American demographics if it never closes its borders to Europe and Latin America

I’m not sure what the PoD would be. But if America somehow maintained open borders with Europe and Latin America to the present, what would its demographics look like?

If European immigration was unobstructed, would the US be able to get close to 100 million immigrants? And how many children/grandchildren/etc... would they have by now? What kind of total demographic impact would we be looking at? Would they be mostly linguistically assimilated by now?

And with Latin American unobstructed, that would certainly result in large scale immigration post 60s. Would the US be able to get 100 million or more people from them? Many would speak Portuguese or some local/indigenous language, who I would assume have smaller populations and are consequently more easily assimilated. The Spanish Speakers on the other hand would be able to form massive communities that might take multiple generations to speak English as their primary language, no?

Between Latin America and Southern Europe, this probably makes the US a Catholic majority or plurality?

And if we combine this with a scenario where America stays out of WWI, Kerensky withdraws, and the Communist Revolution, Eastern Europe doesn’t the level have emigration restrictions, reduced fertility, and death of the OTL. Could this create a wave of Eastern European immigration that gives the US 100+ Million Orthodox Christians by the present?

I also assume America has more Jews than OTL Israel here?


Can the US here get to a billion people by the present?
 
California would have never stopped being a bilingual state, for one.
No doubt, though with immigration legal nationwide I would expect it Spanish speaking communities to be more evenly distributed throughout the country and most European immigrants will have assimilated to English, so I would still expect an English majority.
 
True, but there would also be tons of German-speaking communities. English would be more of a lingua franca like it is in India today.

Why would there be significantly more Germans? Even into the 20s the US didn't close off German immigration in OTL. This ATL will have many more Eastern and Southern European Americans, but not many more Germans.
 
Why would there be significantly more Germans? Even into the 20s the US didn't close off German immigration in OTL. This ATL will have many more Eastern and Southern European Americans, but not many more Germans.
English would probably be less of a native language nonetheless.
 
In such a scenario, would people from Latin America be more widely seen as a part of Western Culture rather than often being viewed as something else?
 
I think the only way the US would think about doing this if they somehow took over all of North America and felt like it needed more people to fill up the place. Even then the mass migration and demographic changes might be the biggest in history. Most of the world Jews would definitely be here. Wouldn’t letting in too many people lead to the country becoming more unstable or even falling apart? At some point the Europeans even if not communist might try to limit emigration in some places. Hell the US might just become too packed to the point of US saying no more and Europeans even think it’s better to stay in Europe at that point. I do think reaching modern day with over billion would not be unlikely if country stays stable enough. Are Chinese still restricted in this pod immigration wise like otl?

The US would definitely have a lot more Irish. The famine probably depopulates Ireland more so then otl(Brits would definitely encourage it). Immigration at one point might eventually stop once Europe becomes more economically prosperous and fair for all classes. America might stay the land of opportunity but Europe might provide more security(welfare states and more social safety nets). US in otl is often against welfare and many social safety nets. With many more people especially a billion they will never adopt that at all. The most they would do is offer work to unemployed and have public schools(infrastructure might actually be better to prevent people from getting too upset. They also might have more cheap labor to help build it). Pensions, social security, welfare, and unemployment relief will likely be nonexistent(image the cost of that with a billion people in the country. If 10 percent of your population is unemployed and 20 are living in poverty that would be a massive number of people for a welfare state to try and provide for in anyway). America might still have a very large middle and upper class but it’s going to have a much much larger very poor underclass who are at least provided very basic(poor) education and aren’t starving(a good number are malnourished but not starving. US produces a lot of food but billion people are a lot).

Europe actually might benefit from this or take advantage of it depending on your view. Britain “encourage” the Irish to go to America. Germany “encourages” Poles to America. Russia and Austria-Hungary does the same to many of the ethnic and religious groups in their countries(can Muslims from the Balkans or Russia migrate to the US during this time?). It’s like the colonization of the Americas all over again. Europe with its growing empires and smaller and more homogeneous populations at home probably make sure living standards are greatly improved. The US would be a even larger economic giant but at the cost of much higher crime, poverty, pollution, and violence. America if it stays united would likely be a very capitalistic democracy while some of Europe goes more towards social democracy. By 2000s you could very well have people working office or service jobs like otl if they are middle class but down the road you would probably have poorer people working in sweatshops for very low wages(5 an hour if not less).
 
I think the only way the US would think about doing this if they somehow took over all of North America and felt like it needed more people to fill up the place. Even then the mass migration and demographic changes might be the biggest in history. Most of the world Jews would definitely be here. Wouldn’t letting in too many people lead to the country becoming more unstable or even falling apart? At some point the Europeans even if not communist might try to limit emigration in some places. Hell the US might just become too packed to the point of US saying no more and Europeans even think it’s better to stay in Europe at that point. I do think reaching modern day with over billion would not be unlikely if country stays stable enough. Are Chinese still restricted in this pod immigration wise like otl?

The US would definitely have a lot more Irish. The famine probably depopulates Ireland more so then otl(Brits would definitely encourage it). Immigration at one point might eventually stop once Europe becomes more economically prosperous and fair for all classes. America might stay the land of opportunity but Europe might provide more security(welfare states and more social safety nets). US in otl is often against welfare and many social safety nets. With many more people especially a billion they will never adopt that at all. The most they would do is offer work to unemployed and have public schools(infrastructure might actually be better to prevent people from getting too upset. They also might have more cheap labor to help build it). Pensions, social security, welfare, and unemployment relief will likely be nonexistent(image the cost of that with a billion people in the country. If 10 percent of your population is unemployed and 20 are living in poverty that would be a massive number of people for a welfare state to try and provide for in anyway). America might still have a very large middle and upper class but it’s going to have a much much larger very poor underclass who are at least provided very basic(poor) education and aren’t starving(a good number are malnourished but not starving. US produces a lot of food but billion people are a lot).

Europe actually might benefit from this or take advantage of it depending on your view. Britain “encourage” the Irish to go to America. Germany “encourages” Poles to America. Russia and Austria-Hungary does the same to many of the ethnic and religious groups in their countries(can Muslims from the Balkans or Russia migrate to the US during this time?). It’s like the colonization of the Americas all over again. Europe with its growing empires and smaller and more homogeneous populations at home probably make sure living standards are greatly improved. The US would be a even larger economic giant but at the cost of much higher crime, poverty, pollution, and violence. America if it stays united would likely be a very capitalistic democracy while some of Europe goes more towards social democracy. By 2000s you could very well have people working office or service jobs like otl if they are middle class but down the road you would probably have poorer people working in sweatshops for very low wages(5 an hour if not less).

Edit: our elections would be heavily corrupt and a nightmare to do in this pod. We had a hard enough time at that with our otl population.
 
Top