America with no post-1965 immigration: stronger or weaker?

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Going by the side effects of what's happened since the mid-late 2000s with the damage done by smartphones, the polarization caused by facebook/twitter type real name social media that strikes me as an argument against post-1965 or to be precise post-1986 since that was the BIG opening immigration. You might think silicon valley was worth it, but I don't.

You have the US with a GDP say 20% smaller than OTL but less unequal with there being techie multimillionaires but no techie billionaires but on the flip side less likely to suffer a civil war.
by 2030

 

[Lusitania]

If you can find it check out George Megalogenis' "Australia's Second Chance" or "Making Australia Great". Basically he correlates Australia's booms with periods of open migration policies while the bust follows the country locking itself up after Federation (1901). The cynic in me notes that the booms also correlate to two massive mining booms, but George is usually a pretty canny operator so he is worth a look.

If I am being honest I don't blame a proto Australian in 1900 being keen on the White Australia Policy. Drought (and end of a mining boom) have just destroyed a standard of living higher than contemporary USA. Jobs are scarce so you want to keep foreigners out to save what you have. Especially those who aren't properly English as they are clearly inferior as any glance at a map will tell you.

With WAP in place Australia became an insular little bubble continually recycling the internal orthodoxy. In some ways that's good as it established a strong cultural identity in a small and under developed country. OTOH it probably did restrict growth (culturally and economically) for the best part of 70 years.

Like anything there are good sides and bad sides. Are the rewards worth the costs? In the case of the US after 1965 those immigrants basically powered the IT revolution. That is a revolution mentioned in the same breath as the Industrial or Agricultural ones so that is a big deal if you miss out on it. Heck it probably keeps the US competitive as Asia begins its Industrial Revolution. That is food for thought.

I was thinking that unless other countries followed suit then you could have Canada with 60 million. Much larger populations in South America and other immigrant countries. It would mean that as % of world gdp the US would be much lower.

 

[JamesBond88]

This thread feels like bans could flow freely and heavily, but I'm going to wade into it anyways.

It is my understanding that the removal of racial quota immigration was in part motivated by the Cold War. The US couldn't have blatantly ethnic immigration policy while simultaneously trying to battle "egalitarian" communism around the world. If one is of the opinion that the US immigration policy matters to non white people in other countries, then restricting immigration around '65 and afterwards would weaken the US position in the Cold War. But if you don't think it matters, then there'd be no loss or gain of strength.

Economically I think a lot of people here would be of the mindset that more people=more good economy. If that's your opinion then less overall immigration would result in a weaker economy, although I do wonder if, at least initially, there'd be that big of a drop off in the number of immigrants. Didn't the '65 act just open up more countries and people to access a limited number of visas? I could be wrong, but if that's the case then Europe could still probably fill the visa allowances for a little while. If the European only policies remain in place up till the end of the Cold War you could see ex-Soviet people coming over in greater numbers than OTL maybe.

Looking at the issue from a social perspective I think it again is a matter of opinion. Obviously there's been cultural intermingling as a result of immigration, particularly on the West Coast and Southwest, but there's also been tensions as a result. Whether the equation produces a positive or negative result is largely up to one's own interpretation.

One thing we might see is the continuation of anti immigration, anti population growth rhetoric from the environmentalists. It seems to me that that kind of fell by the wayside as environmentalism became a facet of the immigration friendly, social liberal left wing of the country. It's a lot easier to be against immigration when there are fewer immigrants in the country to begin with.

One interesting thing I think would happen, and this is my attempt at a prediction based on objective analysis, would be the rework of the education system. The rise in technology is still going to happen roughly as it did OTL due to the Space race and DoD spending. As a result, without a pool of people to pull from companies and the government may seek to rework education around higher tech fields, with a greater emphasis on STEM fields. I don't know that "free college" would be part of this push, but I could see grants for certain fields going up a lot.

