>If we look at the number of foreign-born residents, the 2024 estimate was the highest in the Census Bureau’s series, which stretches back to 1850. So, on that measure, the 2024 figure was unprecedented.
Illegal immigration didn't really exist in 1850, nor even a meaningful Federal immigration policy beyond Congress statutorily setting the number of years of residency required to apply for citizenship, and of course limiting it to whites. The borders were open; border checkpoints and ports of entry were years away. People came, worked, and after several years applied for citizenship at the local state court house, attesting to the number of years they'd been here.
Federal immigration policy didn't really get going until the 1870s (notwithstanding some toothless laws passed in the 1860s), and IIRC it wasn't until the 1880s that the Federal government created ports of entry to process immigrants, including creating a system to reject immigrants.
I mention this because I think the ~20 year time lag between the first wave of large scale immigration and immigration becoming a major political issue, including the rise of anti-immigration sentiments and policies, is notable. Not necessarily for anything specific, just that it's interesting how history rhymes.
I expect the answer has to do wit higher populations, easier transport, increased knowledge of emmigration opportunities via presence of the Internet, climate change, and globalization.
At bottom, it's politics. Most people in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have a top-down, paternalistic view of government compared to western europeans and in particular Americans. So political parties who support a paternalistic government are heavily incentivized to increase immigration to gain voting power over their political rivals. It's basic math.
That's the type of comment people make when they don't want to understand what the others side's actual views are, so instead they tell themselves a simple story they can believe rather than engage with the actual reason.
Both sides do it, but that's a prime example of one of the popular ones from one side.
It's Occam's Razor. In particular, nothing else explains why immigration became such a major issue for left-leaning parties around the western world only in the last 15 years: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/694804917/democrats-used-to-t.... As it became apparent that immigrants were a deep well of votes for people who wanted to expand the welfare state, immigration--which the left traditionally had viewed through the lens of economics and labor markets--became reframed as a civil rights and moral issue.
But the people in for example the Biden administration didn't consider themselves authoritarian or particularly paternalistic. They saw themselves as in a fight against structural oppression.
Although I agree with you that non-white immigration has had the effect of making the electorate more paternalistic, my guess is that most on the Left would be disappointed to learn that.
The pro-immigrant Left must believe that the immigration helps in the fight against oppression somehow or that it helps the immigrants while not harming the US. I think particularly that they reject (as racist) any suggestion that non-white immigration might harm or diminish the US in any substantial or lasting way.
Some of the comment on HN over the years claim that immigration is essential to keep the US from collapsing (although I don't know whether that view has any influence among Washington decisionmakers). If someone believes that US whites got most of their wealth and privileges by extracting labor from non-whites, then it starts to make sense to believe that the US economy is structurally dependent on exploitation and consequently needs a steady stream of non-white immigrants to extract labor from. (Maybe for example he believes that the children of immigrants are less exploitable than their parents because for example going to college in the US insulates a person from most forms of oppression.)
You raise some interesting points. I have a hard time figuring out what liberal Americans think immigrants think. One thing that jumps out to me is that "Biden administration" types (that is, liberal educated white people) are very isolated from the immigrant voting blocs on which they depend. Their interactions with those groups are mediated through minority proxies that travel in the same socioeconomic circles as themselves. When they think of Bangladeshis, they think of someone like me they met in grad school, not the hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis living in ethnic enclaves in New York or Detroit. And even as to me, they have little basis to understand how differently I think of the world, much less my mom, much less my cousins who came here on family reunification.
Buries the fucking lede by putting this at the end
> Relative to the total population, the share of immigrants in 2024 was approximately the same as in 1890. If we only look at the last few decades, we miss this historical perspective — there have been periods where immigrants made up a similarly large share of the country.
No, because the "United States" is the name of a country--a man-made entity--not just a label for an outline on a map. That country was made by a specific group of people, who brought over their language, culture, laws, and political philosophy. Those people were settlers and founders. The people who came into that pre-existing society are immigrants.
I'm a Bangladeshi immigrant married to an Anglo-American. Almost everything about America reflects her culture, not mine. At home, we speak the language her ancestors spoke, not mine. We're both lawyers. We deal with concepts her ancestors developed over the past 800 years, not mine. Our kids grow up learning things like individualism, which is a concept her ancestors developed, not mine. She's descended from settlers, whereas I'm an immigrant. It's like the Last Samurai, where Tom Cruise's character settles down with the Japanese woman. He's an immigrant, but she's not an immigrant--even though technically Yamato people came to Japan from the Korean peninsula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_people.
