More Immigrants Please

[tomcat]

...while Asians and Latinos appear to integrate fairly smoothly in the US, I wonder about Muslims...

Immigrants Do a Great Job at Becoming Americans

They quickly adapt to the culture, learn English and intermarry.
By Noah Smith
November 21, 2017, 8:00 PM GMT+7





Immigration has lots of economic benefits, and few economic costs. Immigrants pay for native-born Americans’ retirement, start companies, and make the U.S. a desirable destination for investment, while not taking away jobs or depressing wages of the native-born. But people care about more than dollars and cents -- culture is important. Immigration skeptics -- including a few on the political left -- often fret that immigrants won’t adapt to American culture. But they shouldn’t worry. The great American assimilation machine continues to work as designed.

First, restrictionists misunderstand the nature of assimilation. Many seem to have an image of newcomers imitating the native-born, conforming perfectly to local traditions and customs. But this has never been the reality. In the 19th and 20th centuries, when religion was the key marker of culture, immigrants to the U.S. rarely converted. Despite heavy discrimination and even violence against Catholics, Catholicism became the plurality religion throughout much of the country. Instead of mass Catholic or Jewish or Orthodox Christian conversion, what happened was that the notion of American identity simply expanded to include all of these denominations.

Assimilation, therefore, is really a process of integration -- many cultures becoming one culture. E pluribus unum. American parents of all races can expect their children to know how to use chopsticks and to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, just as older generations of Americans embraced German Christmas trees and Italian pasta. Cultural preservationists on all sides might be unhappy with this, while cosmopolitans will rejoice. But no matter what you think of cultural evolution, it’s important to realize that integration is nothing like the submissive, conformist abandonment of all ancestral culture that some nativists wrongly imagine prevailed in the past.

The real question is: Is integration still happening? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. If anything, recent immigrant groups -- Hispanic- and Asian-Americans -- are integrating even more quickly and completely than the previous waves from southern and eastern Europe did a century ago.

In the past, research has focused narrowly on linguistic adaptation. And here Hispanic-Americans -- by far the biggest of the recent immigrant waves -- have been adopting English just as quickly as earlier immigrant groups.
But cultural integration goes way beyond language. It involves so many things -- customs, traditions, attitudes and modes of social interaction -- that it’s hard to measure. But one very good indicator is intermarriage rates. There’s no act of integration deeper or more long-lasting than choosing to spend your life with someone from a different ethnic, racial or cultural group. And here, we see that recent immigrant groups have been intermarrying at rapid rates.
A recent Pew survey found that the share of Americans who marry someone of another race or ethnicity has risen steadily, and now stands at 17 percent. That trend has only accelerated in recent years, possibly due to the prevalence of online dating. But for Hispanic- and Asian-Americans, the rates are much higher. Almost four out of 10 U.S.-born Hispanics marry someone of a different ethnicity, and for U.S.-born Asians the number is 46 percent. The overwhelming majority of those marriages are to white Americans.

Love Is Blind

Intermarriage also allows us to test the hypothesis that multiculturalist rhetoric -- common on liberal college campuses -- will slow the rate at which immigrant groups integrate. In fact, Americans with a bachelor’s degree -- who have, presumably, been exposed to much more multiculturalism -- intermarry at a 19 percent rate, while for Americans with a high-school degree or less the number is only 14 percent. This gap has grown in recent years, suggesting that multiculturalism has done little to impede integration, and may even have contributed to its acceleration.

The final fear that many immigration skeptics have relates to politics. There is a worry that voting will break down along racial lines, balkanizing the country into hostile ethnic blocs. The 2016 election, with its charged racial rhetoric and stark voting divides, certainly did little to quiet those fears.

But in many areas, this divide is far less in evidence. In Texas, Republican senatorial candidate John Cornyn won the Latino vote in 2014, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott won a respectable 44 percent. In 2004, George W. Bush appeared to be making inroads with Hispanics, winning 40 percent, while Asian-Americans broke Republican as recently as 1996.

Meanwhile, a recent study by Alex Nowrasteh and Sam Wilson of the Cato Institute found that on the issues, immigrants and their descendants tend to hold many of the same views as native-born Americans. On issues like welfare spending, Social Security, environmental protection, income redistribution and marijuana legalization, immigrant positions are very similar to those of the native-born -- and by the third generation, practically indistinguishable.
So on politics too, integration is the reality for recent immigrant groups.

In other words, not only are the economic fears of immigration skeptics unjustified, but the cultural anxieties are as well. Recent waves of immigrants have integrated into American culture -- changing it, and being changed by it -- just as quickly and completely as their European predecessors. American culture is doing what it has always done -- taking diverse peoples, and forging a single polity from the disparate parts.


https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-21/immigrants-do-a-great-job-at-becoming-americans

[cyrille]

Well the inter-marrying part is of course off-limits for many for a start.

