If no immigration regulations, how big is the US (Pop)

If there's no immigration regulations throughout the 19th and 20th century that passed, how many people will there be in the United States?
 
If there's no immigration regulations throughout the 19th and 20th century that passed, how many people will there be in the United States?
I don't know about how much, but there will be a lot of Chinese/Jewish people. Maybe the Chinese population even exceeds 40% of total US population by 1990?
 
A minimum of 10% higher than in OTL, largely from Mexico and Latin America, Eastern Europe, and China and Japan.
 
I don't know about how much, but there will be a lot of Chinese/Jewish people. Maybe the Chinese population even exceeds 40% of total US population by 1990?

How the hell does a near majority of the American population end up being chineese? I mean I don't know much about the numbers of OTL immigrants pre-chineese exclusion act but that seems like a lot to come in just because there's no law.
 
The USA might be 10-15% Chinese. Remember that even without restrictions there is a whole ocean that needs crossing.
 
It's hard to say, since the issue doesn't occur in isolation. It would require an absolutely vast change for there to be no immigration regulations, especially in the 20th century. The simplest way for this to occur, I guess, would be to magically change the minds of the elites/politicians. Some things to keep in mind, then, would be:

- You can probably expect very heightened racial tensions, destabilizing the country a bit, making it a less attractive immigration target.
- If the U.S. becomes populated by large numbers of Chinese, Mexican, Japanese, and Eastern European people, it would probably become less attractive for Western Europeans (sad but true.) They'd probably go to, say, Canada instead.

The population would still be significantly higher from OTL, but not as much as it'd seem at first glance.
 
Without fundamentally changing the nature of the United States very early on their are going to be immigration regulations, I mean in no point in our history has their been a period where their were none.

The question then is what would be the result if their were different regulations;

If their are few regulations on the Chinese, well that would mean that the Chinese would make-up substantial minorities (5-20%) in nearly every Western state, as their were IOTL massive amounts of Chinese labourers brought into the West, with the large majority of them forced to return to China or go to another country in the end, and overall the population of the United States would likely be about 10% Chinese.

The Japanese are another potential case, IOTL Japan and the United States came to a Gentlemans Agreement on restricting immigration from Japan to the United States, the U.S. because of racist attitudes against Asians and Japan because it considered it a great insult to the Japanese nation that the Japanese would be treated badly/not equally; let's say that the U.S. comes to see Japan as different from the rest of East Asia ('the Japanese, unlike the Chinese are efficient, hardworking people who share our values unlike the Chinese, who bring with them Opium dens and try to steal our women!') and thus the Japanese are treated better and legally ordered to be treated like Whites, this would leasd to a much larger Japanese-American population; Hawai'i would likely be about 30-35% Japanese (IOTL Japanese make-up 13.6% of the Hawaiian population) and large minorities ranging from 5-10% in the Pacific Coast states and smaller minorities elsewhere in the United States, with an overall population probably around 3% of the U.S. population, maybe more if it leads to sustained immigration.

The third potential case are Indians (as in from the Indian subcontinent); IOTL their was a degree of racism towards them, though it was unique in that it was'nt originally there, then grew into existence, but then diminished two or three decades later. If you can prevent the anti-Asian sentiment from being as severe or have it end-up being limited to East Asia and South East Asia you could see a larger Indian-American population develop, however this would most likely be something that would really start-up in the 20th century, so ultimately you'd probably see a situation where Indian-Americans made-up 3-4% of the population as opposed to the 1% IOTL.
 
The US population would have to be psychologically changed to accept unlimited immigration, which seems pretty much ASB.
 
I don't see a realistic way this could be achieved.

But OTL from the 1830s to WWI the immigration rate as a percentage of the American population averaged around 7.5% (that is, every year for every 1000 persons already in the country, you'd get 7.5 immigrants) although with wide swings depending on the economy and wars.

My guess is that no Chinese Exclusion and with better transport and communications in the 20th C., that number would be higher. But even being equal would be a big bump. After WW1, the rate has been around 2% (legal immigration only).
 
