In the first three pieces of our landmark Great Repatriation series, we outlined the most practical policy-based methods to repatriate recent immigrants and their descendants, and increase the Historic American share of the US Population. Specifically, we found that roughly 51 million people, immigrants, and their (underage) US-born children could be repatriated to their ethnic homelands. This process would increase the White American share of the population from roughly 54% today to approximately 70% after implementing the aforementioned policy changes. This change would result in a demographic mix that could have been expected had the 1965 immigration act never been implemented, data backed up by the Pew research center.
In the fourth and final installment of the original four papers, we gave outlined a series of data points on those immigrants and descendants of immigrants that could not be deported via the executive actions that we suggested in the first three pieces of the series. Meaning, these people(s) are those over the age of 18, born in the United States, and those with a multigenerational connection to the country. We sought to start a conversation around the possibility of voluntary repatriation of these citizens, a conversation we are continuing in this piece.
This demographic of ‘remaining’ non-Westerners, numbering about 88 million people, is dominated by the roughly 37 million African Americans as well as a handful of Asians and Hispanics who arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some were absorbed as the United States expanded under manifest destiny, and others arrived before immigration laws could be tightened to prevent their admission into the country. Regardless of their origin, voluntary repatriation, or repatriation of those willing to leave the country, will be necessary in order to restore America’s historic demographic mix.
A quick note as regards racial and ethnic terminology for this series: We realize that some terms are contentious, however for the sake of simplicity and directness, we will be sticking with the Census Bureau terminology for these pieces.
Asians:
In our original piece on the Great Repatriation and Asians, we outlined how roughly 10.7 million Asians, or 47.7% of the current Asian population of the US could be repatriated through the cancellation of visas for the 4.7 million naturalized Asians and the subsequent departure of that group and their underage children. And of course the deportation of America’s roughly 2 million illegal immigrant Asians.
We also touched on the lack of integration into American life which Asians in the United States experience. For example, some 51% of Asians in the United States claim that they are primarily friends with people of their own race, including among young people in high school where 62% of Asian youths report friendships only with other Asians. 20% of Asians report that they have hidden aspects of their racial or ethnic identity to attempt and fit in, and perhaps most illuminating of all only 45% of Asian adults in the United States report that they in any way consider themselves to be Americans.
Since this original publication, we have been able to collect yet more data. The 2023 “Social Tracking of Asian Americans in the U.S.”, a report published by The Asian American Foundation, found that 78% of Asian Americans do not feel like they belong in the United States. Among Asians aged 16-24, the overwhelming majority of whom are American-born, 83% feel like they do not belong in the US. Among the top reasons cited for this feeling is that Asians do not “see others like them” in power in the United States.
Research by PEW, released in late 2023, also shows that a large share of Asians in the US, some 26%, would consider moving to their ancestral homelands. This includes 14% of US-born Asians who would move back to their ancestral homelands, representing about 1.4 million people. Further, 30% of foreign-born Asians would move back to their ancestral homelands if given the opportunity. If we apply this figure to the 8.32 million naturalized Asians it indicates that as many as 2.5 million additional Asians would be willing to return to their homeland.