 

[David T]

I assume that the OP chose 1965 because of the Immigration and Nationality Act, so I'd like to recycle an old post of mine at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ity-act-of-1965-effects.434189/#post-16330966

***

Mr_Fanboy said: ↑
Put it this way - do you dispute that much of the post-1965 Latin American immigration to the United States was enabled by the act? If so, why?

At least one immigration scholar, Douglas S. Massey, disputes it:

"Actually, the transformation of American immigration had little to do with the 1965 amendments, and successive legislative acts did not—and could not—restore the conditions of the 1950s. The dramatic decline of immigration from Europe stemmed from changes there, not from anything that happened in the United States. After World War II Western Europe underwent a profound transformation that converted it from a region of emigration to one of immigration. By the mid-1960s labor shortages had grown so acute in northern and western Europe that governments there established formal programs to recruit immigrant workers. By the 1970s even the nations of southern Europe—Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece—had begun to attract immigrants. Europeans stopped coming to the United States because of structural shifts in European society itself, not because of changes in U.S. immigration policy.

"The 1965 amendments also had nothing to do with the expansion of Latin American immigration. On the contrary, they functioned to restrict entry from this region. Prior to 1965 immigrants from the Western Hemisphere were exempted from national origins quotas and could enter without numerical restriction. The 1965 amendments imposed the first-ever ceiling on immigration from the Western Hemisphere (120, 000 persons), and a quota of twenty thousand visas per country was applied in 1976. Contrary to popular belief, the upsurge in immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean occurred in spite of, not because of, the 1965 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Were these amendments never to have passed, immigration from the region would have been substantially greater that it actually was.

"The one change that can be traced directly to the 1965 amendments was opening the door to Asian immigration that had been slammed shut at the end of the nineteenth century. But immigration from Asia would have expanded anyway, even without the amendments. In the wake of South Vietnam's collapse the United States was reluctantly compelled to accept hundreds of thousands of "boat people" as refugees. Most of them were "paroled" into the United States by the attorney general for political and humanitarian reasons, outside of the numerical limits and entry criteria established under the 1965 amendments.

"Whereas only 335 Vietnamese entered the United States during the 1950s and 4, 300 arrived during the 1960s, 172, 000 were admitted during the 1970s; 281, 000 arrived during the 1980s; and 125, 000 entered during the first half of the 1990s. The U.S. misadventure in Indochina also led to the entry of thousands of Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong refugees, who collectively totaled 300, 000 by 1990. All told, about a third of Asian immigration after 1970 stemmed from the U.S. intervention in Indochina.

"Thus, none of the drop in European immigration, none of the expansion of Latin American immigration, and only a portion of the increase in Asian immigration can be traced to the 1965 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Whether or not this legislation had ever passed, immigration to the United States would have been transformed..." https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpres...nc808&chunk.id=ch08&toc.depth=1&brand=ucpress

BTW, one important thing that people often ignore is the end of the temporary programs for Mexican agricultural laborers (braceros). Many of the Mexicans who illegally entered the US after 1965 were former braceros or people who would have entered as braceros had the program continued. The combination of (1) ending temporary programs and (2) establishing quotas on legal immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries almost guaranteed increased unauthorized immigration, at least in the absence of far more rigorous enforcement than the US was willing to undertake at the time.
https://books.google.com/books?id=oTqfCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA306

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

I assume that the OP chose 1965 because of the Immigration and Nationality Act, so I'd like to recycle an old post of mine at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ity-act-of-1965-effects.434189/#post-16330966

imo the big changes were under Reagan in the 1980s with the 1986 immigration changes+amnesties and not 1965.

Anyways without the US setting the example they wouldn't open up to anywhere near OTL's extent. You'd see some opening but chances are we'd see western countries be much more picky: being either theoretically western-culture(latin america), anti-communist(non-communist bits of asia) or NATO allies(Turkey)

My guess is we'd see somewhat lower GDP, blander food, but OTOH more support for socialists/(pre-neoliberalism) conservatives and MUCH less appeal for "third way" type policy. There'd still be some sort of backlash against the postwar consensus so there'd still be populist, and in diverse societies nationalist movements happening anyways.

