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Notes -
Matt Yglesias posted on X an argument in favor of immigration (having trouble finding it now). The argument was basically “you like lasagna right? Well if we didn’t allow Italians to immigrate no lasagna. And now Italians are pretty indistinguishable from other Americans so clearly that will be the case with others such as Somalians. Think of the future lasagna equivalent you’d get with no cost since the immigrants will assimilate.”
Leave aside the HBD argument. It seems to me that one Matt and those who make this argument miss is the massively different technology that exists today that didn’t exist in yesteryear. If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
It is likely harder to assimilate in the modern world where immigrant populations are not cut off as opposed to the old world. So pointing to historic examples of assimilation do not hold for today because the factors have changed. Now maybe you still think there will be assimilation for different reasons. But you need to make that argument. Comparing like and unlike however cannot be your argument.
I don’t think this is some kind of groundbreaking point but why would presumably smart people like Yglesias make such a sloppy argument? Maybe they aren’t smart. Maybe they don’t encounter enough arguments to the contrary. Or maybe they are propagandists. I can’t help but think repeating a catechism has value to building political unity even (perhaps especially if) it’s fake.
This is exactly right. During the early 1900s the fertility rate of the population in USA was around 3.5 children per woman. At the same time there were around 13.5 million immigrants living in the USA out of the population of 92 million, so approximately 14%. The birth rate was over 30 per 1,000 population or around 2,7 million a year. So the total population of immigrants in USA after spurt in late 1800s and early 1900s was equivalent of 5 years of births. And even then it stretched the resources eventually leading to Immigration Act of 1924 limiting the immigration, the 1910 was actually the peak year of immigration share which fell down to 5% in 1970. In 2025 the total population of immigrants is around 50 million - or around 16% out of 340 million - with 3,6 million births in 2024. So we are talking about 14 years of natural births in the nation.
Additionally early 20th century was magical for USA as it was the era of birth of mass media especially radio and television at the tail end of successfully finishing the Manifest Destiny project. Also US won two world wars and the nation swam in prestige and patriotic fervor, which massively helped with US ethnogenesis as we see it now. I'd say that capacity of the nation to accept immigration is regulated by proportion of immigrants compared to natural replacement of domestic people paired with the ability to project cultural dominance and assimilate these foreign immigrants. The interesting thing about progressive policies is that they are actively working against both, but definitely against the assimilation with their multi-culti salad bowl ideology.
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