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

[Star Eater]

Less people, less economic output, thus weaker.

 

[mouli]

Less people, less economic output, thus weaker.

Also less educated immigrants. A massive chink of U.S. research and development has been driven by immigrants since the Second World War. Yes, there is a large native scientific establishment - but there's a good reason that many point to the H1B and the skilled visa program as a net benefit. The United States has for a long, long time made sure that highly educated labor moves in and works for them.

I mean, take Silicon Valley. A majority of the workers, the researchers and a good chunk of the founders are nonwhite/nonblack. Mostly Asian/South Asian. Take the universities - many top US unis have researchers from more than just America and Western Europe. A lot of innovation will bypass the US should immigration cease from non-Western European countries.

Now, suppose you cut out Western Europe as well and stick to the Anglosphere. That makes things even worse.

Honestly, a large part of America's projected image to the world has been the whole 'melting pot' of immigrants thing, and a complete cessation of immigration will also have a knock-on effect there. That's another point.

Now what about diplomacy? IMO it'll be a bit tougher to understand foreign cultures and treat with them/spy on them if you have nobody from that culture around who's a citizen. Makes it a little tougher in terms of soft power.

Lots of points, and overall I believe things would be worse both economically and in terms of America's image abroad.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Also less educated immigrants. A massive chink of U.S. research and development has been driven by immigrants since the Second World War. Yes, there is a large native scientific establishment - but there's a good reason that many point to the H1B and the skilled visa program as a net benefit. The United States has for a long, long time made sure that highly educated labor moves in and works for them.

I mean, take Silicon Valley. A majority of the workers, the researchers and a good chunk of the founders are nonwhite/nonblack. Mostly Asian/South Asian. Take the universities - many top US unis have researchers from more than just America and Western Europe. A lot of innovation will bypass the US should immigration cease from non-Western European countries.

Now, suppose you cut out Western Europe as well and stick to the Anglosphere. That makes things even worse.

Honestly, a large part of America's projected image to the world has been the whole 'melting pot' of immigrants thing, and a complete cessation of immigration will also have a knock-on effect there. That's another point.

Now what about diplomacy? IMO it'll be a bit tougher to understand foreign cultures and treat with them/spy on them if you have nobody from that culture around who's a citizen. Makes it a little tougher in terms of soft power.

Lots of points, and overall I believe things would be worse both economically and in terms of America's image abroad.

How exactly will the United States deal with Latin America if it makes it clear that it wants to keep Latin Americans out of the United States? How will it be credible, necessarily? This will surely cost it.

If the United States maintains closed borders, especially if the rest of the world remained roughly as OTL, this suggests to me one advantage other countries could have over the United States. A European Community that has a single market for labour, or a Canada and Australia that do not follow the American lead, have the potential to benefit from foreign talent and workers in a way given up by the United States. (I don't think the Soviet bloc would be able to take advantage, given the restrictions on inter-state movement within the bloc; the Vietnamese gastarbeitar of central Europe stand out as being exceptional.)

 

[rfmcdonald]

The 1920s were the decade of a massive campaign for immigration restrictions, the foreign born proportion of the US population has reached similar levels to the 1920s (Reuters), and the 2010s have seen a nativist backlash as well. White ethnics being seen as white is the culmination of a decades-long assimilation process that occurred in background of practically zero additional European ethnics between 1920 and 1970. Any individual person can assimilate, but there's a tradeoff between the additional immigrants from a country each year, and the rate at which a new immigrant assimilates.

Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World by the economist Paul Collier goes into more detail about the factors that affect assimilation. The same variables can be used to predict the the rate of assimilation for any two given countries. For example, if there was a diaspora of 5 million Canadians in Brazil and 200,000 additional Canadians emigrate each year, it becomes easier for Canadians to immigrate because they can move to a Canada-town where there are poutine restaurants and every still speaks English and/or French.
Starting from the assumption that immigrants benefit the Brazilian (or any) economy, the economic benefit that each additional immigrants' labor provides would be subject to diminishing marginal returns, like other factors of production.
Eventually a part of the Brazilian electorate would probably start complaining about "those darned canadians with their poutine who don't speak portuguese", and advocate immigration restrictions. Without any additional Canadian immigrants for several years, the population of unassimilated Canadians would level off and then steeply decline, with the next generation becoming assimilated Brazilians in a country with more poutine restaurants and a Canadian version of St. Patrick's day or something.

I'm not sure how well that works for the actual case of Canadians moving to the United States, where they (well, the Francophones at least) did set up Petit Canadas. The immigration to the US from Canada slowed down after the first quarter of the 20th century, when Canada began to develop enough to absorb its own surplus labour in its cities.

 

[Lusitania]

I'm not sure how well that works for the actual case of Canadians moving to the United States, where they (well, the Francophones at least) did set up Petit Canadas. The immigration to the US from Canada slowed down after the first quarter of the 20th century, when Canada began to develop enough to absorb its own surplus labour in its cities.

A US that had closed its borders to All people as thread stated would of been a huge boon to Canada as it would of attracted both immigrants and investment yhstbotherwise went to US and today viuldbof had 2x its population. Similarly to Australia and New Zealand. South Africa had taken a similar approach as being advocated for US. The Africaners were worries about loosing their power and wAnted to limit immigration. Even South America would of benefited from increased immigrants.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

I'm a software developer and I write code for a living

Yikes. Well, at least that puts even my worst life choices in perspective. I'm not in STEM at least.

 

[RousseauX]

Yikes. Well, at least that puts even my worst life choices in perspective. I'm not in STEM at least.

why, you don't like getting paid?

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

why, you don't like getting paid?

Having a soul happens to be slightly more important to me. It's probably going to be for the best that programming seems to be something AIs are apparently good at doing. Two generations of smug techies is more than enough, to paraphrase a supreme court justice.

 

[ChadMachine999]

The US would be weaker, but not to much weaker. America would still have a very large high tech sector as America has a very high rate of collage enrollment to the point where a third of collage graduates work in jobs where their skills are not required. So an H1B Visa worker can be replaced by native born collage grads who IOTL would be working jobs where their skills would not be needed. The biggest impact would be that American would have a smaller population and the population left would be older. The economic impact of this would not be to grate because the Government can always fund automation more to make the tech come quicker. The big impact would be militarily where because of a smaller and older population America’s military strength would be weakened leading to modern day America being less bold on taking military actions, so less intervention. Also because of this China would be militarily bolder possibly leading to a South China Sea scenario happing sooner.

 

[jerseyguy]

I'm not sure how well that works for the actual case of Canadians moving to the United States, where they (well, the Francophones at least) did set up Petit Canadas. The immigration to the US from Canada slowed down after the first quarter of the 20th century, when Canada began to develop enough to absorb its own surplus labour in its cities.

I just picked two countries as an example, the three variables apply to any other pair of countries. In the case of Canada- US migration, the third variable of cultural distance is strong enough to outweigh the importance of the other two variables. The size of the Canadian diaspora would have to be massive to cancel out the variable of cultural distance here and make a Canada-town or Little Toronto somewhere in the US feasible for any extended period of time.

The cultural distance between the two societies in question are also a factor in addition to quantitive factors. It would clearly be easier to assimilate 1 million American immigrants into Canadian society than 1 million Tajikistanis. Even if immigration is still a net benefit, its possible to concede that there are short term costs in the efforts to assimilate new immigrants and a society with Little Italys, etc. that runs the risk of becoming more socially fragmented in the short to medium term.

 

[RousseauX]

Having a soul happens to be slightly more important to me.

so people who know how to program don't have a soul?

and you are telling me this through a piece of computer software?

jesus christ dude you are douche go talk to some people irl instead of learning about life through tv news reports

 

[Quintuplicate]

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.