 

[Jellico]

Going by the side effects of what's happened since the mid-late 2000s with the damage done by smartphones, the polarization caused by facebook/twitter type real name social media that strikes me as an argument against post-1965 or to be precise post-1986 since that was the BIG opening immigration. You might think silicon valley was worth it, but I don't.

You have the US with a GDP say 20% smaller than OTL but less unequal with there being techie multimillionaires but no techie billionaires but on the flip side less likely to suffer a civil war.
by 2030

The inequity is coming anyway. The social democratic way of spreading the wealth is going to be discredited by the mid 70s so neo liberalism is going to kick in in the 80s. It is not just Silicon Valley in the west but Wall Street in the east driving the US economy while the industry capable of supporting a lowly educated middle class is fleeing the center.
And you aren't going to stop that short of nuking Asia. Asia is doing what the west did 100 years before and all the low level industrial stuff is going to go there by default. The west has to play the brain game and up skill and there are going to be losers. As a society I think we just didn't accept how bad it was going to be for the losers.

Anyway. You need immigration to play the brain game. And you need young people to drive growth in an economy. Given rich educated countries don't make babies you need immigration for that too. Waving at Japan as exhibit A here.

So it comes back to costs and benefits. A developed country need robust immigration to maintain its position economically. If it is willing to fall back in the pack that is cool too.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

The potential of 3 or 4 sided social conflict between whites blacks hispanics, and asian communities is an order of magnitude more complex than trying to remedy inequality between a 90% white majority and an African American community that's been roughly 10% of the US population over the course of the twentieth century.

This illustrates a growing 21st Century misconception that the 'white' are a racially homogenous group. This was absolutely not the case. The English/Scots decended group, WASPs have strongly identified as separate. I: When the Klan revived circa 1915 it's primary target was non WASP Euro immigrant groups. Even Germans an Norwegians and Dutch were not part of the club. These people were not part of the club & were targeted by the Klan, along with Jews and Catholics.

I suspect were post 1965 immigration waived away the WASPs would continue to see themselves as the real white ethnic group, "True Americans" as the slogan went in the 1920s. Tensions between them and the Mick's, Squareheads, Hunkies, Ities, Jews, Spics, Pollack's, ect... could remain at 19th Century levels.

 

[stubear1012]

I am reading the book "Empty Planet" and one of the points of the book is many countries the native birthrate is below what is needed to maintain a stable population. Without immigration, many countries will have a shrinking population and a growing ratio of elderly to young people. Sooner or later the spending on the elderly will become a major problem. I know that here in the USA, there are articles on how long before Social Security and Medicare run out of money. Without immigration, they would run out of money sooner.

 

[rfmcdonald]

In that post-1965 immigrants played a key role in enabling American economic growth, the United States will be weaker. More, since these immigration policies were an outgrowth of domestic racism, there is absolutely no reason to think a US that limits Hispanic and Asian immigration would be kinder to racial minorities like African-Americans. The United States will still be the single wealthiest country in the world, but it will be less populous and poorer than OTL.

 

[Jellico]

This illustrates a growing 21st Century misconception that the 'white' are a racially homogenous group. This was absolutely not the case. The English/Scots decended group, WASPs have strongly identified as separate. I: When the Klan revived circa 1915 it's primary target was non WASP Euro immigrant groups. Even Germans an Norwegians and Dutch were not part of the club. These people were not part of the club & were targeted by the Klan, along with Jews and Catholics.

I suspect were post 1965 immigration waived away the WASPs would continue to see themselves as the real white ethnic group, "True Americans" as the slogan went in the 1920s. Tensions between them and the Mick's, Squareheads, Hunkies, Ities, Jews, Spics, Pollack's, ect... could remain at 19th Century levels.

