Over the past 58 years, the U.S. has been gradually filled up with people from a wide range of cultures who had a wide range of reasons for wanting to come here, oftentimes because they did not like where they were and not because there was something about American culture that they liked. “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065” (Pew 2015):
Looking ahead, new Pew Research Center U.S. population projections show that if current demographic trends continue, future immigrants and their descendants will be an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million.
A recent article from a U.S. senator and a Harvard lecturer, “We Have Put Individualism Ahead of the Common Good for Too Long” (TIME):
In America today, far too many of us are disconnected from each other, lonely, self-protective, or at each other’s throats. Sacrifice for the common good feels anachronistic.
Immigration is nowhere mentioned in the article. It is a curious blind spot, perhaps reflecting how detached American elites are from their subjects. Why would they expect a Hindu immigrant from India who had lost all of his possessions to Pakistani Muslims to feel connected to a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the U.S.? Why would an immigrant from Cambodia want to sacrifice to help an asylum-seeker from Haiti or Venezuela? Cambodians in Cambodia don’t sit around wondering what they can do to help Haitians and Venezuelans. If we transport Cambodians to the U.S., what would motivate them to suddenly want to sacrifice to help recently arrived Haitians and Venezuelans?
But suppose that a truly altruistic person were to exist in the U.S., someone who can measure up to the standards set forth in this article. He/she/ze/they actually wants to sacrifice to help a person whom he/she/ze/they has never met. Why does he/she/ze/they choose to help someone who is in the U.S. comfortably enrolled in means-tested public housing, Medicaid, SNAP/EBT, and Obamaphone? Why doesn’t he/she/ze/they be like Bill Gates and instead try to help the world’s poorest, nearly all of whom are found in very poor countries?
In short, once a country is sufficiently filled with immigrants, neither the selfish nor the altruistic will seek to sacrifice for the common good of other residents of that country. The selfish will concentrate on themselves and their families. The altruistic will sacrifice some of their time and money to help those humans who need the help the most.
You wrote “the U.S. has been gradually filled up with people from a wide range of cultures who had a wide range of reasons for wanting to come here.” Pray tell, what is your family’s immigration story? How did it happen that you came to be an American?
My ancestors arrived in the late 19th century and, a few, in the late 20th century. There was no welfare state and, therefore, there were a lot of opportunities for altruistic people to help neighbors without competition from the federal government.
The asylum-refugee-industrial complex did not exist in the 19th century and, therefore, immigrants to the U.S. came here because there was something about the U.S. that they liked, not because they were at risk of being killed in whatever country they were living in and the U.S. was a last resort because no other country would accept asylum-seekers.
Our family’s immigration into a nation of 50 million wasn’t quite as destructive for natives as immigration today is into the same plot of land already cluttered with 335 million. But, of course, immigration of Europeans to the U.S. was incredibly destructive to the Native Americans. And, like other 19th century immigrants, our family didn’t arrive as refugees or asylum-seekers. They weren’t running away from somewhere and coming to the U.S. only because no other country would take them. Because there was no welfare system, they came to the U.S. expecting to work. Probably the predominantly Christian population of the U.S. would have been happier if my Jewish ancestors had stayed in Europe, but my ancestors had a fair amount of common culture with the Americans of European-Christian background.
@philg: “My ancestors arrive in the late 19th century and, a few, in the late 20th century.”
Will this history require you to pay cash reparations to black people residing in the US in the 2020s?
Some of: I am a huge supporter of California Democrats paying reparations to Blacks in California and elsewhere. I would especially enjoy a video of a Jewish California Democrat writing a $5 million check to Kanye West (see state-sponsored PBS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/san-francisco-proposes-reparations-includes-5-million-for-eligible-black-people ).
Will I personally pay under the administration of President Harris? Maybe I am already paying because the federal government awards contracts based on the skin color of the bidder and not based on who has the lowest price and highest quality.
@ITscout, I can tell you about my immigration story to the US and I will make it as brief as possible.
I immigrated, legally, with my family, in the summer of 1981. After applying to immigrate, we waited 5 years for our turn for a working visa. Went through background checks, medical checks, and interviews with the immigration counselor in Damascus. In order for us to obtain a visa, we had to provide sworn affidavit of support, which my uncle did. Upon arrival, we stayed 1 week at my uncle’s home before we moved to our rental home.
My father started working 1 week after arrival, and my mom 1 month later. Within 4 years, my father opened his own tailoring shop and within 5 years we bought our own home and become US citizens after taking the citizenship test.
Oh, did I mention that we paid for all, yes, all of our expenses, with zero support or assistance from taxpayers? Also, we didn’t get any support from any kind of organization other than from our local church members.
