What makes them “better immigrants?” Until the mid 20th century America took the poorest and least educated immigrants and it worked out pretty well. It’s not clear to me that importing other countries’ elites is a better tack.
My mom's parents immigrated in the late 1950s (from a recently impoverished country despite having advanced degrees) and they were required to show proof of having a job, proof of having healthcare, and proof having enough savings among other things I am sure, or so I was told (I think the requirements can be verified online if in doubt). They would have qualified as poor I imagine since they came with nothing and were fleeing their country. But there were completely different requirements back then.
There are various ways one can immigrate to the US now, such as H-1B, DV, asylum, illegally, etc. I think only H-1B requires proof of employment before entering. I think the requirements previously may have filtered a lot of people in spite of education and net worth. Also, I am not sure what qualifies as being educated back then since having a bachelor's degree was a lot less common than it is now.
Right, that’s mid 20th century. There was immigration restriction in the US starting in the early 20th century, which caused the foreign born population percentage to drop under 5% in 1970 (compared to almost 15% in 1910 and almost 14% today). But prior to 1920 or so those restrictions weren’t there.
The kids of the poorest and least educated immigrants are the ones who created the Italian and Irish gangs/mafia. We see the same thing in Western Europe today, where people fled their pretty bad countries, only to have their un-integrated kids repeat the same behaviors that made the origin countries bad in the first place.
I love the idea of the diversity visa lottery, I think it's a great way to spice up the population.
But mass immigration of low educated individuals is not good, they won't integrate as well as highly skilled workers.
Also, in the 1800s, you needed millions of farm workers, miners, rail workers etc. These jobs were dangerous, no skill required, no language required, making it feasible to just import whatever immigrants you can. Today it's not the case, with such a sophisticated economy.
> But mass immigration of low educated individuals is not good, they won't integrate as well as highly skilled workers.
It’s not clear to me the highly educated individuals are integrating well. (E.g. high caste Indians bringing caste-based elitism to the U.S.) They're obviously prospering but that's somewhat different.
Intermarriage rates for Indian Americans are very high which would suggest that they’re integrating. If caste lasts in the US it will be the first place in the Indian diaspora that it does. For US born 29% marry outside of ethnic group. At those rates once mass Indian immigration ends it’ll be two to three generations before the ethnic group are pretty much completely American, like German Americans or Italian Americans.
When was that data for Italians collected? Nobody in this thread was saying that Italians in the 1990s were forming Mafia...It was about the mass immigration at the end of 19th-beginning of 20th centuries.
Just look at the bigger picture: when the US imported large amounts of un-vetted immigrants, you had several ethnic based gangs.
The Italian mafia was hard to get rid off once established, but in general you didn't have new ones popping up - that stopped with tougher immigration.
Now the only ethnic based gangs are the Spanish speaking ones...it's such a coincidence that the latino gangs started around the time of mass immigration...
Up until the mid 1800s you had to be rich, at least solidly middle class, to afford the passage across the Atlantic. There’s maybe 70 years of uncontrolled immigration not gated by very high costs before immigration became unpopular enough for restrictions to become large.
“One historian described the typical German immigrant as a poor farmer or artisan who arrived around 1750 with a wife and two children. They were most likely in debt for the passage across the Atlantic but had family or friends already settled in America. They were affiliated with the Lutheran or Reformed church but only loosely committed to an organized religion. Records indicate that they became prosperous members of the community. However, many were too poor to pay the transatlantic passage so as many as one-half to two-third of German immigrants came to Pennsylvania as indentured servants or redemptioners, as Germans called them.”