Asians and Latin Americans are integrating over 3 or 4 generations. As you noted, 50 years ago southern Europeans weren't part of the club. Now they are the oppressors. Demographics are fun.

 

[RousseauX]

To put it bluntly, yeah, America would be much stronger, since it wouldnt have to deal with so much ethnic tension.

but what about immigrants who came who created companies like google and yahoo?

like yeah there would be less ethnic tension but america has always had a lot of ethnic tensions even between whites, america would actually end up having a far less dynamic economy

 

[RousseauX]

Going by the side effects of what's happened since the mid-late 2000s with the damage done by smartphones, the polarization caused by facebook/twitter type real name social media that strikes me as an argument against post-1965 or to be precise post-1986 since that was the BIG opening immigration. You might think silicon valley was worth it, but I don't.

You have the US with a GDP say 20% smaller than OTL but less unequal with there being techie multimillionaires but no techie billionaires but on the flip side less likely to suffer a civil war.
by 2030

why are you assuming america alone can create facebook?

the talent for the digital/social media revolution is there, they would have gone somewhere else (maybe canada or europe?) if america wasn't opening it's doors. It's like assuming nobody would have invented the steam engine if england didn't exist.

 

[RousseauX]

The potential of 3 or 4 sided social conflict between whites blacks hispanics, and asian communities is an order of magnitude more complex than trying to remedy inequality between a 90% white majority and an African American community that's been roughly 10% of the US population over the course of the twentieth century. The LA riots back in the '90s started with whites acquitted after beating up a black person, then boiled over into looting of Korean owned business, as well as conflict between blacks and hispanics.

for most of us history irish/italians wasn't considered white, and various "white" european ethnics hated each other as much as any white hated blacks back then. What you are talking about isn't too different from New York City in the 1920s.

 

[RousseauX]

Also this post is barely disguised "is America better off being whiter"

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

why are you assuming america alone can create facebook?

the talent for the digital/social media revolution is there, they would have gone somewhere else (maybe canada or europe?) if america wasn't opening it's doors. It's like assuming nobody would have invented the steam engine if england didn't exist.

The nightmare of OTL's web 2.0 didn't have to happen. Remove the combination of 1) ALOT of tech talent combined in san francisco 2) lots of indentured servants in the form of H1B visas and you don't see OTL's combination of 1) RAPID expansion of the sector 2) even faster expansion of labor in the sector so you have the early adopters/managers REALLY getting to set the cultural tone due to being able to REALLY cherrypick hires.

Remove all that and yo'd have an internet that'd basically be the internet of the early 2000s but extended to now, with the addition of (old youtube, not netflix style or modern post-cleanup of piracy/"trolling" youtube") video streaming being a thing.

 

[Rufus]

As others have pointed out, the 1965 act didn’t really affect immigration from Latin America, which is the source of the largest group of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the US today. To prevent large scale Hispanic immigration another immigration act like the one that was passed in the 20s would have been needed, but this time targeting Latin America.

As to the positive and negative effects, it depends on what you value more. If the way you want to measure human flourishing is through an economic lens, through stats like GDP etc., then open borders is the way to go, at least on paper. Of course, GDP doesn’t measure societal cohesion or social trust, nor does it say anything about a people’s health, safety or general happiness and wellbeing.

I’m also doubtful that immigration was the reason for the IT revolution (the ‘third industrial revolution’). I mean, the first and second industrial revolutions in Europe took off without the need for large scale immigration, so i don’t see why the third one couldn’t have come about despite the lack of labor from East and Southern Asia. In fact, the company that was probably most responsible for kickstarting the IT revolution was IBM, a company that was founded (under another name) in 1896, and sold its earliest computers in 1952. Intel is another early pioneer in this regard, which was founded in 1968, long before the advent of the stereotypical Indian IT-expert.

