Will Japan's Disaster Open the Country to Immigrants?

The genuinely horrific combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdowns in Japan has shocked and saddened the entire world. A huge rebuilding of places and lives will, however, be the likely long-term aftermath in one of the richest countries in the world--unlike the slow pace with which Haiti has been rebuilding after its massively destructive earthquake a year ago. Quite naturally, speculation has arisen as to the extent to which Japan will need to rely on foreigners to help in that rebuilding process. Jeanne Batalova of the MPI Data Hub project at the Migration Policy Institute has noted that, at present, there are very few foreigners living in the country (of course, these data do not reflect any post-disaster evacuations):

There were slightly less than 2.2 million foreign nationals residing in Japan in 2009, according to Japan's Ministry of Justice. Since 2000, the foreign population grew by nearly half a million, from 1.7 million. Its share of the total Japan's population also increased from 1.3 percent in 2000 to 1.7 percent in 2009. (For comparison, the 38.5 million immigrants accounted for 12.5 percent of the total US population in 2009.) 

Life Expectancy at All-Time High in the US

The US Centers for Disease Control just released their latest estimates of life expectancy in the US, based on death certificate data for 2009. 

Life expectancy at birth increased to 78.2 years in 2009, up slightly from 78.0 years in 2008. Life expectancy was up two-tenths of a year for males (75.7 years) and up one-tenth of a year for females (80.6 years). Life expectancy for the U.S. white population increased by two-tenths of a year. Life expectancy for black males (70.9 years) and females (77.4 years) was unchanged in 2009. The gap in life expectancy between the white and black populations was 4.3 years in 2009, two-tenths of a year increase from the gap in 2008 of 4.1 years.

Among the Reasons Why a Complete Census Count is Important...

In an era when the US Congress is hacking away at budgets, including that of the Census Bureau, it is good to be reminded of the many ways in which the complete count is critical to our understanding of demographic trends. The Pew Research Center today issued a report showing that the intercensal estimates of the Hispanic population tended to be considerably different from the census count in those states, such as in the Southeast, where the Hispanic population is still relatively small, but is rapidly growing. As Jeff Passel and D'Vera Cohn note:

The six traditional Hispanic states for which Hispanic counts from the 2010 Census have been released include Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas. Each has more than a million Hispanic residents and collectively, 31% of their population is Hispanic. As a group, those states house 30 million Hispanics, according to the 2010 Census, yet their aggregate census count was only 88,000 (or .3%) larger than their aggregate census estimate. 

In the other 27 states, Hispanics make up 7% of the total population. These states as a group house 8.7 million Hispanics, and their combined 2010 Census count was 501,000 people (or 6.1%) higher than their combined census estimate. Among them are Alabama, where the Hispanic census count of 186,000 people was 16% higher than its census estimate, the largest gap among states seen so far.