The US population would have to be psychologically changed to accept unlimited immigration, which seems pretty much ASB.
The most realistic way to make this happen would be to make the US economy a lot more successful throughout the 19th and 20th century. More and bigger economic booms.
That way there would be a shortage of labor. And most Americans would be okay with the idea of letting in lots of immigrants to do their dirty work.
 

katchen

Banned
Go to the source of American racial self-consciousness.
Somehow butterfly the events leading up to the War of 1812.
John R. Loewens (Lies My Teacher Told Me) lays out a convincing case that it was the War of 1812 and events leading up to it that crystallized race consciousness in the new United States. Prior to the War of 1812 (which was a war against Tecumseh's Native American Confederation that was backed by the British), according to Loewens, it was not uncommon to find towns on the Western frontier in which Native Americans and Whites were living together in harmony, often intermarried and often intermarried with African-Americans.
Tensketwah (the Prophet) and Tecumseh's mobilization of Native American tribes in the lead-up to the War of 1812 put an end to all that and created battle lines on both sides. And yes, Tensketawah and Tecumseh engaged in terrorism, which is what burning white farms and killing and torturing people certainly amounted to, just as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri 's Al Qaeda has done (though Al Qaeda has the technology to do it on a larger scale). And it was state sponsored terrorism, sponsored by the British, in an effort to contest the Mississippi Basin with the new United States.
So from Loewens's point of view, whose arguments I find compelling, we should refrain from romanticizing Tecumseh and Tensketawah. Unlike in our time, in which policymakers have worked very hard to prevent Al Qaeda's activities from translating into bigotry against Muslims in the US, after 1812, American politicians such as John C. Calhoun were more than willing to maintain and enhance the racial divides that 1812 opened up and to use those racial divides to create a racially bifurcated, White Supremacist society.
And just as after 9/11, American's civil liberties suffered after 1812. Americans might not be subject to the degree of surveillance that we see after 9/11 after 1812, but it is after 1812 that the US sees it's first local police forces--in the South, out of fear of slave insurrection. And new restraints on press freedom. And of course on intermarriage between African-Americans, whites and Native-Americans--which is one of the things Tensketawah and Tecumseh were fighting for.
And this of course is where all of our racial restrictions on immigration come from because this is the historical POD from which our self-consciousness as a race to be kept pure seems to have come from. Before the lead-up to the War of 1812, it was "you have some Indian blood--so what? Who cares?" After 1812, everybody cared.
So if Tecumseh and Tensketawah can be somehow butteflied away (maybe some native American raid kills one or both of their parents) or the British can be butteflied away from access to the Mississippi Basin after the American Revolution (making Tecumseh easier to put down a lot earlier) the US might see a far more laid back attitude toward race at least North of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. (Though whether a racially conscious South could coexist as part of the same country with a North that ISN"T RACIST AT ALL is another question. Secession might happen much sooner). And that North would likely be far more accepting of immigrants of whatever race, bringing us back to our original topic.
 
Go to the source of American racial self-consciousness.
Somehow butterfly the events leading up to the War of 1812.
John R. Loewens (Lies My Teacher Told Me) lays out a convincing case that it was the War of 1812 and events leading up to it that crystallized race consciousness in the new United States. Prior to the War of 1812 (which was a war against Tecumseh's Native American Confederation that was backed by the British), according to Loewens, it was not uncommon to find towns on the Western frontier in which Native Americans and Whites were living together in harmony, often intermarried and often intermarried with African-Americans.
Tensketwah (the Prophet) and Tecumseh's mobilization of Native American tribes in the lead-up to the War of 1812 put an end to all that and created battle lines on both sides. And yes, Tensketawah and Tecumseh engaged in terrorism, which is what burning white farms and killing and torturing people certainly amounted to, just as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri 's Al Qaeda has done (though Al Qaeda has the technology to do it on a larger scale). And it was state sponsored terrorism, sponsored by the British, in an effort to contest the Mississippi Basin with the new United States.
So from Loewens's point of view, whose arguments I find compelling, we should refrain from romanticizing Tecumseh and Tensketawah. Unlike in our time, in which policymakers have worked very hard to prevent Al Qaeda's activities from translating into bigotry against Muslims in the US, after 1812, American politicians such as John C. Calhoun were more than willing to maintain and enhance the racial divides that 1812 opened up and to use those racial divides to create a racially bifurcated, White Supremacist society.
And just as after 9/11, American's civil liberties suffered after 1812. Americans might not be subject to the degree of surveillance that we see after 9/11 after 1812, but it is after 1812 that the US sees it's first local police forces--in the South, out of fear of slave insurrection. And new restraints on press freedom. And of course on intermarriage between African-Americans, whites and Native-Americans--which is one of the things Tensketawah and Tecumseh were fighting for.
And this of course is where all of our racial restrictions on immigration come from because this is the historical POD from which our self-consciousness as a race to be kept pure seems to have come from. Before the lead-up to the War of 1812, it was "you have some Indian blood--so what? Who cares?" After 1812, everybody cared.
So if Tecumseh and Tensketawah can be somehow butteflied away (maybe some native American raid kills one or both of their parents) or the British can be butteflied away from access to the Mississippi Basin after the American Revolution (making Tecumseh easier to put down a lot earlier) the US might see a far more laid back attitude toward race at least North of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. (Though whether a racially conscious South could coexist as part of the same country with a North that ISN"T RACIST AT ALL is another question. Secession might happen much sooner). And that North would likely be far more accepting of immigrants of whatever race, bringing us back to our original topic.