The argument that there would have been no growing IT industry without foreign labor is like saying no one would pick cotton without slaves, or no one would pick fruits in the Californian agricultural industry without illegal immigrants. The demand for cotton and fruits would still be there, so it’s safe to say that someone would pick said cotton/fruits, though probably at a higher wage than is the case currently. Similarly, if there had been fewer foreign IT experts, then the wages for domestic ones would have risen, and more people would have choosen a career path in the IT industry. On the downside, in the case of the agricultural industry, this would have probably meant that prices for certain agricultural products would have been higher, though it’s also possible that we would have seen increased automation in the agricultural sector by now. Also, it’s not out of the question that without the US draining the developing world of much of its human capital that places like India would have developed their own high-tech industries, similar to countries like Japan or South Korea (both of which have experienced almost no significant immigration historically).

Also, i don’t think its accurate to say that a higher population automatically means that a country is richer, or more powerful. China has been the world’s most populous country for a long time, but it was only recently that it became a respected player on the world stage. Does anyone really believe that China would be better off if it had another billion people? There is a reason the China has pursued its infamous one-child policy, after all. Even if the US hadn’t allowed any immigration at all since its founding, not even from Europe, it would likely still be a very prosperous country, just much smaller than it is today. And let’s not forget, immigration into the US was very limited between 1924 and 1965 (possibly even later), which was also the period during which the US emerged as the world’s foremost economic, political, cultural and military power.

Another factor that is often overlooked in these discussions is the environmental impact of immigration. I think it’s safe to say that the environmental footprint of the United States would be significantly smaller if its population was also significantly smaller. A lower population probably means less urban sprawl, which means less commuting, which means less emissions etc.

But as i said, from the perspective of GDP high levels of immigration are probably fairly advantageous. And let’s not forget the food...

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

The crowd on here who keep posting "WI MORE US MASS TRANSIT" threads would like no-1965/1986 act timelines due to more homogenous americas being more willing to vote for social services/infrastructure, including things like the railroads. Granted realistic boosts in mass transit would make the us more like canada/australia than now and not full on-euro levels due to geography/

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Asians and Latin Americans are integrating over 3 or 4 generations. As you noted, 50 years ago southern Europeans weren't part of the club. Now they are the oppressors. Demographics are fun.

So true now, but that is in large part because the WASPs needed growth to retain a majority. Demographics more favorable to them means the grandsons of the men who burned my grandfather's barn are not now inviting me to join the Klavern.

 

[RousseauX]

The nightmare of OTL's web 2.0 didn't have to happen. Remove the combination of 1) ALOT of tech talent combined in san francisco 2) lots of indentured servants in the form of H1B visas and you don't see OTL's combination of 1) RAPID expansion of the sector 2) even faster expansion of labor in the sector so you have the early adopters/managers REALLY getting to set the cultural tone due to being able to REALLY cherrypick hires.

So what's preventing the equivalent of silicon valley from developing in Canada or the UK or Singapore?

Remove all that and yo'd have an internet that'd basically be the internet of the early 2000s but extended to now, with the addition of (old youtube, not netflix style or modern post-cleanup of piracy/"trolling" youtube") video streaming being a thing.

So you think internet technology stagnates at early 2000 level forever?

yeah sorry I don't buy this is is like an AH in which James Watt dies so the industrial revolution never happens or Thomas Edison dies and the light bulb never gets invented

 

[RousseauX]

The crowd on here who keep posting "WI MORE US MASS TRANSIT" threads would like no-1965/1986 act timelines due to more homogenous americas being more willing to vote for social services/infrastructure, including things like the railroads. Granted realistic boosts in mass transit would make the us more like canada/australia than now and not full on-euro levels due to geography/

But the New Deal coalition fell apart and the ascension of Reagan conservatism before immigration became a big issue in the 2000s, and that was over existing US racial tensions btwn whites/blacks