[russellsimpson]

"The final fear that many immigration skeptics have relates to politics. There is a worry that voting will break down along racial lines, balkanizing the country into hostile ethnic blocs. The 2016 election, with its charged racial rhetoric and stark voting divides, certainly did little to quiet those fears."

I don't find a single piece of evidence to support this view. On the other hand there exist a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Certainly I've found that to be the case in the frozen north where I abide

[russellsimpson]

Well the inter-marrying part is of course off-limits for many for a start.

[YourDaddy]

Aren't you glad I'm here

[baldrick]

Well the inter-marrying part is of course off-limits for many for a start.

like jews and mormons and stuff

[bsnub]

...while Asians and Latinos appear to integrate fairly smoothly in the US, I wonder about Muslims...

The muslims in my local area do not integrate at all from what I see.

[jabir]

I've begun to see the word 'integrate' more than 'coexist' lately. Just a couple years ago 'coexist' was the buzz word dished out by the media for the gullible. Maybe someone looked it up and discovered that Europe's Muslims have been happy to coexist for decades, without integrating.


That said, at the European Council for Fatwa and Research (2005), Qaradawi (spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood) encouraged the Europe’s Muslim population to integrate into European society.

Ranks of clueless infidel leaders were pleasantly surprised and rushed off to celebrate, probably due to ignorance or embarrassment, or to conveniently ignore Qaradawi’s next sentence, which stipulated that the integration must be done “without violating the rules of Sharia.”

Coexistence can and is happening throughout Europe without violating Sharia, but not integration. The only one way integration can happen, within Sharia, is for weak and weakening Europeans to integrate with Muslims, by accepting new norms and adopting Sharia. This is being done as a gradual process, and the strategy is working while Europe sleeps, but wakes up long enough to ridicule those that chuckle at Europe sleeping.

[tomcat]

The only one way integration can happen, within Sharia, is for weak and weakening Europeans to integrate with Muslims,

...within Sharia, possibly, but without Sharia almost definitely: the young will want to emulate their peers in non-parochial schools...that suggests they will want to date, smoke dope, sext and do all the boundary-pushing activities that would disappoint/enrage their parents. If they aren't killed by their more tribal adults, they and succeeding generations may grow up to be more attuned to the culture they grow up in and look on Sharia in the same way that many US youths regard the Bible: incomprehensible nonsense that stifles the fresh air of alternative opinions of reality...

[Little Chuchok]

[I]...while Asians and Latinos appear to integrate fairly smoothly in the US, I wonder about Muslims...

So there are no Asian and Latino Muslims?

[jabir]

...within Sharia, possibly, but without Sharia almost definitely: the young will want to emulate their peers in non-parochial schools...that suggests they will want to date, smoke dope, sext and do all the boundary-pushing activities that would disappoint/enrage their parents. If they aren't killed by their more tribal adults, they and succeeding generations may grow up to be more attuned to the culture they grow up in and look on Sharia in the same way that many US youths regard the Bible: incomprehensible nonsense that stifles the fresh air of alternative opinions of reality...

I think you'll find it works the other way with following generations, but no time now am off for a temple BBQ.

[cyrille]

Thanks for the update...do keep us informed.

[bsnub]

Latino Muslims?

No such thing unless they converted. Islam is virtually non existent in central and south America.

[CaptainNemo]

In for a penny...

US Could Be World’s Most Populous Country


By opening immigration door, the US could fuel rise of population and power


Joseph Chamie


Monday, April 15, 2013


Let them come: Tourists at the feet of the Statue of Liberty (top); Latino demonstrators rally for immigration reformNEW YORK: The United States could aim to have largest population in the world before the end of the century, thus ensuring its power.

