Spanish American

only about 613,211 people are "Spanish American" vs say 3,000,000 Greek Americans or 17,815,289 Italian Americans, so is their a way to get large numbers of Spanish people to come to the US, I was thinking the years leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War its self would help drive people out, also the post-Franco 1970s and early 1980s, what needs to change in the US and Spain to make this happen and what happens to both if there is a few million "Spanish-Americans"?
 
You'd need the US to relax its immigration laws in the 1930s. Both the United States and Canada's were designed around the "middle-class northwest Europeans only", even for Southern Europeans. As for the 1970s perhaps a successful coup in '81?
 
You'd need the US to relax its immigration laws in the 1930s. Both the United States and Canada's were designed around the "middle-class northwest Europeans only", even for Southern Europeans. As for the 1970s perhaps a successful coup in '81?

Well in order to have a substantial Spanish population in US is to have a worse revolution in Spain in 1868 that forces the Spaniards to emigrate elsewhere especially in the US and Canada. Or no immigration restriction in 1920s and have all Europeans allowed to enter US.
 
For one thing you'd need to make Argentina a less attractive place to immigrate. The majority of Spaniards before emigrating before 1960 went to Argentina (over 2/3). After Argentina you have Cuba which was very popular with around 20% of the pre-WW2 total going there. Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico received Spanish immigrants in smaller numbers. Finally there was Algeria which received many immigrants from Andalusia before 1920.

After WW2 there were many Spaniards that went to Venezuela due to their booming economy (pre-1970). However, during this period the economic boom led many more to go to France and West Germany as guest workers. These options were cheaper and less restrictive options than the United States.

There were some Spaniards who emigrated to the U.S. but it was much more attractive to go somewhere where the same language or a romance language was spoken. Just as the Portuguese emigrants overwhelmingly chose Brazil and the British chose English-speaking countries. The Greeks you mentioned didn't have such an option.
 

Goldstein

Banned
Interesting, the "greater Spanish presence in the US" is one of the scenarios that I've been considering to make a TL (Someday I'll overcome my laziness. Maybe tomorow :rolleyes:). But this is a very, very problematic one. There's a big obstacle for this, and it's called Argentina.

From the mid 19th century until WWI, in the Spanish collective conciousness, Argentina was the land of Hope and Dreams and it received literally millions of Spaniards (and old saying referred to Buenos Aires as the second Spanish metropolis, as the Spanish inmigrants there surpassed the population of Barcelona), not to tell the perception towards the United States was hostile, to say the least. So lots of things would have to happen, and the neccesary conditions would change the world so deeply that the Spanish inmigration patterns would be the last thing to care about. I guess an earlier Cuban emancipation/no Spanish-American War plus Argentina somehow becoming a very hostile place for Spaniards, would be the minimum conditions.
 
You need to make places like Argentina a lot less attractive for Spaniards and peoples of Romance background and the United States a lot more welcoming of people from southern Europe.
 
I wonder if the Spainiards that emigrate over in the wake of the Civil would form their own ethnic communities or would they merge with other Hispanics? I guess it depends where they end up...Interesting Premise though:D
 
I wonder if the Spainiards that emigrate over in the wake of the Civil would form their own ethnic communities or would they merge with other Hispanics? I guess it depends where they end up...Interesting Premise though:D

I'm guessing places in the Northeast like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. You won't see a lot coming to the South.
 

Goldstein

Banned
I'm guessing places in the Northeast like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. You won't see a lot coming to the South.

That's probabily true, but extrapolating OTL migrating tendencies, I guess a fair deal of them would chose the West Coast. I don't see them merging with "other" Hispanics* more than I see American and British people merging. To the contrary, I see them developing a strong Spanish-American identity, and creating Spanish cultural centers, as well as their own regional cultural centers, as it happened in Argentina.

*The term is a bit problematic, as people from Spain often consider itself substantially different from Latin Americans, and culturally closer to other Southern Europeans, despite languages.
 
