Racial and ethnic demographics trends

SIGNIFICANCE: The demographic makeup of the United States and Canada has changed over the years, affecting the relations between and relative power and dominance of the various racial and ethnic groups living in these nations of immigrants.

The United States, Canada, and Australia havge historically been the three most important “receiving” countries for immigrants worldwide. The United States and Canada, as a result of their immigration policies, have become two of the world’s most ethnically diverse geographical areas. In the twenty-first century, the United States was the largest destination for immigrants of any country in the world. Two centuries ago, the population of these two nations was predominantly of White European heritage, but in the twenty-first century, people of color and people whose heritage is not European are expected to become an increasingly large part of their populations. Because the United States and Canada both possessed a strong democratic ethos and high standard of living, they were likely to attract many more people, especially oppressed ethnic minorities.

United States

Since 1790, as required by the US Constitution, a census has been conducted every ten years. The initial purpose of the census was to enable the US government to determine an equitable apportionment of tax dollars and the number of representatives each area would send to Congress. During its early history, the census was executed by temporary workers in nonpermanent facilities. It was not until March 1902 that the government created the Bureau of the Census with a full-time staff and permanent facilities.

A perennial issue for the bureau has been the underreporting of certain subpopulations, including the very young, the poor, immigrants, and nonwhite people. The resulting lower numbers have often resulted in those populations having less government representation and, unfortunately, fewer benefits. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the bureau made great efforts to correct these shortcomings by making questionnaires available in Spanish and developing methods for assessing the undocumented immigrant population.

During its first hundred years, the United States had an open immigration policy. It was not until 1882 that Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which outlawed Chinese immigration for ten years. This anti-Chinese legislation followed thirty years of heavy Chinese immigration during which more than two hundred thousand Chinese people came to the United States to escape overpopulation, poverty, and warfare in China.

The history of legal immigration to the United States between 1820 and 1985 exhibited dramatic changes in the regions of the world from which immigrants came. Examination of the table “Regional Background of US Immigrants (1820–1985)” revealed these changes. Most striking was the decline of European immigrants, largely White people, and the significant increase in immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

1820-18601861-18991900-19201921-19601961-19701971-19801981-1985Northern and western Europe9568413818 7 5North America 3 7 61912 4 2Southern and eastern Europe—2244201511 6Asia— 2 4 4133548Latin America—— 4 18394035Other 2 1 1 1 3 3 4

Canada

Canada, founded by the British and French, had exclusionary laws that discouraged non-European immigrants. These laws were relaxed after World War II. The nation’s modern multicultural population reflected the new immigration policies. Of the almost 33 million people in Canadaas estimated in the 2011 censusabout 34.5 percent were of British ancestry, 15.4 percent were of French ancestry, 18.5 percent were of other European descent, and 4.3 percent were of Aboriginal Canadian ancestry. Though the Canadian census allowed people to identify their ethnicity simply as "Canadian," most of the rest of the population was made up of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Canada's census also counted visible minorities, defined as people who are "non-Caucasian in race or non-White in color," who in 2011 made up 19.1 percent of the population. The largest visible minority groups at this time were South Asians, Chinese people, and Black people. Although the number of people with non-European ancestry in Canada’s population had steadily increased and was expected to continue to do so, it is anticipated that people of European descent will continue to dominate its culture and seats of political power.

Ancient Peoples of North America

Recent archaeological research suggested human beings, probably Homo erectus, were living in North America as far back as 135,000 years ago. At the time of the first European contact, about 12 million to 15 million Native Americans and 20,000 Inuit were living in North America. According to the 2011 American Community Survey, 5.1 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives were living in the United States, making up about 1.6 percent of the population. In Canada, in 2011, census takers reported about 1.4 million Aboriginal Canadians, accounting for 4.3 percent of the overall population. Mistreatment by Whites and deadly epidemics account for the great reduction in the Indigenous population. However, both in the United States and Canada, these populations grew quickly. In Canada, the Aboriginal population grew 20.1 percent between 2006 and 2011, compared to 5.2 percent for the non-Aboriginal population, while in the United States, the Native American and Alaska Native population grew 26.7 percent between 2000 and 2010, compared to 9.7 percent for the overall population.

