[adventured]

Facts are facts. Canada's immigration system is absurdly anti-diversity, which is why Canada has so few hispanic and black people, and why it's nearly 80% white.

Within about 20 years, the US won't even be a majority white nation. Pretending Canada is more diverse than that, is ridiculous. That Canada is somehow a super diverse nation, is a pretend claim that is unsupported by the actual demographic facts.

Why don't more poor black people immigrate into Canada from cities like Detroit, Chicago or New York? Surely their lives would be considerably improved given Canada's superior safety net, healthcare system, etc. - and Canada has good wages and a healthy unemployment rate. It's simple, they're not allowed to. Canada's immigration system excludes the possibility that most people with lower skill & education backgrounds can ever get in.

If Canada were actually pro-diversity, they'd liberalize their immigration policies and let in a large amount of immigration from Latin America (after all, the vast majority of the Americas is hispanic), such that Canada's hispanic percentage closes the gap with the US over the next 20-30 years. They're never going to allow it.

[BenchRouter]

> which is why Canada has so few hispanic and black people, and why it's nearly 80% white.

Er, or it's not bordered by Mexico and doesn't have nearly the extensive history with African slavery that the US does?

> Why don't more poor black people immigrate into Canada from cities like Detroit, Chicago or New York?

I'm not trying to argue one way or another for Canada's immigration system (I know very little about it), but this is a very simplistic argument.

Why don't all the ex-coal miners in WV simply move to where the jobs are?

Picking up and relocating your life is way, way more involved than you're making it sound.

> It's simple, they're not allowed to.

This is also the case in the US, hence the widespread fears about illegal immigrants.

If life was significantly better in Canada, one would expect far more illegal immigration.

[adventured]

> but this is a very simplistic argument.

It's not a simplistic argument. It's a facts based argument and I'm the only one in this discussion so far that is actually using facts.

> Er, or it's not bordered by Mexico

Canada also isn't bordered by Asia. It allows in plenty of skilled Asian immigrants. What does bordering have to do with Canada's regressive immigration policies that prevent low skilled, low education persons from immigrating into the country?

The US isn't bordered by Pakistan, India, Vietnam, China, Philippines, or El Salvador. Six of the top 10 immigration countries for the US.

Borders don't mean much if you're not allowed to immigrate regardless.

The US is also not bordered by Colombia, Hondurus, Ecuador, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Brazil, etc.

> Why don't all the ex-coal miners in WV simply move to where the jobs are?

Well that's exactly how the US has worked in fact. People - over time - migrate toward opportunity state to state. That's why West Virginia's population hasn't grown in 80 years (!).

See: population growth over time in Nevada, Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, etc. Silicon Valley exists precisely because the US works that way.

[BenchRouter]

> It's a facts based argument and I'm the only one in this discussion so far that is actually using facts.

Your facts-based argument is that people in Detroit would move to Canada if the immigration policy was relaxed? I see no facts at all around that assertion, which is the one I was calling simplistic.

> What does bordering have to do with Canada's regressive immigration policies that prevent low skilled, low education persons from immigrating into the country?

You said (paraphrasing):

>> Why are there no hispanic people in Canada, relative to the US

I said:

>> Because it's not bordered by Mexico

(And, by the way, Mexico is the #1 source of immigrants for the US).

> The US isn't bordered by Pakistan, India, Vietnam, China, Philippines, or El Salvador. Six of the top 10 immigration countries for the US.

Out of those 6 countries, one would qualify as contributing to the Hispanic or Black population in the US (the groups we were discussing).

Out of the top 10, none are from countries in Africa or the Caribbean (which we might also consider to be a "black" population).

So we can agree then, that the US's diversity w.r.t. black people has nothing to do with immigration?

> See: population growth over time in Nevada, Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, etc. Silicon Valley exists precisely because the US works that way.

Those are also states that have heavy immigrant populations because they're attractive for skilled workers or close to natural entry points. You'll have to cite a source stating that the growth in those populations is from internal movement.

The US as a whole is fairly close to replacement rate births, so we would actually expect populations to remain stable.

[adventured]

> Your facts-based argument is that people in Detroit would move to Canada if the immigration policy was relaxed?

My facts based argument goes back to the original parent discussion that you joined, which is: the US is considerably more diverse than Canada and that that is due to very different immigration policies over time. I've overwhelmingly backed that up.

