Major American cities without significant immigration

[Jiraiyathegallant]

If the US did not open its immigration system in the 50s and 60s and strictly enforced its borders, how would major US cities look?

What would cities like New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco look like? Would major cities have their populations shrinking? Would New York still be seen as the capital of the world with the loss of population and cosmopolitan nature? Would Hollywood influence on the world be significantly reduced?Would some of these cities be more affordable for the average Joe?

 

[Jiraiyathegallant]

Would rural and suburban Americans head to the cheaper cities, emptying rural and suburban parts of the country? That seems to be happening in Japan where there has been little immigration.

 

[Ficboy]

Well without massive immigration from the Third World in the 1960s or at least a substantially reduced version of it, the United States would be majority white (non-Hispanic and Hispanic) even up until 2045. Keep in mind, the United States was 88 percent white (both non-Hispanic and Hispanic) in the 1960s and it has declined it about 72 percent and for the former only 60 percent since the 2010s. Granted there would still be civil rights laws assuming if everything else was unaltered like OTL but without the Hart-Celler Act the ethnic composition of the nation would be completely different and cities and states considered to be bastions of the liberal Democratic Party would lean a bit more towards the conservative Republican Party. I might not even be here either or some other way my parents who are from Pakistan could have gone there.

For Southern cities such as Richmond, New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham and Baltimore (to an extent), whites would still be the majority and the politics would be completely different skewing more conservative than liberal. For Northern cities that experienced white flight such as Detroit, Camden, East St. Louis, Buffalo and Rochester, they would have a more homogenous population.

 

[Gracchus Tiberius]

Eh... I can only speak for my home city of New York. It would likely retain a larger proportion of middle/working class white ethnics (Irish, Italians, and Jews, predominately) that left the city for Long Island and New Jersey following the chaotic Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties (the rise in crime that New York saw back then had nothing to do with immigration, but it did lower housing prices so that new immigrants could move in). I'm not saying that no Hart-Celler will change that much, the factors that brought about white flight were happening way before it passed, but it'll cushion the fall sizably.

Would rural and suburban Americans head to the cheaper cities, emptying rural and suburban parts of the country? That seems to be happening in Japan where there has been little immigration.

I mean that's kind of already what's happening. If you look at the millennials in the workforces of NYC, LA, or Seattle, or Portland (just to name a few), you'll find that the majority of them are transplants from rural or suburban America, who left their hometowns looking for work. What job opportunities are there in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa compared to New York City or Los Angeles?

 

[interpoltomo]

Blacker and more southern/appalachian. Blacker west coast plus even more of a reverse great migration than OTL.

 

[Jiraiyathegallant]

Eh... I can only speak for my home city of New York. It would likely retain a larger proportion of middle/working class white ethnics (Irish, Italians, and Jews, predominately) that left the city for Long Island and New Jersey following the chaotic Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties (the rise in crime that New York saw back then had nothing to do with immigration, but it did lower housing prices so that new immigrants could move in). I'm not saying that no Hart-Celler will change that much, the factors that brought about white flight were happening way before it passed, but it'll cushion the fall sizably.


I mean that's kind of already what's happening. If you look at the millennials in the workforces of NYC, LA, or Seattle, or Portland (just to name a few), you'll find that the majority of them are transplants from rural or suburban America, who left their hometowns looking for work opportunities. What job opportunities are there in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa compared to New York City or Los Angeles?

So you think fewer people leave the cities?

 

[David T]

If the US did not open its immigration system in the 50s and 60s and strictly enforced its borders, how would major US cities look?

You mean, stirictly enforced the 1920's legislation which set no quota limits for the Western Hemisphere? https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...tronger-or-weaker.462784/page-2#post-18523509

 

[Jiraiyathegallant]

You mean, stirictly enforced the 1920's legislation which set no quota limits for the Western Hemisphere? https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...tronger-or-weaker.462784/page-2#post-18523509

What was the basis for mass deportations in the 30s and 50s then?

