How high is current immigration to the United States in historical perspective?

How high is current immigration to the United States in historical perspective?ourworldindata.org

We use long-run census data to understand the scale of recent US migration trends, and how these compare to previous centuries.

30 points•xnx•9 days ago•20 comments•

#immigration #states #united #high #current #perspective #historical #current immigration

20 comments

purplepatrick9 days ago

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…

quaddoggy9 days ago

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.

wahern9 days ago

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.

ncr1009 days ago

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.

rayiner9 days ago

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.

BoiledCabbage9 days ago

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.

hollerith8 days ago

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.)

ChiperSoft9 days ago

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.

xnx8 days ago

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.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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