Handpicked legal immigrants are transforming Virginia's political landscape from a traditionally conservative state to a more Democratic-leaning state, and it has helped the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections.
Such changes are not the result of a naturally-evolving political demographic, but rather, the result of the federal government printing and distributing millions of visas "to the poorest and least-developed nations in the world," explains Breitbart's Julia Hanh.
Seventy-seven percent of Virginia immigrants are coming from Latin American or Asia, and 75 percent of all refugees in 2013 came from four countries: Iraq, Burma, Somalia and Bhutan, notes Hanh, citing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration Yearbook.
A census study released by researchers from the University of Virginia found that until 1970, "only 1 in 100 Virginians was born outside of the United States; by 2012, 1 in every 9 Virginians is foreign-born."
Over the past decade, "soaring numbers of Hispanics and Asians pushed Virginia's population over 8 million," explains The Washington Post. "Statewide, the number of Hispanics almost doubled to 632,000. Hispanics now make up 8 percent of Virginia residents," while the state's Asian population rose by 68 percent in 10 years.
Only about 9 percent of green cards issued by the federal government in 2013 were issued to European immigrants, according to the DHS.
"Year after year, the United States continues its annual dispensation of one million plus new green cards, the admission of one million foreign workers, refugees and dependents, and the importation of half a million foreign youths sought by college administrators," Hahn wrote.
They collect public benefits, can fill any job, rely on federal retirement programs, and perhaps most importantly, they vote; and mostly Democratic.
"The enormous flow of legal immigrants into the country - 29.5 million from 1980 to 2012 - has remade and continues to remake the nation's electorate in favor of the Democratic Party," concludes a 2014 report authored by University of Maryland professor James Gimpel for the Center for Immigration Studies.
The report cites a 2012 YouGov study of 2,900 naturalized immigrants, which found that 62.5 percent identified as a Democrat, 24.6 percent as Republican and 12.9 percent as independent.
The are around 8.7 million immigrants currently in the U.S. who are eligible for naturalization, according to the report. "Not all will become voting citizens, but somewhere between 50 percent and 60 percent will. And it's a sure bet that a majority will identify themselves as Democrats," according to the Washington Examiner. Millions more could eventually be eligible to vote under President Obama's executive immigrant amnesty program.
Hahn argues that the effects of such immigration policies are much more permanent and transformative "than many of the most far-reaching foreign policy accords."
The population shift, particularly in North Virginia, has changed the state's educational, political and social landscape, the Richmond Times Dispatch said in 2012.
"Virginia's demographic changes have also transformed political leanings in the state that, before President Barack Obama's win of electoral votes in 2008, had not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964," the Dispatch continued.
According to exit polls reported on by The New York Times, "During the 2012 presidential election, when 71 percent of the state's voters went to the polls, two-thirds of Hispanic and Asian voters backed Obama. Obama carried 93 percent of the black vote, 64 percent of the Hispanic vote and 66 percent of the Asian vote."
The effects are not limited to electoral patterns, though, according to Hahn. Resettling poor foreign populations in Virginia has posed educational challenges and impacted the fiscal landscape, as well as resulted in changing crime patterns.
"In this sense, the ongoing dispensations of green cards, refugee admittances, and foreign worker visas to developing nations exacerbates income inequality in two ways: it increases job competition for the current minority population while also straining educational resources in these communities," said Hahn. "While this income inequality is helpful to large political donors whose financial enterprises gain profit from reduced wages, it adds substantially to the challenges facing dedicated educators and social workers."
Ironically enough, Republican officials in Virginia have led the push to bring even a larger number of immigrants to the state, Hahn said.
"Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, for instance, in the months before his titanic fall from power, engineered the effort to provide more labor to Virginia employers through foreign worker visas," she wrote.
More recently, Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, proposed two bills.
The first, the SKILLS Visa Act, would significantly increase the number of foreign visas annually distributed to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. It would also increase the number H-1B visas and repeal the employment-based per-country cap.
The other bill, the Agricultural Guestworker "AG" Act, "would increase foreign worker visas issued to food manufacturers who wield substantial influence within the modern Republican Party," explained Hahn. "Since Goodlatte's foreign workers would arrive on visas, Republican donors who own businesses would be able to legally replace Americans workers with these newcomers."
