(CNN)A joke about the politics of immigration is that things are going nowhere, faster than ever. Even though the immigration debate hasn't changed in years, someone should tell Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton that the immigration reality has. Demographics have shifted in Mexico and in Central America because women are having fewer babies.
In fact, a decadeslong wave of Mexican immigration to the United States simply stopped when the Great Recession started in 2007. It won't be coming back, regardless of who becomes president or what policies the federal government enacts.
What the numbers miss is the more important demographic shift. Fertility rates have essentially collapsed throughout Latin America. The average woman in every Latin American country gave birth to nearly seven children in the 1950s, 1960s and even into the 1970s. Today, the average is two to three children per woman (only Guatemala is near three). Indeed, fertility is nearing the demographic tipping point of 2.1 children per woman in many developing countries, below which a society shrinks rather than grows. In Japan and some European societies, fertility has been far below the replacement rate for a long time, and their labor shortage has become acute. Demographers now admit that the overpopulation alarmism of yesteryear was misplaced. That explains why the wave of Mexican immigration evaporated. And while migration pressure from Central America in a sense has replaced the Mexican cohort, that entire region has a third of Mexico's population. And it is unlikely to supply a young migrant wave because all those nations are graying, too. In Guatemala, for example, the median age during the 20th century was 17.5 years. It was steady for half a century. Suddenly, in 2000, it jumped to 18.1 years. The median age proceeded to rise by nearly a full year during each five-year census: in 2005 (18.9), in 2010 (19.9), again in 2015 (21.2) and is projected to be 22.6 years in 2020. In the United States, the median age rose by two years between 2000 and 2010. It's no joke to say the growth industry of tomorrow will be elder care.
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