-extracted Whites formed just 70% of the commonwealth’s population.

Pennsylvania’s Black population, which totaled just 8.6% of the overall population at the end of the Second Great Migration, has continued to swell and today forms 11% of Pennsylvania’s population. This continued growth is not due to births or internal migration from other states, though. Instead, Pennsylvania’s Black population has continued to grow due to large-scale international migration of Blacks from Africa and the Caribbean.

Between 2000 and 2019 the Black immigrant population of Pennsylvania grew by a staggering 156% and the Black immigrant population in Philadelphia alone amounts to more than 120,000 individuals. Another 53,500 Blacks in the state are the underage children of these immigrants, while an additional 81,000 Blacks in the state hail from Africa.

In total, some 900,000 immigrants have come to call Pennsylvania home and comprise 7% of the state’s total population. Of these immigrants some 80% are minorities and less than 18% are from Europe, which historically provided the overwhelming majority of the state’s immigrant population.

The demographic changes are about more than raw numbers, though. These changes have brought significant levels of crime to a state, making it one of the states among the top 20 least safe states in the United States.

In January 2024 a Black man, Tyrik Jones, was arrested for the sexual assault and murder of a woman walking along a nature trail in the state. In late 2023 a Hispanic man (and illegal immigrant), Danelo Cavalcante, escaped from a Pennsylvania prison where he was serving time for stabbing his girlfriend more than a dozen times.

According to the Vera Institute Blacks are 5.6 times more likely to serve time in Pennsylvania prisons than Whites, while Hispanics are 2.8 times more likely to be incarcerated than the state’s founding White population. In total 67% of Pennsylvania’s prison population is of minority extraction, or more than double the minority share of the state’s overall population which stands at 30%.

With a cost per prisoner of more than $51,000 the state prison system serves as a serious drain on the resources of Pennsylvania’s White taxpaying population, and it is far from the only one. The state’s Medicaid program, which costs taxpayers some $37.4 billion, overwhelmingly covers the state’s minority population. Just 23% of White Pennsylvanians are on the program, while 64.2% of Hispanics, 63% of Blacks, 59.7% of native Americans, and 25.6% of Asians are on the program’s benefit rolls.

The drive to change the state’s demographics, and provide goods and services to minority populations, only continues to push ahead. In May of 2024, the state’s Democratic party introduced a billion to issue undocumented and illegal aliens with driver’s licenses.