Michigan needs new people? Recent anemic growth numbers of 0.6% from Jul 23 to Jul 24 highlight Michigan’s slowing and losing ground again, relative to our fellow 50 states. The solution, according to one of our foremost demographic experts is new people. Not just new Michiganders like the old Michiganders, but new kinds of people.

              Kurt Metzger, eminent demographer as well as Mayor of Huntington Woods, is quoted in Global Detroit blog: “For counties with populations, 90 percent or more white, non-Hispanic, births average about 75 percent of deaths – deaths outnumber births 1.29 to 1.  Unless these counties figure out a way to bring migrants in, their destiny is one of continued loss…”

              Sum up: Michigan must ““grow its share of the nation’s increasing immigrant and refugee numbers, as well as devise campaigns to attract immigrants from other parts of the country” or continue to decline. And not white, non-Hispanics.

              Mr. Metzger’s analyses are as usual, impeccable. But the racial component smacks of “Replacement Theory?” YOW!! That phrase, meaning substituting one population for another of different ethnicity, is Verboten! But is it really unthinkable? Well, it all depends how you do it.

              Replacing a population deliberately by deporting one group of people and settling another, as the Russians are doing in Occupied Ukraine and the Chinese in Sinkiang, is considered an offense against humanity and a war crime—no argument. But the replacement of one population by another naturally happens all the time.

              There’s an American town whose traditional and established makeup, culture, and religion was totally swamped and altered by mass immigration. The town was Puritan Boston and the ‘invaders’ were my people: the Catholic Irish! Today the Celtics and the shamrock define Boston, and not just in Southie. Here in Michigan, Hamtramck was overwhelmed by migration.

No, not Poles by the current Muslim immigrants, but the peaceful German-American farmers of the early 1900s swamped by thirsty Polish newcomers who raised the population from 3589 to 46,615 in just ten years and built a bar on every corner. As the Polish generations moved to Warren, then Sterling Heights, then Shelby Twp, the Yemeni moved in.

              Metro Detroit’s moving population can be tracked through the suburbs. Irish Corktown begat Redford, which begat Livonia, which begat Plymouth. Jewish 12^th Street begat Southfield, which begat West Bloomfield. The original neighborhoods change to house the newest newcomers.

              There are stories about immigrants providing strength to one party or another. Historically, immigrants made the muscle of Tammany Hall. But today is more complex. Some groups, like the Chaldeans, are receptive to Republicans who support entrepreneurship, and nationally, Hispanics broke unexpectedly for Trump. Each community is unique, and alliances follow perceived interests.

              What about the current immigration controversy? The Biden Flood? Mass migration of virtually open borders has destabilized nations in Europe. Could it happen here? It hasn’t happened here. Our various ethnic communities are still settling in, finding their futures, and becoming Americans same as always. Here in Michigan our history shows that legal immigration keeps the engine running, and new blood brings vigor and dynamism. Maybe the theory’s not “Replacement” but “Transformation.”

              Even with us Irish.