More Irish people live in the U.S. than in Ireland (31+ million says the US Census, compared to about 7 million in Ireland and Northern Ireland). Joe Biden recently granted permanent temporary status to about 500,000 Venezuelans who walked across the open border in the last couple of years (CNN). Haitians granted temporary status in 2010 still have that status (it gets extended every 18 months) and their U.S.-born children are now nearly old enough to get the parents automatic “chain migration” Green Cards. So let’s assume that the same thing happens with Venezuelans, i.e., temporary status becomes permanent in practice and continues to be expanded to cover later arrivals.
Given the assumptions that the Venezuelans keep accepting our invitation to arrive and, once here, keep creating U.S.-citizen children, how long before there are more Venezuelans here than in Venezuelan?
Population is actually falling in Venezuela right now:
And the Venezuelan population in the U.S. is rising (Pew):
(Note that this may not capture the undocumented since they might not want to answer a lot of questions from a U.S. government Census representative.)
The Pew web page provides numbers through 2021, but migration is rising exponentially and more undocumented Venezuelans arrived in 2022 than in all previous years combined (source):
Perhaps we should assume that migration levels off at 500,000 arrivals per year?
Also from Pew:
6% of U.S. Hispanic females ages 15 to 44 gave birth in the 12 months prior to the July 2021 American Community Survey. The rate for Venezuelan females was also 6%.
(Note the hateful language associating “female” identification with the ability to give birth. This from the same organization that publishes “The Experiences, Challenges and Hopes of Transgender and Nonbinary U.S. Adults” and does “deep explorations of the experiences of LGBT and transgender and nonbinary Americans”.)
It seems reasonable to assume that the declining population of Venezuela levels off at 20 million. Humans have more babies when more resources are available and dividing Venezuela’s resources by a smaller population should result in a birth rate high enough to offset the continued exodus to the U.S.
With that assumption, we can simply try to predict when the Venezuelan-origin population in the U.S. will exceed 20 million. For natural increase, let’s use the 3 percent annual population growth rate that Venezuelans had circa 1980 (it might be larger in the U.S. given our provision of taxpayer-funded housing, food, health care, etc.). In other words, births will exceed deaths and amount to 3 percent of the total (this might not be the best assumption given that the migrant population is younger than average because of the physical rigors of the journey).
It’s tough to estimate a population of the undocumented (Yale study), but let’s assume that we have about 1 million Venezuelans here in the U.S. right now. Our model shows that the Venezuelan-origin population of the U.S. will exceed that of Venezuela in 2048. (If you are preparing to criticize my model for its unsupported assumptions and simplicity, keep in mind that this is in complete accordance with Coronascience! See, for example, Coronascientists are the modern Aristotles?)
| Year | Population Size | Migrants | Births in excess of deaths |
| 2023 | 1,000,000 | 500,000 | 30,000 |
| 2024 | 1,530,000 | 500,000 | 45,900 |
| 2025 | 2,075,900 | 500,000 | 62,277 |
| 2026 | 2,638,177 | 500,000 | 79,145 |
| 2027 | 3,217,322 | 500,000 | 96,520 |
| 2028 | 3,813,842 | 500,000 | 114,415 |
| 2029 | 4,428,257 | 500,000 | 132,848 |
| 2030 | 5,061,105 | 500,000 | 151,833 |
| 2031 | 5,712,938 | 500,000 | 171,388 |
| 2032 | 6,384,326 | 500,000 | 191,530 |
| 2033 | 7,075,856 | 500,000 | 212,276 |
| 2034 | 7,788,132 | 500,000 | 233,644 |
| 2035 | 8,521,776 | 500,000 | 255,653 |
| 2036 | 9,277,429 | 500,000 | 278,323 |
| 2037 | 10,055,752 | 500,000 | 301,673 |
| 2038 | 10,857,424 | 500,000 | 325,723 |
| 2039 | 11,683,147 | 500,000 | 350,494 |
| 2040 | 12,533,642 | 500,000 | 376,009 |
| 2041 | 13,409,651 | 500,000 | 402,290 |
| 2042 | 14,311,940 | 500,000 | 429,358 |
| 2043 | 15,241,298 | 500,000 | 457,239 |
| 2044 | 16,198,537 | 500,000 | 485,956 |
| 2045 | 17,184,494 | 500,000 | 515,535 |
| 2046 | 18,200,028 | 500,000 | 546,001 |
| 2047 | 19,246,029 | 500,000 | 577,381 |
| 2048 | 20,323,410 | 500,000 | 609,702 |
I like the analysis, but wonder if you should consider one additional element: yesterday’s announcement will allow the 500,000 Venezuelans to work here, so they will all be granted social security cards, which will enable them to also obtain drivers licenses in most state. With those documents, they can register to vote in many states (in fact Maskachusetts *automatically* enrolls everyone who obtains a drivers license). Should we assume in your model that these people exercise their rights as citizens under the constitution and help pass laws that allow everyone else in Venezuela (and the rest of the world) to be become citizens too? What is the impact of this on the model?
Vennies and Haitians are the future! If the coming US vs everyone else war (China, Russia, North Korea, perhaps +Iran war) doesn’t happen by then, they won’t stand a chance with all that US diversity!
The American notion of nationality/erhnicity is an odd one for me. If some grandfather or even great-grandfather immigrated 100 years ago from Ireland, then his descendant claims he’s Irish, though he’s never visited Ireland, lived there, absorbed the way of life. He and his father have been living immersed in American culture for all their lives: television, sports, politics, malls, food, suburban life, high-school, cheerleaders, dating, college fraternities, spring break, the whole Americana. According to this logic, there are no Americans in America, only Italians, English, Irish, Jews, Mexicans etc. and the sum of Italians, Irish, English etc exceeds 20 times the population of the USA.
In my opinion an American citizen is Italian if he is born and raised in Italy, speaks Italian at home, and immigrated to the USA only after his formative years (later than let’s say 14 years old). His children are vaguely Italian and his grandchildren are already American.
According to such a definition it is impossible that there are 31 million Irish people in the US. There were 57500 births in Ireland in 2022. It would take hundreds of years for Ireland to produce 31 million people.
Adso: There are definitely Americans in America. Elizabeth Warren, for example.
Well, I hope you’ll be around in 2048 to test your prediction. What would you bet on it?