Absolutely no immigration into the USA after 1790

Hierosolyma

Banned
What do you think this America would look like?

Specifically

1. What impact do you think this would have on the timing/outcome of the civil war? Would the more equal balance of north/south population (most immigrants went to the north) delay or even prevent the war? On the other hand, the north would probably be less politically fractured, given that no immigration butterflies away the Know-Nothing movement.

2. What would America be like today? Obviously, smaller and poorer overall, but would the average standard of living be the same? Similarity of cultures means that there would be less social strife, but the smaller population means that we would be unlikely to become the dominant superpower.
 
I don’t see how this would even be possible? End all immigration to the new world right after its founding? Not very likely at all.

It all depends on what the PoD is here
 
Your far more likely to have America to become full on Nativeist in the 1850s with groups like the the Know Nothings then suddenly in 1790.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Back in 1790, nobody wanted to restrict all migration. Very few people even wanted to restrict any migration. (Which doesn't mean they wanted open borders completely, but that they didn't want to exclude any groups a priori.) That kind of sentiment arose later. And even then, I have my doubts. Some kind of (alt-)nativist movement could sweep into power, but i don't see it staying in power.

If you want to end all or almost all immigration as of 1790 or thereabouts, you need a POD that goes further back. A POD that will inevitably change the nature of the USA, to the point where you're looking at a completely different revolution. I recall a thread where someone posed the challenge of having the Americas go completely isolationist. I suggested a religious POD, where pre-independence North america gets swept up in some sort of new Christian movement that sees America as a special, "pure" country that must shield itself from the sinful outer world. If you just want the USA affected, then that idea becomes far more realistic than if (as in that thread) you want it to sweep up all the New World.

So, let's see: the first great awakening (1739s-1740s) produces such a new cult/denomination. As tensions between colonies and Britain arise, this new denomination becomes closely tied to the cause of independence. An alt-ARW sees the alt-USA go independent. Ideally, the alt-USA would (thanks to the religion having spead there) include Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island). Why? So that the alt-USA borders Francophone Quebec, whick is full of scary Catholics, which makes immigration from those parts far less likely. Alt-USA closes itself off to all immigration, goes full isolationist, and becomes a Tokugawa-style quasi-theocracy.

How this religion views slavery decides what happens in the South. If the religion is opposed to slavery, then you may expect the South to stay out of the alt-ARW altogether, starying with Britain. If the religion embraces slavery, I can vaguely see the slavocrats accepting that no more slaves will be coming (due to the closed borders), in return for certain political concessions. However... since the South made quite a profit from exporting raw goods, I suspect that a POD such as this is likely to lead to an alt-USA that simply doesn't include the slave states.

A religious POD is pretty much the only thing I can imagine that's powerful enough to make this kind of isolationism happen. So ultimately, the very idea will demand that we end up with an alt-USA that isn't really recognisable to OTL. It's a sort of funhouse mirror version of the North-Eastern USA, that accentuates its historical association with dissenting religious factions, a strong puritanical streak, and a tendency towards 'utopian' religious colonies.
 
Seems impossible to happen but interesting to contemplate some of the ideas involved.

Re: population growth, the big problem is that its not so clear what impact migration had, if any, on impacting the birth rate, both overall, and non-migrant. Positive or negative.

Share of foreign born/migrated only about 10-15% for most of late 19th century, IRC, then less early 20th century, and late 19th century estimated to be high relative to early 19th century.

US population growth proceeds at more or less the same pace from 1670-1900, until US enters demographic transition.

Migration probably didn't do *much* to "big picture" of demographic transition either way, as history broadly similar to low migrant destination countries in Europe.

But small changes at the edges could alter things, in either direction. It could go either way - either more competition with migrating people could lead to lower birth rate among natives (people less inclined to have children than otherwise) or migrating people have more children themselves (as relatively young population).

Share of "Northeast" vs "South" in US population as defined by US census bureau didn't really change from 1790 to mid-20th century. But both regions lose out in pop to Midwest and then West through 19th century. Hard to call if migration kept north population high relative to south or not, because again, depends on who is migrating to Midwest and from where, and what impact this had on birth rates, and trying to make a guess on what would happen without contribution from migration; if both north and south equally contributing to Midwest, then doesn't change things too much. (Data from: https://census-charts.com/Population/pop-us-1790-2000.html)

So it all seems hard to call really. Population might be less than in OTL, but poss less than we think.

GDP per capita estimates for the US are also virtually linear from 1820 onwards, so if migration makes a contribution to per capita wealth and living standards, it's very subtle 0.01% growth per year stuff, which is really hard to tease out again.
 
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