And, did I mention that my parents didn’t speak any English? Only my brother and I know basic kindergarten-level English when we arrived. Between school and working with my father, we helped at the shop taking care of customers.
Compare my story to today’s immigrant. Most immigrants today, have no intention of integrating with the Americans and every-single-one-of-them is on some sort of government support.
What bugs me is this: dial a service center, any service center you want, and you will hear the automated answering system telling you to dial a number in Spanish, why? Walk into a bank or any store, and you will see instructions in Spanish, why? Check the price labels and store aisles, and you will see signs in Spanish, why? None of this is helpful for the immigrants, it just sets them back.
In the U.S., at least they seem to understand once the migrants arrive on their doorstep:
https://nypost.com/2023/04/21/mayor-eric-adams-says-bidens-migrant-crisis-has-destroyed-nyc/
The city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis, a distressed Adams said before his scheduled meeting, during a panel discussion hosted by the African American Mayors Association.
I suppose that Adams is a Deplorable now.
Thanks for that link. I am confused. The mayor refers to an “asylum seeker crisis”. We are informed by corporate media and state-sponsored media (NPR/PBS) that we are enjoying an economic boom thanks to asylum-seekers, each of whom makes existing Americans wealthier regardless of the asylum-seeker’s skills, age, education, health, etc. If Science has proven that every migrant makes a country or city wealthier, why is this mayor saying that NYC is being injured somehow? It is bad to be rich?
philg: I was surprised as well. Could this be the beginning of yet another policy reversal, where Adams is the trial balloon because no one can criticize a Black person?
They did it with Covid, they’ll do it again. With their mainstream press apparatus, they can get away with claiming that they had always been tough on immigration and anyone who claims otherwise is a far right conspiracy theorist.
@philg: “My ancestors arrived in the late 19th century and, a few, in the late 20th century. There was no welfare state…”
My great-grandparents arrived in MA from France, Ireland, and Poland all during approximately 1900. I was the first to receive government welfare when, in 1984 at age 19, I collected one month of emergency food stamps totaling $60 after I broke my foot and was out of work for a while.
Hopefully the US blinders make foreign countries affordable enough for us to get the hell out.
In this London Sunday Times article https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/time-to-end-cousin-marriage-in-the-uk-ktqqg3t26 (paywall, archived at https://archive.is/5h45e), a columnist whose parents married across “race”, “identity”, etc, calls for a ban in the UK on 1st cousin marriages. This practice is particularly typical of families of Pakistani and Bengali heritage.
He holds that, as well as concentrating genetic defects, cousin marriage isolates the communities that practise it, while its prohibition in the Middle Ages was a factor in forming national rather than tribal identities.
Coincidentally the Easter TV schedule treated us to a showing of “Guys and Dolls”, where Nathan and Adelaide require a blood test to be allowed to marry. However I learned that the test was for syphilis rather than consanguinity.
I can only imagine what a stink would overwhelm the USA if someone proposed to regulate consanguineous unions.
It’s such an amazing coincidence, whenever anybody complains about immigration or growth or the like, the perfect size of their country/state/town exactly and magically coincides with their birth/childhood/arrival. That was the perfect size. Nobody has ever, ever contributed to growth or immigration problems themselves.
She says: Dozens of people we’ve met here in Florida openly admit that they are part of the problem before saying that they are opposed to further growth that would exacerbate the overcrowding. Jupiter is over 60,000 people now and was fewer than 30,000 three decades ago. In other words, more than half of the folks here in town are relative newcomers. I have yet to meet someone who favors growth in Jupiter, even those who are in the real estate industry (they favor tearing down $3 million houses and building $10 million ones, but not the building of substantially more houses or, apartment buildings). If asked, however, nearly all admit that their own arrival in town made life worse for the folks who were already here.
(We are part of this tradition, of course! We freely admit that most Floridians would have been better off if we had stayed in Maskachusetts. At the same time, we dread the idea of development in Jupiter that would turn the town into something more like the dense coastal towns and cities between here and Miami.)
I’m not harping on you Mr. Greenspun, more noting a universal blindness. My hometown is rabid anti-growth. My town used to be hundreds of acres of orchards that were bulldozed in the 60s and 70s to create tract homes during a defense spending boom. But that was before me, so of course I think the size of my town is just right. Surely back in the 60s there were complaints about the city growing larger, just as there are complaints now. But to be intellectually honest, I think one should be able to craft an argument as to what the right size of their town is, based not on coincidental timing with their arrival, but on principles of available water and other resources, etc. So, what is the right size of Jupiter? Or the US for that matter?