Would poor people have immigrated out of Detroit and into Canada as Detroit collapsed, seeking a drastically superior social safety net, free universal healthcare, etc.? Hell yes they obviously would have.

> You'll have to cite a source stating that the growth in those populations is from internal movement.

You can't actually believe the US has historically lacked for internal movement (in fact it's only very recently that that has been the case).

California's population in 1960 was 16 million. The US total hispanic population in 1960 was 6.x million. As recently as 1970, California's white population was nearly 80%. In 1970, 16 million of California's 20 million people were white - how did they get there? Millions of people moved to California from other states, famously, in the post WW2 era.

Las Vegas, which makes up a quarter of Nevada's population, is 44% white, 11% black and 7% asian today. How do you think those people all got there? The Las Vegas population figure was 8,422 in 1940.

I'm certain I don't need to cover Arizona (boomed internally similarly to Nevada), Texas and Florida. Florida has very famously seen vast internal US migration as older people flooded the state over decades.

[pierrebai]

Actually, you've moved the goal post.

Your actual claim was that Canada immigration policy is anti-diversity. The only correct claim you've backed up is that the Canadian immigration policy is greatly favoring rich and educated immigration.

It's no wonder people feel offended. Saying Canada is anti-diversity is a close proxy to say it's systematically racist.

[freeone3000]

"Diversity" in your example seems to include black people and hispanic people, but disregards the diversity in "white" culture (there's a huge split between English and French), and the entire Asian continent.

Denying people of low skill and educational backgrounds isn't inherently racist - an African-American software developer gets the same NAFTA rubber-stamp as a Polish-American developer. French-speaking workers have it even easier, as French-speakers get preferential treatment. (Areas of Africa natively speak French, if you're insistent that Africa is the source of all "diversity".)

I don't see how letting low-skill, uneducated people immigrate to a country helps it. Immigration isn't a charity.

[ZeroGravitas]

Yes, facts are indeed facts, let's agree on that at least.

The USA has always been partly hispanic, from before there was a USA. That might have something to do with their presence in the country today.

Similarly, I don't think the African-American presence in the USA can be put down to a pro-diversity immigration system, unless we're really twisting those words meanings. Indeed America has a long history of having openly and literally racist immigration laws.

Either way, we seem to be retreating from "this can't happen in the USA because it's diverse" to "there's poor people in America", which seems like a different argument entirely.

[adventured]

> That might have something to do with their presence in the country today.

The US was 3% hispanic in 1960 and 84% white. Your premise is wrong. In 57 years, the US hispanic population has skyrocketed from around 6.x million, to ten times that today. The reason for that, is immigration policies that allowed for vast immigration from Latin America. For reference, from 1980 to 2000, the US absorbed about 8% of Mexico's entire population; that's just immigration from one country.

I never said the presence of black people in the US was due to pro-diversity reasons. You're inventing that. I specifically said the lack of black people in Canada is due to anti-diversity immigration policies. That the US is ~13.4% black, does in fact make it more diverse than it would be if the US were 2% black as with Canada.

[pessimizer]

> The US was 3% hispanic in 1960 and 84% white.

You're going to need a good reference for that one, just because categories have changed, plenty of hispanics have identified as white when they thought it would help and when they could pass, and because plenty of non-citizens don't respond to these types of surveys unless specifically targeted, although I'm sure that there would be methodologies that could attempt to account for them if the investigator intended to.

tl;dr methodology is important when trying to estimate the population of hispanics in the US, especially in 1960. Specific references would be helpful.

[adventured]

Sure thing. Good references on this data are very, very easy to come by. If you want to dispute the hispanic numbers, based on the facts, the burden is on you to prove the prevailing authority numbers are wrong.

"Since 1960, the nation’s Latino population has increased nearly ninefold, from 6.3 million" (the US population was 180 million in 1960, that's 3.5%)

"The foreign-born Latino population has increased to nearly 20 times its size over the past half century, from less than 1 million in 1960 to 19.4 million in 2015"

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/09/18/facts-on-u-s-latinos/

Here's information showing the US was only about 4% hispanic in 1965 (11% black, 84% white).

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wav...

All the reference points line up to my information being approximately correct. For example, there were 2.1 million Mexican immigrants in the US as recently as 1980. By 2006, that was 11.5 million.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/mexican-immigrants-u...

[ZeroGravitas]

> The US was 3% hispanic in 1960 and 84% white.

