Here are three problems the United States faces, and our part of Virginia is ground zero for many of these unhealthy trends.
Most rural areas are losing population. In Virginia, most rural areas are now seeing more people move in than move out — a dramatic and welcome shift — but they’re still losing population overall because, with aging populations, deaths outnumber both births and this new net in-migration.
Because of declining birth rates, universities are facing what’s called “the enrollment cliff,” a smaller pool of college-bound students. This is putting pressure on some schools, especially small ones, to figure out ways to maintain their enrollments. This is why we’re seeing Ferrum College move its sports programs to the Division II level and why we’re seeing Randolph College adding new sports — all those things might make it easier to attract new students, and retain them.
Overall, a declining birth rate is creating economic pressure in other ways. The short-term problem is that we have worker shortages. The long-term problem is paying for certain government programs that people expect to be there. Social Security is not a bank account. It’s set up on the premise that each generation pays for the generation ahead of it. In the beginning, that worked fine because we had a lot more workers paying in than we did retirees drawing out. Now, that’s no longer the case. In 1940, there were 42 workers for each beneficiary. Now that figure is 2.7, and going lower. If you think your Social Security taxes are too high, or worry that the retirement age might be increased, this is why. We need more younger adults so they can pay into the system. If we’re not creating those the old-fashioned way, then we need more immigration — but immigration has become one of the most polarizing political arguments of our time, partly because we’ve conflated a porous southern border that allows unregulated immigration with a demographic need for more immigration.
Now comes a presidential candidate who had proposed something that conceivably could fix all three problems at once. Some of you on both sides may need to go get your smelling salts because that candidate is Donald Trump.
Yes, I’m as surprised as you are. Trump has long made it clear that he thinks we need less immigration, not more — even less legal immigration. This runs in defiance of the demographic facts, but let’s not adjudicate that today. (If you want more on that, see this previous column). Trump has also vowed to carry out the largest deportation in American history. That may strike some as long overdue but once again, some troublesome details. When Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, spoke in Radford he bemoaned how high housing prices are making it impossible for some young adults to buy houses. He’s absolutely right. One way to lower those prices is through old-fashioned supply-and-demand: We need to build more houses. I constantly hear from one banker in Southwest Virginia that the main obstacle to home construction in his part of the state is a lack of construction workers. However, by some accounts, as many as 23.5% of the construction workers in Virginia are either illegal immigrants (the preferred Republican phrase) or undocumented workers (the preferred Democratic phrase). I’m at a loss to understand how we will build more houses, and lower home prices, if we deport nearly a quarter of the construction workforce. A mass deportation will disrupt the economy and drive housing prices higher, but I addressed that in a previous column.
By contrast, here’s a proposal that could work — if Trump means it.
The origin of this was an interview Trump gave in June to the All-In podcast, run by four venture capitalists who advertise that their podcast will “cover all things economic, tech, political, social, and poker.”
Trump was asked if he would “give us [the] ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America” — the tech sector has been among the loudest saying it can’t find enough workers domestically, that it needs to be able to recruit internationally.
Trump’s response was to propose this: “You graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country, and that includes junior colleges too. Anybody graduates from a college — you go in there for two years or four years. If you graduate, or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”
Some conservative immigration groups were apoplectic when they heard this because this seems at odds with the rest of Trump’s immigration rhetoric. Or is it? NBC News points out that Trump said similar things in 2016 but never followed through. Trump is hardly the first politician to propose things and not do them, but let’s suppose he did in this case. What would happen?
Trump contends this would boost the economy by creating a new pool of entrepreneurs: “I know of stories where people graduated from a top college or from college, and they desperately wanted to stay here and had a plan for a company, a concept. And they can’t. Somebody graduates at the top of the class, they can’t even make a deal with a company because they don’t think they’re going to be able to stay in the country. That is going to end on day one.”
Conservative critics say this would simply lead to some colleges becoming diploma mills: “If this proposal were adopted, you would see an explosion of quickie, one-year master’s programs around the country as a way of selling green cards to foreigners,” Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies told the New York Post.
We could argue the hypotheticals here until our faces turn as red as those “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, except we don’t need to argue hypotheticals. We have a real-life example we can look to as a place to determine how this policy would work. That place is Canada.
Apart from its French-speaking province of Quebec, Canada seems a country much like ours — just colder and with a stronger affection for hockey, poutine and The Tragically Hip. However, Canada — under governments both left and right — has long had very different views on immigration. Canada emphatically wants more of it for the same reasons we ought to — to grow the economy and help pay for social programs. Canada does have the luxury of not worrying about masses of people walking across its southern border, and that may allow it to focus more clearly on the economic benefits.
One way Canada encourages immigration is by welcoming international students and then making it easy for them to stay in the country. That’s why enrollment at Canadian universities is growing while enrollment at American ones is declining.
- From 2011 to 2024, enrollment at U.S. colleges declined from 24.8 million students to 20.3 million. During that same period, Canadian enrollment grew from 2 million to 2.19 million students.
- That growth in Canadian enrollment has been driven by international students. The percentage of international students in Canada has grown from 7% in 2010-11 to 18% in 2019-20 before the pandemic hit. In the U.S., the figure is 5.6%, so we’re lower now than what Canada used to be.
- International graduates in Canada are more likely to stay than are their counterparts in the United States. About 11% of international students who receive bachelor’s degrees in the U.S. stay, about 23% of those who obtain master’s degrees do. In Canada, the figure is about 30% (that figure seems to account for all types of degrees). One reason they’re more likely to stay in Canada is that Canada makes it easier for them to get the paperwork — so that speaks exactly to what Trump has floated.
The final part of the equation is that Canada is also trying to direct those graduates to places other than its major cities. How well it’s succeeding on that score is up for debate, but the point for us is that Canada does have a program to do that. Those programs allow immigrants to more easily qualify for permanent residence status if they have certain skills that are in demand in a particular community that haven’t been filled — particularly in health care. There are also requirements for how long those immigrants have to stay, typically at least five years (with the hope that in that time they become rooted in the community and won’t leave when their required time is up). A government report found that these programs accounted for virtually all of the economic-driven immigrants moving to Manitoba and Saskatechewan, two predominantly rural prairie provinces north of our North Dakota and Montana. Now imagine the worker shortages we have in health care professions alone in rural areas and how we can fill them.
If Trump means what he says and were to follow through — two big “ifs” with any politician, I realize — then making it easier for international graduates to stay in the United States would help us fill some worker shortages that otherwise aren’t being filled (plus help save some smaller schools that might be on the economic brink). And if — another big if — we created a rural incentive program the way Canada has done, we could help address some key employment needs in rural communities, as well as reduce those population declines.
Trump is fond of pushing his wall, but the more important question may be whether he’s also proposing a door.
Should we rename the 5th District ‘The Fighting Fifth’?
Rep. Bob Good, who lost the Republican primary for the 5th District Republican nomination to John McGuire, has filed paperwork to run again in 2026. In this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, I write about why this doesn’t necessarily mean he will run. I’ll also address what Tim Walz means for the Democratic ticket and highlight a courageous vote by one Virginia member of Congress.
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