This doesn't do it. Any existing population is going to limit immigration if its hurting their own prospects economically, whether or not they're racially conscious or not. The immigrants could all be Brits or something, and if the economy was constrained there would be found reasons to to exclude them. The racial consciousness, if it didn't already exist, would be invented. You know, Americans are a different race from Britons because of the eugenic effect of the harsh early colonial environment and the admixture with the most vigorous native Indian stock, blah, blah, blah, etc.
 
19th century Americans, who were already pretty racist, will stop tolerating immigrants the second they feel that their own negative prospects are negatively affected.
 
Easy.....Have the Chinese tend to vote for one party that is in charge ( maybe the Dems) that one party will want as many of these voters as possible.
 
What about a weaker federal government that doesn't have the power to enforce immigration quotas? This is tricky because if we keep the Articles of Confederacy in place, economic growth will be severely stunted by interstate tariffs/taxes and there may not be the need for labor that attracted so many immigrants IOTL.

The other option is to have a population crisis that dries up the stream of westward settlement by white American frontiersmen. Is it feasible to have a plague in the Midwest/Old Northwest?

Essentially I'm envisioning a situation where the US suddenly expands its territory significantly, the territory is under threat by other nearby powers, and there is simply not enough internal migration to settle the new territory and cement American control over it. Maybe if the Mississippi watershed is awarded to the US after the ARW (or more likely, the British keep it after the 7yw and the revolutionaries take New Orleans and keep it), and are suddenly forced to deal with Spanish and French fur traders working in cahoots with the NO creole power structure. Accepting immigrants from Napoleon-ravaged Europe might be a stopgap measure to settle the frontier, and starts a precedent of immigrants beating "Manifest Destiny" to new territories.
 

katchen

Banned
This doesn't do it. Any existing population is going to limit immigration if its hurting their own prospects economically, whether or not they're racially conscious or not. The immigrants could all be Brits or something, and if the economy was constrained there would be found reasons to to exclude them. The racial consciousness, if it didn't already exist, would be invented. You know, Americans are a different race from Britons because of the eugenic effect of the harsh early colonial environment and the admixture with the most vigorous native Indian stock, blah, blah, blah, etc.
OK! The Australians DID limit the number of migrants they accepted even from the UK at different times in their history either because they were afraid of wages being driven down or because of a subjective wish to keep Australia from "getting too crowded". This belief continues to the present day based on the widespread belief (in my opinion erroneous and proven erroneous by the economic success of wave action water desalinization) that Australia can only support around 20 million people.

Then take another look at the United States. Throughout the late 19th-early 20th Century Gilded Age, American big business, which then as now calls the shots, WANTED wages depressed. And through unrestricted immigration, got what they wanted.

Through the Mid 20th Century, the US moved toward a highly restrictive immigration policy that was driven largely by the Progressive Consensus on race (the accent WAS on national origin) but also by the growing power of organized labor and a grudging acceptance of some in the business community that wages SHOULD be permitted to rise above subsistence level. This consensus lasted until the 1960s with the New Deal (which DID contain compromises to racism) when the racism side of it breaks down completely with the Civil Rights Movement and becomes reflected in the end of National Origins as an immigration test.

