IMMIGRATION thread

[Viking]

Here's a relevant American political cartoon from 1903:

http://imgur.com/4GGibUO

It's been 110 years and the US has not turned into some sort of Southern European hell-hole. I'm not arguing for un-restricted immigration but I don't think Middle Eastern and African migrants are going to destroy Europe either.

Just as one might object to a comparison to last days of the Roman empire, one might object to a comparison to the US.

The most obvious difference is that the US is nation of immigrants. With the exception of 'native' Americans, most Americans can say that their ancestors came from this or that European or African country at that or that time. That means new immigrants don't look that out of place in the US. In comparison, my own ancestors (minus some Danish ones) might have come to this area ~ 10 000 years ago. Most of the population in Europe have a connection to the countries they occupy through thousands of years. This creates a schism between new arrivals and ancient arrivals, unless there is assimilation.

Some other things:

- Europe is filling up - both literally and non-literally. Some places really are getting crowded, but there are also national parks (and more rural areas not legally recognised) that people want to preserve, necessary farmland, opposition to further urbanisation and areas that are simply inhospitable. I imagine things looked rather different in the US over a 100 years ago; both physically and in terms of attitudes.
- there is still a significant split in the US population between the original natives, the population of European origin and the population of African origin
- the cultures where the immigrants came from were typically not too different from the cultures that the current Americans themselves came from

That latter point seems especially relevant. I am not aware of Europeans not integrating properly in other European countries being a common problem (international criminals are a problem, but that's largely a separate topic - they take advantage of the open borders), despite there being significant migration internally in Europe.