African Americans

As of 2021, The United States contained about 40 million African Americans and had the third-largest Black population in the world. Only Brazil and Nigeria have larger populations. Contrary to popular belief, the first Black people in North America were not enslaved people. In 1619, twenty Black men became indentured servants to wealthy Virginian White men. Unfortunately, most of the other Black people who landed in the United States came as enslaved people. From the beginning of the American trade of enslaved people in the 1600s to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, almost 90 percent of all Black people in what is now the United States were enslaved. The first US census in 1790 reported 757,000 Black people. By 1800, they numbered one million. In the 1860 census, there were about 4,442,000 Black people. The 1990 US census reported almost 30 million Black people, or about 12.1 percent of the population. By 2013, that proportion had risen to 13.2 percent. In the 2020 census, although the number of Americans that identified themselves as African American had risen to nearly 40 million, its percentage in American society fell to 12.1 percent.

Latino People

Latino people were among the earliest nonnative peoples to populate North America. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León discovered Florida, and in 1565, Spaniards settled St. Augustine in present-day Florida. They also colonized Mexico and parts of the American Southwest. As a result, the Latino population of the United States had largely been concentrated in the Southwestern states of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, large Hispanic populations also developed in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Illinois. As of 2013, over 54 million people, or 17.1 percent of the population, identified as Hispanic or Latino. For census purposes, Hispanic or Latino is not considered a race and is covered by a separate question from the racial identification question, so there is some overlap between this group and those who identify as Black or White on the census. The 2020 census indicated a sharp upward trend in the percentages that Hispanic or Latino communities formed in American society. In 2020, approximately 62 million Americans identified themselves in this racial category, which comprised almost 19 percent of all Americans. In Texas, Hispanics became the majority population in 2023. Nationwide, White demographics had declined to about 58 percent of the US population.

Asians and Arab Americans

The first Asians to arrive in the United States were the Chinese. In 1849, there were only 54 Chinese people in the whole nation, but the Asian American community grew rapidly after that. In the 1880s, Chinese and Japanese immigrants came to Canada to help construct the railroad and work on other industrial projects. They were soon followed by East Indians. In 2011, the Asian American population was estimated at 18.2 million individuals, roughly five percent of the population. The largest subgroups were Chinese (4 million), Filipino (3.4 million), and Asian Indian (3.2 million).

As Arab Americans were considered White for census purposes, there is less certainty as to the exact population figures. However, the 2011 American Community Survey reported approximately 1.8 million Arab Americans. Two-thirds of the Arab American population was concentrated in ten statesCalifornia, Michigan, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginiaand one-third lived in the metropolitan areas of New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The largest subgroup was Lebanese, followed by Egyptians and Syrians.

Between the early 1900s and World War II, exclusionary laws kept most Asians from immigrating to Canada. However, after the war, Canada relaxed its immigration policies, and many Asians came to Canada. In 2011, approximately 15.2 percent of Canadians, or over 5 million people, reported Asian ancestry. South Asians, who are not only the largest subgroup of Asian Canadians but the largest Canadian minority group overall, made up 4.8 of Canada's total population and 25 percent of the visible minority population. Chinese Canadians, both the next-largest Asian group and the next-largest minority group, constituted four percent of the total population and 21.1 percent of the visible minority population. The third-largest subgroup, about half the size of the Chinese population, was people of Filipino descent, making up about two percent of Canadians.

Arab people first came to Canada in the late nineteenth century and most were Christians from Syria or Lebanon escaping Ottoman rule. Immigration of Arab people to Canada increased following World War II, bringing a wider array of ethnic and religious backgrounds to the Arab Canadian community. This trend continued steadily through the twenty-first century. As of the 2011 census, there were there were 380,620 Arab Canadians, making up about 1.2 percent of the country's population. The largest subgroup in both Canada and the United States was Lebanese people, followed by Iranians, though many Arab Canadians did not specify their ethnicity further than "Arab." More than 80 percent of the country's Arab population lived in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario at the time of the census.