The next major change comes about beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the 1990s and 2000s with the resurgence of Social Darwinism under Randian Objectivism in American corporate circles and the growing power of business over labor. Yes, business wanted labor costs cut and used the growth of immigration, both legal and illegal to help depress wages and bust unions (although the union busting generally happened first).
Probably the clearest example of this has happened in the building trades.
During the mid 20th Century, the building trades were highly unionized to the point where positions in unions such as the plumbers were often handed down father to son. Wages were bargained well past the point of a living wage. African-Americans were systematically excluded from building trades unions.
(In large part, one of the major reasons why so much of America's older housing stock turned into slums in the 1950s and 60s when African-Americans moved in was that union controlled building trades jacked the cost of repairs beyond what landlords of unskilled African Americans on welfare could afford to pay. That may be a large part of the reason maintainence got deferred on many of those buildings.)
As part of this control over building trades, Americans were systematically deskilled in these areas. "Shop classes" in US high schools were systematically dumbed down to where they did not teach any useable skills that might overload the job market or enable young people to compete with older unionized workers. But this was not the case in non-unionized Mexico.
There, young men who make it to high school were and are taught building trades as part of the curriculum. And in the 1980s, an increasing number of young Mexicans were making it to high school. And learning these skills. More than the Mexican economy could absorb.
So thousands of Mexicans travelled north with skills in the building trades. And that is why it is possible to find people at Home Depot stores across the US who can do painting, plumbing, tiling. And why it is once again economical to renovate older housing. Because the American business and political elite saw fit to allow these skilled Mexican workers to cross the border and work illegally, without any legal protection rather then keep them pent up in Mexico and risk a Cuban or Venezuelan style revolution there.
So if you want more immigration in the mid 20th Century, butterfly away Progressivism and keep business in control longer in a very socially darwinian way. Which in the context of the early 20th Century is not that easy to do.

It was the existence of a land frontier that made all this social darwinism in the US's cities bearable, and as soon as Americans had the perception that the land frontier had closed (in 1883), the pressure for some sort of reform and curbs on the power of big business racheted up dramatically. So, to prevent that from happening, business must tell it's Senators and Congresspeople to get over it's buyer's remorse over purchasing Alaska and pass legislation fully organizing Alaska into territories for settlement and granting land for several railroads to Alaska as soon as James G. Blaine can settle the Alaska Land Dispute with the UK so that the British and local British Columbia Government will grant land to US railroads to build across BC to reach Alaska in return for possession of the mainland of the Alaskan Panhandle south of the Taku River (gold has been found at Juneau just north of the Taku). By now, because of experiments at US forts it is known that crops can be grown in places like the Tanana Valley and that there are vast areas of arable land in Alaska waiting to be farmed. Keep the frontier going and the Gilded Age gets extended probably until 1929.
 
Easy.....Have the Chinese tend to vote for one party that is in charge ( maybe the Dems) that one party will want as many of these voters as possible.

Thats actually very counter-intuitive. In the Gilded Age, it was the Republicans who were staunchly anti-restriction, due to their business ties. For a variety of ideological and economic reasons, the 19th Century GOP was the party for non-white minorities. Though, ironically enough, it was a former Know-Nothing turned Republican, Burlingame, who sought equal treatment for the Chinese in the US. When the Exclusion Act was first proposed, Republican president Hayes nearly got impeached for his opposition to it (admittedly, more on technical grounds, since he didn't want to abrogate a treaty without actually negotiating with China).

Anyway, lets presume that, for various reasons, more favorable laws towards immigration are passed/less favorable laws are not passed. While this will, of course, lead to increased immigration, it might also have some unexpected effects:

- We won't necessarily see more 'Mexican Americans' or 'Chinese Americans,' but more possibly see more Americans who happen to have ancestors of that descent. With fewer legal barriers between them, its possible that they'll be more integrated, socially and genetically into the population as a whole. But then, the US is generally pretty good at that anyway, so perhaps there's a limit.
- What effects will increased immigration have on the home countries? If the country, for example, is overcrowded, then reduced population pressure there might stem further emigration in the long term. For example, say wages are low, encouraging emigration to the US. If the labor market shrinks enough, then wages will go up, until there's an equilibrium. Or, more dramatically, there are military considerations in those other countries.
- Will immigration from various sources discourage immigrants from other areas?

Quite important, though very indirect, would be the impact a few generations down the line. Almost certainly, the GDP of the US would be larger overall, leading to increased military and diplomatic power, which could impact world affairs, which could then feed back into the immigration question, particularly insofar as it concerns political refugees.

In short, its a very muddled picture, almost like predicting the weather.
 
As a point of departure, how about in some early part of the country's history we got a constitutional amendment saying that the US will accept all peaceful immigrants, thus locking in the lack of restrictions if and when anti-immigrant sentiment increases. Not sure when the most plausible period for such an amendment to appear would be, but it seems like the kind of thing that could theoretically happen if there was some brief swing towards intense pro-immigration policies, either to increase the country's population or as a humanitarian gesture.
 
You would see a lot more Irish in America after 1969 when Irish legal immigration was almost completely shut down.
 
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