The abandoning of New York
The objective of the looming U.S. Census is to count every man, woman and child in the nation. That is an undeniably lofty goal but here are the treasures waiting at the end of the quest: Congressional representation and billions of federal dollars. Now here is the challenge confronting us: Recently released population data from the U.S. Census Bureau deliver projections that New York may be losing a congressional seat, and maybe two, in the new decade.
The numbers are discouraging, to say the least. The report found that New York has grown far more slowly than other states over the past decade, adding only about 73,000 people while losing nearly 1 million residents to other states. According to the study, the state would need 537,876 people to keep the 27 seats it holds in Congress.
Even more alarming, if this year’s census information reveals that New York’s population is down by around 237,000, the state could lose a second congressional seat, bringing the number of seats down to 25. The 2020 projections, based on the growth trends of the past decade, found that New York is only 61,279 people away from losing that second seat.
The population losses are heavily concentrated in the upstate area — that means Columbia and Greene counties — which is probably not surprising, and so a district there could be lost. Also not surprising are two of the three main reasons people are heading out of New York in droves: climate change and high taxes.
The third, the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, contains its own logic.
New York grew in population mostly because of immigration, and that has slowed since 2017 with the Trump administration. With a travel ban the administration enacted against several Muslim-majority countries, increased apprehensions and lower numbers of immigrants crossing the southern border, and a lower refugee cap year after year under the administration, immigration slowed to a trickle in New York.
Between 2016 and 2018, there was an approximate 25,000-person drop in immigrants obtaining lawful permanent status in New York, according to data from U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. Special immigrant visa arrivals to the state were slashed by more than half between fiscal years 2017 and 2019, from 531 to 230, according to Office of Refugee Resettlement data.
The number of refugees who resettled in the state fell by more than 3,000 from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2019, and is expected to drop more dramatically with the White House plan to slash refugee admissions from 30,000 to 18,000.
Experts said the immigrant communities left in New York will have a hard time getting counted in the new census, a problem for a state that is dependent on immigrants to bolster population count.
Holding on to the status quo on congressional representation for New York is in great peril and, as the census begins, the immediate outlook for the state is grim.