Maybe the hispanic people were younger, and had more children (I believe the facts back me up here)? Maybe their religion encouraged this? Maybe hispanic immigrants wanted to go to a nation that already had 3% hispanic population and that was geographically closer to their home nation? Maybe they could trace their family roots over the border?

You appeared to making a relative claim about US and Canadian immigration policy? I thought you were implying that if Canada had an immigration policy like the USA then it would also have 12% black population and that because it doesn't then it's somehow bad and/or cheating?

You'd have to estimate what percentage of African immigrants would have made it into the USA (in the years it wasn't illegal of course) and then substract some kind of modifier similar to the Hispanic immigration, where African immigrants may wish to move somewhere where there already were people who looked like them. And then compare those numbers to see whether Canada was really being exclusionary towards Africans relative to the USA.

[adventured]

> I thought you were implying that if Canada had an immigration policy like the USA then it would also have 12% black population

I was implying Canada would have far more black people today than a mere 2.x% of its population, if its immigration policy wasn't extremely exclusionary. There is a six fold gap in that percentage with the US. There is a ~15 fold gap in the hispanic percentage.

I would like to see you explain how the Americas can be ~72% hispanic, while Canada is 1.x% hispanic, while the US has allowed in vast Latin American immigration over the last 60 years, if it's not due to Canada being anti-diversity. The touted diversity premise doesn't make any sense given the demographic facts of Canada and the facts about its immigration policies.

If Canada is pro-diversity, why aren't the hispanic numbers dramatically higher given the context in the rest of the Americas? Why doesn't Canada abandon its regressive skill & education based immigration system and allow in millions of Latin American immigrants?

[ZeroGravitas]

I thought we'd established that lots of African-American's ancestors were brough here as slaves? Saying the Canadian rate is 6 times less is meaningless without accounting for that starting state (and the impacts it has on later immigration).

Something like 60% of hispanics in the US are originally from Mexico, which shares a border with the USA. You keep bringing up other latin American countries as if geographical distance means nothing when people choose to emigrate. I would guess that even in these days of transatlantic flight, it's still probably the number 1 factor in migration.

The next two chunks after Mexico are Puerto Rico and Cuba, both of which have unique relationships with the USA that don't apply to Canada. One being part of the USA and the other being basically invited in as part of a political battle with Cuba & Russia.

You don't seem to even be trying to present evidence to support this argument of yours.

[adventured]

> Something like 60% of hispanics in the US are originally from Mexico

Since you want to talk about borders. The question then is, since the US borders Canada, why hasn't Canada seen vast immigration from and through the US, from poor black and hispanic communities, that would obviously benefit massively from Canada's strong society safety net and universal healthcare system? Why aren't millions of hispanics choosing to pass right through the US and immigrating into Canada?

The US has somewhere around 13 to 15 million undocumented immigrants. Why don't they just pass through the US and seek citizenship in Canada, given the obvious upside (Canada's social system would benefit poorer people far more than anyone else)?

They can't. Canada's immigration policy won't allow it. That's the crux of the discussion that you can't avoid.

People will risk life and limb to go from Syria to Germany (about the same distance as Mexico to Canada). Millions of poor Latin Americans immigrated into California over 40 years, and eg NY is about 28% hispanic, but your premise is that Canada is just too far away because it doesn't border Mexico. That's absurd and it poorly attempts to evade the real problem: Canada will not allow in large amounts of low skilled, low education immigration because of its immigration policies, and the US by contrast has historically. That's an unavoidable fact backed up by immense immigration data. I find it incredible you're even attempting to counter argue that, it's a direct result of the system that is in place in Canada right now.

Your 60% figure is close. There are around 70 million hispanics in the US, including the large undocumented immigrant population (equal to 40% of Canada's entire population). Of that, at least 33 to 35 million have origins in Mexico:

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/05/01/a-demographic-portrait...

> Saying the Canadian [black population] rate is 6 times less is meaningless without accounting for that starting state

Canada's black population percentage is extremely meaningful. The six fold gap between the US and Canada, indicates exclusion, as the poorest demographic in the US is black people. They are the worst off, and would logically be the most likely to want to immigrate for a better life, which surely Canada's admittely superior social safety net and healthcare system would provide. And yet Canada is seeing almost non-existent poor black immigration from the US (hint: Canada won't allow it, because it uses a skill & education restriction system on immigration). The US black population is larger than Canada's entire population, which makes the point extremely well.

[gruez]

>The reason for that, is immigration policies that allowed for vast immigration from Latin America

how much of that was legal?