How many WASPs are there today? Is it in the millions?

 

[BELFAST]

Best time to stop immigration is when Columbus arrived.
Deport him and his crew on the spot.

 

[jerseyguy]

America's politics would probably be more left-leaning compared to OTL. A labor scarce economy would probably strengthen unions, and there would be less opposition to a European-style welfare state. If the US couldn't importing sizable amounts of labor it would probably be exporting capital instead, so there would likely be more foreign investment as a proportion of the economy.

America would only have around 270 million people, immigration was responsible for half of the US population growth between 1965 and 2015 (Pew Research Center).

 

[Lord High Executioner]

How many WASPs are there today? Is it in the millions?

A quick googling puts English Americans at about 7% of the U.S. population and they are presumably still majority Protestant.

 

[Red_Crate]

A quick googling puts English Americans at about 7% of the U.S. population and they are presumably still majority Protestant.

But you have to understand, that 'British' or 'English' ancestry isn't marked under the U.S. Census, and that isnt mentioning the desire to be considered 'American' as well, so it may well be much higher. At least 10%, or maybe even 15%. Who knows, it could even be 20, maybe even 25%, if we're really stretching the definition of 'English'.

 

[NiGHTS]

But you have to understand, that 'British' or 'English' ancestry isn't marked under the U.S. Census, and that isnt mentioning the desire to be considered 'American' as well, so it may well be much higher. At least 10%, or maybe even 15%. Who knows, it could even be 20, maybe even 25%, if we're really stretching the definition of 'English'.

How do people of mixed white ancestry fit into the definition of "WASP" nowadays. Like, someone who has German ancestry, also likely has English and Irish ancestry. TBH, I'd be really surprised if there are many people, with no recent immigrant ancestors, who can fit the description of being purely descended from British settlers.

 

[Red_Crate]

How do people of mixed white ancestry fit into the definition of "WASP" nowadays. Like, someone who has German ancestry, also likely has English and Irish ancestry. TBH, I'd be really surprised if there are many people, with no recent immigrant ancestors, who can fit the description of being purely descended from British settlers.

That's what I meant to say if we stretched the definition of a WASP. Personally, I'm a bit Cherokee on my mother's side, so I wont be able to make any blanket statements on 'pure huwhiteness'.

 

[Quintuplicate]

How do people of mixed white ancestry fit into the definition of "WASP" nowadays. Like, someone who has German ancestry, also likely has English and Irish ancestry. TBH, I'd be really surprised if there are many people, with no recent immigrant ancestors, who can fit the description of being purely descended from British settlers.

"Not many" might still be something in the low 7 digits.

 

[BELFAST]

People who would not be in America without immigration post 1965.
Arnold Schwarzenegger actor
Anthony Hopkins actor
Sergey Brin google founder
Sundar Pichai google ceo
Arianna Huffington publisher
Michael J. Fox actor
Natalie Portman actor
samantha power politician and author
Charlize Theron actor
jim carrey actor
Salma Hayek actor
Patrick Ewing sportsman
Mariano Rivera sportsman
joni mitchell singer
Melania Trump model
Dikembe Mutombo sportsman
Rupert Murdoch publisher
Jan Koum whatsapp
isabel allende author
elon musk businessman
etc

I think America would be a duller place without the people above and the many others who came both famous and not so famous.

Immigrant scientists have also received some of the highest accolades in science for their pioneering work; since 2000, 40 percent of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in the areas of chemistry, medicine and physics — 31 of 78 awards — were earned by immigrants https://www.livescience.com/57769-immigrants-who-shaped-science.html

Immigrants Form 25% of New U.S. Businesses, Driving Entrepreneurship In 'Gateway' States
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dinahw...eurs-form-25-of-new-u-s-business-researchers/

13 People Who Came To America With Nothing And Made A Fortune
https://www.businessinsider.com/cam...r-managing-director-of-mckinsey-and-company-5