In fact it's even starker because the United States borrows almost nothing from the Indian nations that existed on the land before it, while the Jomon people had a much larger influence on present-day Japan.
The US inherited corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, chillies, and tobacco from the native population.
Given the amount of these foodstuffs that are produced today, Native Americans are probably more important to modern US culture than most European immigrant nations.
Mexican culture is more visibly influenced by its native ancestors, so via Mexicans and “Hispanics” the US also has a strong connection.
Law is a domain that has very few native-inspired aspects, probably because it traces its roots to England and the old Saxon and French traditions, but your domain is a bit special there.
One might argue that the legal system, as it was brought by the conquerors, naturally has little representation of the conquered.
Afaik anthropology as a field tends to differ: Food is a strong marker of cultural adhesion and identity. Jewish, Muslim and Brahmin food traditions may serve as an example here.
Though this is beside the point. I wanted to point out strong Native American contributions to what one would consider the modern US American identity.
The culture iceberg an illustration of a basic anthropology concept. My daughter is doing a unit about it in middle school.
The point is that most of culture lies beneath the surface and food is a very superficial indicator of it. Eating corn doesn’t mean you share anything really meaningful with Native Americans. My wife grew up eating Japanese food because her dad is a Japanophile. But she’s not meaningfully culturally Japanese in any way.
The content of this article doesn’t show what the title says.
Neither the foreign-born population nor the proportion of foreign-born individuals say anything about the “current immigration”.
But I guess it works, because nowhere is “immigration” defined either…
Takeaway:
>If we look at the number of foreign-born residents, the 2024 estimate was the highest in the Census Bureau’s series, which stretches back to 1850. So, on that measure, the 2024 figure was unprecedented.
Inclusive of legal/illegal.
Illegal immigration didn't really exist in 1850, nor even a meaningful Federal immigration policy beyond Congress statutorily setting the number of years of residency required to apply for citizenship, and of course limiting it to whites. The borders were open; border checkpoints and ports of entry were years away. People came, worked, and after several years applied for citizenship at the local state court house, attesting to the number of years they'd been here.
Federal immigration policy didn't really get going until the 1870s (notwithstanding some toothless laws passed in the 1860s), and IIRC it wasn't until the 1880s that the Federal government created ports of entry to process immigrants, including creating a system to reject immigrants.
I mention this because I think the ~20 year time lag between the first wave of large scale immigration and immigration becoming a major political issue, including the rise of anti-immigration sentiments and policies, is notable. Not necessarily for anything specific, just that it's interesting how history rhymes.
Why is immigration high?
I expect the answer has to do wit higher populations, easier transport, increased knowledge of emmigration opportunities via presence of the Internet, climate change, and globalization.
?
At bottom, it's politics. Most people in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have a top-down, paternalistic view of government compared to western europeans and in particular Americans. So political parties who support a paternalistic government are heavily incentivized to increase immigration to gain voting power over their political rivals. It's basic math.
That's the type of comment people make when they don't want to understand what the others side's actual views are, so instead they tell themselves a simple story they can believe rather than engage with the actual reason.
Both sides do it, but that's a prime example of one of the popular ones from one side.
It's Occam's Razor. In particular, nothing else explains why immigration became such a major issue for left-leaning parties around the western world only in the last 15 years: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/694804917/democrats-used-to-t.... As it became apparent that immigrants were a deep well of votes for people who wanted to expand the welfare state, immigration--which the left traditionally had viewed through the lens of economics and labor markets--became reframed as a civil rights and moral issue.
But if the dominant immigration flows to the U.S. were like Cubans in Florida (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2026/8/14/the-party-...), I strongly suspect we would be talking about how wealthy Republicans favor immigrants for cheap labor.
But the people in for example the Biden administration didn't consider themselves authoritarian or particularly paternalistic. They saw themselves as in a fight against structural oppression.
Although I agree with you that non-white immigration has had the effect of making the electorate more paternalistic, my guess is that most on the Left would be disappointed to learn that.