The US now has a population of 316 million – third largest after China, 1.36 billion, and India, 1.28 billion – and could aim for 1.6 billion, simply by opening wide its doors to immigration from across the globe as it did during most of its 237-year history.
If immigration to America were increased to 10 million immigrants per year throughout the remainder of this century, the demographic result would be a US population of about 940 million by 2060 and 1.60 billion by the close the 21^st century (see Figure 1). The world’s second and third largest populations in 2100 are projected to be India, 1.55 billion, and China, 0.94 billion.
However, if in the coming decades America continues with net immigration of about 1.2 million annually, as currently assumed, the US population would reach 420 million by year 2060. Although this projected growth would be an increase of more than 100 million, the US population would fall to fourth place as Nigeria takes over the number three position with a projected population of 460 million in 2060. The populations of the three countries currently larger than Nigeria – Brazil, Indonesia and Pakistan – are expected to peak around midcentury and begin declining thereafter due to projected low fertility rates falling below replacement levels. Also in the longer term, the gap between projected US population, with 1.2 million immigrants annually, versus the larger US population, with 10 million immigrants annually, widens rapidly, resulting in a difference of 1.1 billion Americans at the close of the century.
Immigration is the chief source of America’s population growth in the coming decades, unlike China, India and Nigeria. US fertility hovers around the replacement level of about two children per woman and is unlikely to change significantly in the foreseeable future. If immigration were to cease altogether, the US population in 2060 would grow to 355 million, an increase of 39 million, but the labor force would decline by several percentage points and the age structure would be considerably older.
America could easily accommodate a larger population given its considerable size and abundant resources. A population of 1.6 billion would increase the nation’s density from today’s 33 persons per square kilometers to 165 persons in 2100, about half the level in Massachusetts today. This future density is well below current densities in Germany at 231 per square kilometer; Japan, 335; and the United Kingdom, 255. Even if the world’s entire population of 7.1 billion were to reside in America, the nation’s resulting density of 732 persons per square kilometer would still be less than current densities of Bahrain, at 1,818; Bangladesh, 1,033; and Singapore, 7,447.
Increased demands for food, housing and energy could be handled with a revitalized US economy and developing underutilized land and natural resources, including natural gas and renewable sources of energy. Innovation and technology could alleviate negative environmental impacts, as has been demonstrated over the nation’s two-century history.
Increased immigration is consistent with America’s admired tradition of being a nation of immigrants and the eloquent call on the plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
Since the nation’s founding in 1776, immigration has accounted for more than half of America’s population growth. Without its past immigration waves, America’s current population of 316 million would be about 143 million.
Immigrants have shaped American history. At the start of the 20^th century, the US proportion of foreign born reached its peak near 15 percent. Considerably higher proportions of foreign born occurred in California, with 25 percent; Massachusetts, 30 percent; Minnesota, 29 percent; and New York, 26 percent. Today, the proportion of foreign born is 13 percent – leading states are California, 27 percent; New York, 22 percent; and New Jersey, 21 percent. Countries with higher proportions of foreign born include Australia, 22 percent; Canada, 21 percent; and Israel, 40 percent.
Rapid population growth for the United States is not without historical precedent. For example, between 1813 and 1900, America’s population increased nearly tenfold, 8 million to 76 million, and fivefold between 1890 and 2013, 63 million to 316 million. The populations of some individual US states grew more rapidly than the nation as a whole. For instance, between 1850 and 1910, populations of Texas and California increased 18-fold and 26-fold, respectively.
Increasing US immigration to 10 million per year would facilitate the reunification of separated families. Rather than having to wait for years, US immigrants would be joined by spouses, children, siblings, parents within weeks. This would boost American leadership in promoting family and social networks. America’s ethnic, cultural and personal ties, such as those now firmly established with Ireland, Israel and Italy, would be extended to encompass all nations.
The issue of illegal immigration would no longer be a sensitive political matter occupying valuable time and resources of the US president or Congress. Unauthorized immigrants residing in the US – 60 percent currently from Mexico – would be granted amnesty and welcomed as new citizens. Enforcement, border patrol, legal/judicial hearings, incarceration and deportations would be negligible, saving the nation billions of dollars that could be used for rebuilding America’s ailing infrastructure.
In addition to the familial, political and administrative advantages, opening America’s doors wide to immigrants would engender many far-reaching economic and social benefits, including yielding a vastly expanded GDP and greater tax revenues; more workers, entrepreneurs, innovators and consumers; a younger population; a more competitive workforce and wage levels; increased contributions to Social Security and Medicare; a larger pool of potential recruits for all kinds of work; and enriched cultural diversity.
Furthermore, setting US immigration at 10 million per year would help repopulate and rejuvenate many declining and financially strapped cities, including Detroit, Newark or Stockton. It would ease the labor-shortages for farmers, food producers, working mothers, landscapers, health care providers, high-tech entrepreneurs and more. Energetic immigrants would take on jobs that Americans find difficult, decline to do or are not qualified to perform.
Businesses, chambers of commerce, unions, religious institutions, immigrant-advocacy groups and various government agencies would also benefit from increased immigration. Companies could choose from a terrifically expanded, motivated and youthful labor pool. Unions would have all workers authorized to participate in the labor force, thereby ending the undercutting of fair wages. Government authorities and employers would not need to verify or monitor work permits and worksites except to ensure that all employees pay required taxes.
Global opinion polls show that many people at virtually all skill levels would like to emigrate, and the number-one destination is overwhelmingly the United States. In addition to promoting continued migration from neighboring Canada, Mexico, Central America and other Latin American countries, greater numbers of bright, ambitious and innovative immigrants should be sought from countries in South and East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Finally, with US immigration increased to 10 million per year, the enhanced America with a population of 1.6 billion by century’s close would mean a more secure and flourishing world. As the world’s most populous nation by 2100, America would strengthen its capacity to continue promoting democracy, freedom and development, thereby ensuring peace, stability and prosperity for every region of the world.

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/...pulous-country

[russellsimpson]

Forgotten how to use the forum.

[tomcat]

...^there may be a sympathy thread in the banal banter forum...