New California: Mass Immigration Turning Virginia Blue

The birthplace and final resting place of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson–and once one of the most reliably-red of red states–is being rapidly turned into a progressive stronghold.

These changes are not the result of an inside agency, or a natural evolution in political thinking, but rather the result of one of the most impactful yet least-discussed policies of the federal government.

Each year the federal government prints millions of visas and distributes these admission tickets to the poorest and least-developed nations in the world.

A middle-aged person living in parts of Virginia today will have witnessed more demographic change in the span of her life than many societies have experienced in millennia.

A census study entitled “Immigrants in Virginia,” released by University of Virginia (UVA) researchers, documented the phenomenon: “Until 1970, only 1 in 100 Virginians was born outside of the United States; by 2012, 1 in every 9 Virginians is foreign-born.”

Fairfax Connection, a community newspaper, offered more detail:

In the span of one generation, Fairfax County has seen an explosion in its immigrant population. In 1970, more than 93 percent of Fairfax County’s population was white and middle-class. In the fall of 1970, a white 6-year-old child beginning elementary school in one of the county’s developing towns . . . could look to his left, or look to his right, and see a classroom full of children who, at least 90 percent of the time, looked like him and who spoke English. By 2010, a child entering elementary school in Fairfax County would almost certainly encounter a classmate who did not speak English as a primary language, and whose parents or grandparents immigrated from places such as Vietnam, India, Korea or a country in Africa.

UVA’s report explains that more than three out of four of Virginia immigrants (77 percent) are coming from either Latin America or Asia–immigration from Europe, the report writes, “lag[s] far behind” representing only 10 percent of Virginia’s immigrant population. This is consistent with trends nationwide. According to the 2013 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration Yearbook, only 8.7 percent of green cards issued by the federal government went to immigrants born in Europe, a product of immigration changes pushed through by Ted Kennedy in 1965.

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Large numbers of these settlers handpicked by the federal government have come to Virginia. A 2011 article from The Washington Post explains: “Soaring number of Hispanics and Asians pushed Virginia’s population over 8 million in the past decade.”

“Statewide the number of Hispanics almost doubled to 632,000. Hispanics now make up 8 percent of Virginia residents.” The Post continues, “The state’s Asian population also took off, climbing by 68 percent in 10 years.”

The Post notes that, “as recently as 1990, non-Hispanic whites made up 76 percent of the state’s residents. A decade later, their numbers had fallen to 70 percent, and [in 2010], they accounted for less than two-thirds of the state’s residents.”

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In 2012, the Richmond Times Dispatch highlighted the political effects of issuing visas to so many migrants from outside the Western World: “The population shift, most notably in Northern Virginia, is changing the state’s educational, political and social landscape.”

The Times Dispatch continues, “Virginia’s demographic changes have also transformed political leanings in the state that, before President Barack Obama’s win of electoral votes in 2008, had not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.”

The blue-ing of Virginia brought about by continued immigration is not calculated only by measuring the voting habits of immigrants themselves, but is multiplied outward through the voting habits of immigrants’ children and grandchildren. As the Times Dispatch notes: “Not all minority voters are foreign-born, of course, but many have participated in the changing political landscape.” The increase in the minority vote share stems from immigration itself: “Many immigrants come to the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 44, during the prime of their careers, and are more likely to have families here.” The results, per the Times Dispatch, are striking: “During the 2012 presidential election, when 71 percent of the state’s voters went to the polls, two-thirds of Hispanic and Asian voters backed Obama. Obama carried 93 percent of the black vote, 64 percent of the Hispanic vote and 66 percent of the Asian vote, according to exit polls reported by The New York Times.”

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