VICKSBURG - Zero population growth among Mississippians who are white. Four percent population growth among Mississippians who are African-American. Thirty-five percent population growth among Mississippians who are Hispanic.
Shock! Alarm! Awe! - and proof, if nothing else, that statistics - especially when percentages are employed - can be misleading.
The fact is Mississippi is nowhere near being "overtaken" by immigrants, legal or illegal.
Indeed, the actual situation is akin to saying a ball player who hit 25 home runs last year and 25 home runs this year has not improved his game while a ball player who hit one home run last year and two this year has become twice as good. The statement is accurate, but which player would you want on your team?
It was raw estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau that led to the percentages reported in the state's press and repeated by its politicians. From 2000 until 2006, Hispanics have been the fastest-growing racial classification in Mississippi, no doubt about it.
But by the numbers, there are 1,781,250 white Mississippians (61.2 percent), 1,073,989 black Mississippians (36.9 percent) and 53,381 Hispanic or Latino Mississippians (1.7 percent). So, together, with Native Americans and Asians, Mississippi is 98.3 percent non-Latino.
Said still another way, even after the 35 percent increase over the past six years, white Mississippians still outnumber Hispanics 33 to 1 and black Mississippians still outnumber Hispanics 20 to 1. At the national level, 14.4 percent of Americans are Hispanic.
The larger picture is that as a state and a nation, we are nowhere near a consensus on which direction is desired for the nation's future. That's the reason "immigration reform" is having such problems on Capitol Hill today, as it has for decades. It's hard to say what repairs are needed without agreement on what's broken. And this becomes doubly challenging in a nation such as America where all of us - except Native Americans - are a few generations or less from being immigrants ourselves.
Historically, the natural ebb and flow of people follows commerce. The opportunity to be secure and seek prosperity is what made towns under the protection of the Roman Empire grow. We'd like to think people are different today, but they're not. Indeed, the daily exodus of Iraqis from Iraq shows those who can search out stability will do so.
It's no secret that immigration has been part of the success story of America. The majority who came here were people with "gumption," meaning adventurous, curious, driven to do better.
If people moving to find opportunity is natural, then immigration rules and regulations are artificial. That doesn't mean they are not worthwhile. But they're like the border between Mississippi and Alabama or Louisiana or Tennessee. Lines people put on a map, nothing more.
The smaller, not-so-abstract picture contains often-ignored truths.
- As an agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been an abysmal failure at enforcing existing, black-letter law. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the same bureaucratic inefficiency and political meddling that has made immigration controls a joke in the past will not continue under the even more complex regulations in the future.
- Legal immigrants and those who try to be legal immigrants have borne the brunt of this morass in the past and will continue to do so. Illegals will keep doing what they've always done.
- It angers people, justifiably, when they're told that employers and illegals who have broken the law with impunity will not be provided amnesty when, in fact, that's the plan.
Such people are said to have "xenophobia." A phobia is a fear and the prefix, in this case, combines with the term to mean a fear of strangers or foreigners. Some fears are rational. Some are not.
Reports that Hispanics have increased 35 percent while other races have increased slightly or not at all feeds a fear that people who don't speak English are taking jobs, getting a free ride for education and health care and committing criminal acts.
But hyperbole aside, the reality is that as a people, Mississippians and Americans don't really have a unified sense of direction on the topic. Some individuals do. Some candidates and some politicians do. But the people don't.
There's no clear majority demanding "seal the borders" or "open the floodgates." Unless or until such a consensus emerges, we'll kind of muddle along.