The pro-immigrant Left must believe that the immigration helps in the fight against oppression somehow or that it helps the immigrants while not harming the US. I think particularly that they reject (as racist) any suggestion that non-white immigration might harm or diminish the US in any substantial or lasting way.
Some of the comment on HN over the years claim that immigration is essential to keep the US from collapsing (although I don't know whether that view has any influence among Washington decisionmakers). If someone believes that US whites got most of their wealth and privileges by extracting labor from non-whites, then it starts to make sense to believe that the US economy is structurally dependent on exploitation and consequently needs a steady stream of non-white immigrants to extract labor from. (Maybe for example he believes that the children of immigrants are less exploitable than their parents because for example going to college in the US insulates a person from most forms of oppression.)
You raise some interesting points. I have a hard time figuring out what liberal Americans think immigrants think. One thing that jumps out to me is that "Biden administration" types (that is, liberal educated white people) are very isolated from the immigrant voting blocs on which they depend. Their interactions with those groups are mediated through minority proxies that travel in the same socioeconomic circles as themselves. When they think of Bangladeshis, they think of someone like me they met in grad school, not the hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis living in ethnic enclaves in New York or Detroit. And even as to me, they have little basis to understand how differently I think of the world, much less my mom, much less my cousins who came here on family reunification.
Buries the fucking lede by putting this at the end
> Relative to the total population, the share of immigrants in 2024 was approximately the same as in 1890. If we only look at the last few decades, we miss this historical perspective — there have been periods where immigrants made up a similarly large share of the country.
Kind of. No one was alive in 1890 to compare to. Going from 6% foreign born in 1970 to 15% today is a huge change for a lot of voting-age Americans.
- arent native americans the only real american?
- isnt everyone else just an immigrant?
No, because the "United States" is the name of a country--a man-made entity--not just a label for an outline on a map. That country was made by a specific group of people, who brought over their language, culture, laws, and political philosophy. Those people were settlers and founders. The people who came into that pre-existing society are immigrants.
I'm a Bangladeshi immigrant married to an Anglo-American. Almost everything about America reflects her culture, not mine. At home, we speak the language her ancestors spoke, not mine. We're both lawyers. We deal with concepts her ancestors developed over the past 800 years, not mine. Our kids grow up learning things like individualism, which is a concept her ancestors developed, not mine. She's descended from settlers, whereas I'm an immigrant. It's like the Last Samurai, where Tom Cruise's character settles down with the Japanese woman. He's an immigrant, but she's not an immigrant--even though technically Yamato people came to Japan from the Korean peninsula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_people.
In fact it's even starker because the United States borrows almost nothing from the Indian nations that existed on the land before it, while the Jomon people had a much larger influence on present-day Japan.
The US inherited corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, chillies, and tobacco from the native population.
Given the amount of these foodstuffs that are produced today, Native Americans are probably more important to modern US culture than most European immigrant nations.
Mexican culture is more visibly influenced by its native ancestors, so via Mexicans and “Hispanics” the US also has a strong connection.
Law is a domain that has very few native-inspired aspects, probably because it traces its roots to England and the old Saxon and French traditions, but your domain is a bit special there.
One might argue that the legal system, as it was brought by the conquerors, naturally has little representation of the conquered.
Food is a very superficial aspect of society: https://bettymingliu.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/iceberg....
I do not know “the inner child university”.
Afaik anthropology as a field tends to differ: Food is a strong marker of cultural adhesion and identity. Jewish, Muslim and Brahmin food traditions may serve as an example here.
Though this is beside the point. I wanted to point out strong Native American contributions to what one would consider the modern US American identity.
The culture iceberg an illustration of a basic anthropology concept. My daughter is doing a unit about it in middle school.
The point is that most of culture lies beneath the surface and food is a very superficial indicator of it. Eating corn doesn’t mean you share anything really meaningful with Native Americans. My wife grew up eating Japanese food because her dad is a Japanophile. But she’s not meaningfully culturally Japanese in any way.
>The US inherited corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, chillies, and tobacco from the native population.
You have almost all of that e.g. in Europe and nobody associates it with native Americans.
[dead]
No, many people people are born in the usa, having never lived elsewhere.
The definition of native is "Being such by birth or origin.". This means that everybody born in the US are native Americans.