[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.

[dragonwriter]

Spanish town and street names in California don't come from immigration so much as from the fact that Alta California was part of Mexico before it was part of the US.

Its true that there are lots of Spanish speaking immigrants, and its true that more generous quotas would likely increase that more than anything else, but that's not all that closely connected to California city and street names.

[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.

[defen]

I don't know about Gaelic, but German language and culture in the USA was ruthlessly suppressed during World War 1, and they were forced to assimilate into the broader Anglo culture. I don't see that happening today if 10% of our population speaks Chinese as their primary language & we go to war with China.

[lymanstone]

Also, German religious leaders tended to promote integration more than Irish religious leaders. Irish Catholics tended to be highly conservative, and were also viewed (rightly or wrongly isn't totally clear) as sympathetic to the South and slavery up until the Civil War, when they fought for the Union of course, but also led draft riots in many cities.

[refriedbeans3]

Right - he makes that point in the article that it went well with the Germans and Irish, but it doesn't mean it would go well with mass immigration from China, India, or the Middle East.

Impossible to prove without doing it, but valid point that should be considered.

[Torgo]

open immigration periods were punctuated by closed periods that facilitated assimilation of those groups.

[lymanstone]

To the best of my knowledge, this is not true: the US was open from 1800 until Chinese exclusion in the 1870s and 1880s, and in the 1860s actually had laws to encourage even MORE immigration. See here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/30/how-u-s-immi...

[tryitnow]

8 million per year?! That certainly puts things in perspective.

Of course, I don't think anyone other than anarchists IS calling for returning to 1850s levels immigration.

[lymanstone]

As I said, I doubt anyone thinks it's a reasonable number. But I put it out there because advocates of immigration need to be aware that EVEN THEY probably prefer tighter immigration than we had in the 19th century. I don't think there's any political constituency for 19th-century levels of open-ness. I mean, I favor much higher immigration, but even I'd balk at that, regardless of origin.

[x1798DE]

I don't think even a significant fraction of the people over at http://openborders.info would describe themselves as anarchists...