She says: that is a great question and one that American refuse to ask, much less answer. I think that the answer depends on whether the newcomers earn enough to fund awesome infrastructure via taxes. Shanghai is a great place to live despite having 35 million people in the metro area. Guatemala has half the population, but ends up being more challenging day to day…
I just visited Tokyo and Kyoto and infrastructure is beyond believable. It was easy to get around, on some occasions a had to use taxi (cab for Americans) or Uber, and there were no traffic jams! Metro (subway for Americans) was full sometimes, but nothing to the level “they push people in”. Trip to Kyoto on Shinkansen was delightful, in US such trip would be miserable. Most transportations systems are paid by the single card which I activated on iPhone and just scanned my phone on entry/exit.
How can they achieve this in the city of 38! million, when in US with vastly more space and, arguably, resources, we fail at most basic infrastructure? Maybe it’s not about number of people, after all.
It costs us 5-6X what it costs the Japanese or Germans to build the same piece of infrastructure (see https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/where-the-second-avenue-subway-went-wrong ). So we can have the same stuff as the Japanese and Germans just as soon as we’re 5-6X richer per capita. I’m not sure if it makes sense to use PPP or nominal GDP for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Singapore has a minimum income requirement of about $100,000 per year for mid-career migrants who want to get work visas (getting citizenship would be another process). See https://www.intertrustgroup.com/insights/singapore-is-changing-its-work-visa-rules-for-foreign-employees/ (2022). So, in theory, they have funding for additional infrastructure as they add population (the New York mayor wants the same thing, but the funding to be borrowed/printed in Washington, D.C. rather than ensured via a minimum work skills/salary requirement for migrants and the cost of any infrastructure dramatically higher than in efficient Singapore, which spends only 4% of GDP on health care, for example (compare to at least 17% in the US)).
There is good reason to believe that Pew is fudging the numbers to underestimate the population increase caused by immigration.
First: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/ indicates that total fertility rate in 1975 was 2.03 and has been there or below since then. I’m told by demographers that interviews with U.S.women born in the baby boom 1945-55 years about the number of living children they have simply do not match the totals found in the US statistics for women that age. But somebody is having babies.
In that way it is like the employment rate fabrications- the U.S. government household surveys vs employer surveys. They started diverging in the 1970s when the household surveys showed “too many people working” compared to the official employer number. Thegovernment “Adjusted” to make the numbers work. Look at the BLS houshold surveys and the Commerce numbers for details. My guess is this represents off-the-books employment, and since the divergence for men is greater than for women it may be a form of “Alimony? I’m checking out”. If P.G. knows any serious demographers, he should quietly ask them questions about the “Native birth rate” and see what they think unofficially… off the record so they can’t be attacked by the howling mob.
The Mexican president (AMLO), at the beginning of his term welcomed our “brothers and sisters “from Central America, offering asylum, jobs, etc. Mexico is invaded not only by Central Americans but also Venezuelans, Colombians, Haitians, and even Indians and Somalians. Later on AMLO confessed he told Biden not to do the same. The US&A needs basic labor and even immigration for lack of population growth. Mexico is overwhelmed with the immigrants, some of which I have seen competing for handouts with Mexican children on the streets. Immigrants created the US&A, including my grandmother born in Brooklyn in 1903 of English religious refugee immigrants (Quaker).. Immigrants are not all bad, Britain wouldn’t have a “National” dish called Chicken Tikka Masala without immigrants. For some reason a joke says that the cook in Hell is British. However, a British woman told me that immigrants are destroying their culture.
Those foreign devils with their tasty dishes! First the French and Italians, then the Asians and Latin Americans. Luckily the Eastern Europeans have the same appreciation for bland stodge as true Brits and old world Yanks.
Vesuvio, a pizza joint in the outskirts of Swansea, featured the ultimate ’90s British menu item, the chicken tikka masala CALZONE. It must have worked for the owners: they now have an extensive clifftop ristorante.
Mexico city and other places like Chapala, and San Miguel Allende have a lot of American immigrants. The Mexican foreign secretary recently said that about a million and half Americans live in Mexico. They are of all sorts, from surfing hippies in Puerto Escondido who speak good Spanish and have darker skin than the locals, to company executives, DEA agents, retirees, and escapees from the law. The Condesa and Roma neighborhoods in CDMX have lots of young Americans living there and working remotely. Sadly, some of them have been despised for not speaking Spanish, raising rents, or walking dogs without a leash. I have a renter in Condesa from Rochester who is a partner of a Mexican shrink. These immigrants help Mexico with their dollars as opposed to a famous Honduran female refugee who complained about being fed by the Mex government beans and rice. She said: food for pigs.
Indeed, the ideal and original American communitarians are native peoples. This is why I voted for Elizabeth Warren. She honed her obvious natural ability to unite people as an instructor at the well known citadel of healing and harmony, Harvard Law School. Then she ran a very popular and broad based presidential campaign, nearly winning her home state.