 

[David T]

What was the basis for mass deportations in the 30s and 50s then?

"Besides, those opposed to a Mexican quota noted that Mexicans would still be subject to restrictions such as the head tax and the ban on a large category of alleged undesirable immigrants." https://books.google.com/books?id=NagJFMxtkAcC&pg=PA7

 

[Mark E.]

For Northern cities that experienced white flight such as Detroit, Camden, East St. Louis, Buffalo and Rochester, they would have a more homogenous population.

Multiple factors brought down East St. Louis, Illinois. In the fifties, it was a fashionable place, earning All America City one year. With a peak population of only 82,000, it was more of an industrial commercial anchor serving the St. Louis metro area. Its decline can be summarized in phases:

1. In the fifties, finances were grossly mismanaged, forcing the city into debt with the need to raise taxes.
2. The early sixties brought the landing to multiple Interstate highways, with Interstates 70, 55 and 64 all converging into a single new eight-lane bridge over the Mississippi River. The construction broke up neighborhoods. The highways aided eastward suburban flight.
3. In 1967, Missouri legalized liquor by the drink in restaurants on Sundays, siphoning away customers from thriving businesses who would travel across the river throughout the week for dinner.
4. More and more industries would close, since this was an old, established point of commerce.
5. By 1980, suburban flight and racial turnover would leave the community with low property values and insufficient funding to maintain services.

Today, the population is a mere 27,000. Some renewal is arriving on the riverfront, aided by a new light rail link and a casino. Both Missouri and Illinois allow casinos.

 

[Ficboy]

Multiple factors brought down East St. Louis, Illinois. In the fifties, it was a fashionable place, earning All America City one year. With a peak population of only 82,000, it was more of an industrial commercial anchor serving the St. Louis metro area. Its decline can be summarized in phases:

1. In the fifties, finances were grossly mismanaged, forcing the city into debt with the need to raise taxes.
2. The early sixties brought the landing to multiple Interstate highways, with Interstates 70, 55 and 64 all converging into a single new eight-lane bridge over the Mississippi River. The construction broke up neighborhoods. The highways aided eastward suburban flight.
3. In 1967, Missouri legalized liquor by the drink in restaurants on Sundays, siphoning away customers from thriving businesses who would travel across the river throughout the week for dinner.
4. More and more industries would close, since this was an old, established point of commerce.
5. By 1980, suburban flight and racial turnover would leave the community with low property values and insufficient funding to maintain services.

Today, the population is a mere 27,000. Some renewal is arriving on the riverfront, aided by a new light rail link and a casino. Both Missouri and Illinois allow casinos.

Well as far as no Hart-Celler Act is concerned, it would still be poor because of the events you mentioned but it would be much more white than black unlike OTL.

 

[Gracchus Tiberius]

So you think fewer people leave the cities?

I think so. Let me use Bay Ridge, a neighborhood in Brooklyn for example. It was predominately Irish and Italian well into the late Eighties and early Nineties. However, during this period there was a large influx of Arabs and Chinese into the area. A lot of the old population left for other working-class white neighborhoods in the city and to city suburbs (i.e. the Rockaways) because they felt it was becoming less white. With no Hart-Celler, it would probably remain predominately Irish and Italian. The same would go for neighborhoods like Richmond Hill and Ozone Park, which were once Italian neighborhoods but now both have very large Indian and Indo-Guyanese communities.

 

[Mark E.]

Well as far as no Hart-Celler Act is concerned, it would still be poor because of the events you mentioned but it would be much more white than black unlike OTL.

I don't think Hart-Cellar had anything to do with ESL. Those highways literally cut and destroyed neighborhoods, and those who moved in were those who were poor and could afford deeply deflated property.

 

[Electric Monk]

If you want communities not to be divided by highways Robert Moses must die—or be a very different person. His work influenced virtually every bit of highway/parkway(/projects even) construction in the USA.