Similar to more advanced countries worldwide, in the twenty-first century, native born Canadians began to experience decreased birth rates and longer life expectancies. Birth rates fell below levels needed to sustain its population size. Thus the native Canadian population began to age, and younger demographics contracted. Canada realized it was dependent on attracting immigrants to both maintain its population and for labor. Its immigration policies soon reflected this. This showed in the respective immigration policies of both countries. 2025 projections showed Canada would permit entry to 12.5 immigrants per 1,000 residents. In comparison, the US planned to allow 3 immigrants per 1,000 residents. In practical terms, Canada scheduled the admittance of more than four times the number of immigrants as America per capita. In the mid-2020s immigration accounted for all the growth in Canada's labor force. Furthermore, in the coming decade, assessments suggested immigrants would provide 100 percent of the country's population growth.

The Future

For the last five hundred years, the United States and Canada were dominated by White European peoples and cultures. However, in the last fifty years, people of non-European descent became the fastest-growing populations in these nations. In the United States, projections for the population of non-Hispanic White people was expected to drop to less than half of the total population by 2060 as other groups continued to grow, with the African American population expected to reach 14.3 percent, Asian Americans to reach 9.3 percent, and Hispanic or Latino Americans to reach 28.6 percent. In Canada, the most recent projection, from 2006, predicted that by 2031, the visible minority population would rise to about 30 percent of the total population, with the proportion becoming as much as 60 percent in metropolitan areas such as Toronto and Vancouver. In the face of these trends, the power and influence of the dominant White group in the United States and Canada was expected to somewhat diminish while the two nations would continue to be pluralistic and democratic societies that continued to attract refugees and immigrants.

This optimisitc viewpoint was stressed in the 2020s in both Canada and the United States. Both countries were enveloped in the global issue shared by economically advanced countries. This was where native-born populations in more advanced countries experienced declining birth rates and longer life expectancies. Older demographics grew in numbers, while those in younger age segments contracted. Many Western countries met labor shortfalls by encouraging large number of immigrant workers. These same societies, nonetheless, came to feel their native cultures to be at risk by the presence of foreign newcomers. Ironically, many of these Western countries had culturally transformed societies outside their borders as colonizers in previous centuries. This situation had reversed itself in the twenty-first century. Right-wing nativist movements emerged across the globe and threatened to become the popular ruling party of many Western governments, a situation not experienced since the end of World War II in 1945. Countries demonstrating these trends included France, Germany, Norway, Holland, among others.

Bibliography

Chutel, Lynsey. "Sweden Will Offer Migrants $34,000 to Go Home." New York Times, 13 Sept. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/europe/sweden-immigration-reform.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Colby, Sandra L., and Jennifer M. Ortman. "Projections of the Size and Composition of the US Population: 2014 to 2060." US Census Bureau, 2015, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf?#:~:text=The%20total%20U.S.%20population%20is,2.1%20million%20people%20per%20year. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.

Edelberg, Wendy, and David Dollar. "Why Immigrants Are America’s Superpower." Brookings, 3 July 2023, www.brookings.edu/articles/why-immigrants-are-americas-superpower. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Frey, William. “New 2020 Census Data Shows an Aging America and Wide Racial Gaps Between Generations.” Brookings, 1 Aug. 2023, www.brookings.edu/articles/new-2020-census-data-shows-an-aging-america-and-wide-racial-gaps-between-generations. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

"Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity in Canada." Statistics Canada, www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.

Jensen, Eric, et al. "2020 U.S. Population More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Than Measured in 2010." US Census Bureau, 12 Aug. 2021, www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/2020-united-states-population-more-racially-ethnically-diverse-than-2010.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Malenfant, Éric C., et al. "Projections of the Diversity of the Canadian Population, 2006 to 2031." Statistics Canada. Government of Canada, 9 Mar. 2010. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-551-x/91-551-x2010001-eng.htm. Accessed 20 May. 2015.

Moslimani, Muhamad, and Jeffrey S. Passel. “What the Data Says about Immigrants in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, 22 July 2024, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/key-findings-about-us-immigrants. Accessed 9 Sept. 2024.