
A Century of Migration in the US - kawera
https://century-of-migration.silk.co/
======
refriedbeans3
Smart read with some perspective on immigration from a scientist studying
historical migration and immigration to the United States.

Couple of take aways:

> "The United States has experienced much higher immigration rates than at
> present alongside much larger foreign-born populations, and we not only
> survived, but thrived."

BUT

> "...if we returned to our noble American tradition of openness like in the
> 1850s and welcome in 8 million immigrants a year (same rate as 1850 as % of
> population), the truth is, large swathes of the United States actually would
> be “speaking Arabic” (or Chinese or Indian languages). Just like large
> groups in the US in 1850 were speaking German and Gaelic. This isn’t
> speculative fear-mongering, this is just a sober reading of the data."

~~~
Kurtz79
A more sober reading would be considering how many large groups in the US
speak German and Gaelic today.

~~~
golergka
But this kind of reading is less relevant, because it has more factors
involved than mere immigration dynamics. Before immigration, Germans, English,
French and Irish lived alongside together for centuries, with similar
religions and culture, and a lot of shared cultural baggage.

Immigrants speaking arabic don't share this characteristics. For better or
worse, they come from a different culture, different religion, with different
ways of living and values.

Some people simplify these facts to cry gibberish about "brown-skinned
terrorists". These people, of course, are racist idiots. But the fact that
some idiots blow the facts out of proportion and create an idiotic hysteria
out of it doesn't mean that we should ignore the underlying truth. "Different
culture" doesn't necessary mean bad things; there's a lot of beautiful things
that western civilization has to learn from muslim culture. But some aspects
of this culture are alarming, to say the least.

~~~
tryitnow
Hmmmm. How many immigrants are Muslim? My guess would be it's quite small.

I thought most immigrants are Spanish-speaking - and they do have a lot in
common with the current US. Indeed, in many places (e.g. California) Spanish
names of towns and streets still predominate.

I think the Muslim concern may be more relevant in Europe, which has closer
proximity to the Mid-East and has little experience with integrating diverse
immigrant communities.

~~~
golergka
> the truth is, large swathes of the United States actually would be “speaking
> Arabic” (or Chinese or Indian languages)

This is the line in grandparent comment I was referring to. I think it would
be same to assume that Chinese and Indian culture — the actual culture, not
westernized and modernized "buddhism" and curry — is just as distant from
Western culture as Muslim culture.

~~~
lymanstone
Author here: I appreciate your comments!

A few notes:

Muslims make up somewhere between 4% and 12% of all legal immigrants. When you
include illegal inflows, falls to between 2% and 9%. I derive these estimates
based on country-of-origin data for legal permanent residents, so there's a
wide error band, as we don't know exactly how many from a given country are
actually of a specific religion.

I'd also note that I focused on Arabic due to current controversies--- but
Chinese or Indian languages are of course way more important. These groups are
a large and growing share of immigrants. Just didn't seem germane to focus on
them.

Regarding German and Gaelic groups today, yes, there are some, but people
routinely speaking non-English, European languages other than Spanish are
probably a smaller share than in the past wave of immigrants. Don't know for
sure though.

Regarding integration: no, Germans and Irish were NOT easier to integrate.
That's nonsense. Intra-European animosity was intense and real, far more
intense than what modern Americans feel towards Muslims. Suspicion of
Catholics puts current suspicion of Islam to shame. The idea that Europeans
were easier to integrate is, in my opinion, a hindsight bias.

------
bluedino
Is there ever going to be a reason for people to move in the future? It seems
to me like it would be climate-based instead of for work as it was in the
past.

Millions of people moved to the midwest for automotive jobs. What new industry
is going to cause that many people to re-locate these days? I think it
wouldn't only happen if something like a drought causing people to move out of
the southwest or sever flooding a la Katrina.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is there ever going to be a reason for people to move in the future?

Yes.

> It seems to me like it would be climate-based instead of for work as it was
> in the past.

There may be _some_ point in the future where geography is irrelevant to
economic prospects, but that's quite some way off still.

> What new industry is going to cause that many people to re-locate these
> days?

Even without new regionally concentrated industries (which may still occur and
draw people in, but are hard to predict), the _collapse_ of existing
regionally-dominant industries will cause people to move for economic reasons
-- maybe not all _to_ the same place, but out from places experiencing that
kind of collapse to places that aren't.