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To the contrary, I see them developing a strong Spanish-American identity, and creating Spanish cultural centers, as well as their own regional cultural centers, as it happened in Argentina.

Actually, even if there were substantial numbers of spanish immigrants, I'd say they would identify themselves as galician/asturian/catalan/whatever first and spanish later; and spanish identity would end diluting between their "original" regional identity and their adopted american identity. Something similar happened in Cuba, where there are huge galician and asturian communities that have never really identified themselves as "spanish".

IIRC, there is a sizeable galician community in New Jersey today in the Newark area.
 

Goldstein

Banned
Actually, even if there were substantial numbers of spanish immigrants, I'd say they would identify themselves as galician/asturian/catalan/whatever first and spanish later; and spanish identity would end diluting between their "original" regional identity and their adopted american identity. Something similar happened in Cuba, where there are huge galician and asturian communities that have never really identified themselves as "spanish".

IIRC, there is a sizeable galician community in New Jersey today in the Newark area.

Sure, I thought about that as well, but I though that in America, the race thing working differently and everything, a perception of hostility would generate cohesiveness as a response, specially if they come en masse. But then again, the identity thing works differently in Spain than in Italy, for example. I basically pictured communities reuniting in Galician, Asturian or Andalusian cultural centers, and the menace of people willing to beat the Popish Dagoeness out of you, helping to reinforce the identification with Spain. But who knows.
 
Actually, even if there were substantial numbers of spanish immigrants, I'd say they would identify themselves as galician/asturian/catalan/whatever first and spanish later; and spanish identity would end diluting between their "original" regional identity and their adopted american identity. Something similar happened in Cuba, where there are huge galician and asturian communities that have never really identified themselves as "spanish".

IIRC, there is a sizeable galician community in New Jersey today in the Newark area.

And don't forget basques in Boise.

I agree mostly with Dr. Strangelove on this, though I think that also some of them could indentify themselves among other hispanics. In OTL, at least some famous americans with spanish ascendancy did so. Also like others said, spanish will prefer Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela (in this order as in OTL, if nothing impedes it). Even nowadays latin american emigrants prefer Spain to USA due to cultural reasons despite economical oportunities, excepting, of course, those who live next door to the USA like Mexicans and central americans.
If for some reason, spaniards can't go to those countries, you have still Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Perú, Colombia, Brazil etc, which also saw spanish inmigration in OTL. So, you need to close the entire Latin America for spaniards in order to force them to emigrate to USA.

PD: Even in Madrid and its periphery, where tons of inmigrants from other parts of Spain came (like my parents), inmigrants' institutions are strongly regionalized, and you have separate cultural houses for galicians, andalusinas, asturians, extremenians etc.
 
Actually, even if there were substantial numbers of spanish immigrants, I'd say they would identify themselves as galician/asturian/catalan/whatever first and spanish later; and spanish identity would end diluting between their "original" regional identity and their adopted american identity. Something similar happened in Cuba, where there are huge galician and asturian communities that have never really identified themselves as "spanish".

IIRC, there is a sizeable galician community in New Jersey today in the Newark area.

I grew up on the East coast of the U.S. and my family was from Portugal and while Newark's Ironbound area is overwhelmingly Portuguese, there are a few Galicians too. Due to the fact that many of the Portuguese in this area are from Northern Portugal I noticed both groups tend to get along well and share restaurants/cafes etc. I've been to many of the bars and they show TVG from Galicia along with RTP from Portugal.

One thing I did notice is that both the Spanish and Portuguese immigrants tend to get along well with Cubans of European ancestry. In fact I know of quite a few mixed Cuban-Portuguese marriages. On the other hand, there seems to be quite a bit of racism against Puerto Ricans. Most of the older Galician and Portuguese immigrants are quite religious and generally look down upon having children out of wedlock, which is much more prevalent amongst this group than any other Latino group.
 
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