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Its interesting that earnings and inequality worsen around 1965/1970, which is also the year that immigration into the USA began a rapid increase: https://www.

Its interesting that earnings and inequality worsen around 1965/1970, which is also the year that immigration into the USA began a rapid increase: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm... At the same time as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which essentially opened up immigration to anyone in the world instead of just people from North Western Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

elliekelly 5y ago
Given that immigrants who aren’t from north western Europe are often subject to discrimination and treated as second-class citizens it should come as little surprise that inequality increased as immigrants became more diverse.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
The chart you linked to doesn't support your own point. Immigrants as a percentage of population is no higher after the rise in absolute number of immigrants shown there. In fact for the first few years there, it's signifcantly lower. What I get from that chart is that as a proportion of the population immigration has been relatively constant except for the baby boom period, where local demographics were briefly enough to supply the labour force. As for your second link, I have no idea what you're trying to get at, but it frankly sounds a bit racist. Given that for the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century immigrants could basically get off a boat in New York and enter the US or Canada without much restriction and get citizenship quite easily compared to now, this is beyond silly. Literal boatloads of eastern Europeans and Italians (not "north western Europe") arrived in the first part of the 20th century. And built the backbone of the US and Canadian economies in that period. Finally, northwestern Europeans stopped wanting to _come_ to North America after the early 60s. There was no need for them to emmigrate. My own father's economic fortunes would have been far better off if he'd just stayed in Germany.

elliekelly 5y ago

Given that immigrants who aren’t from north western Europe are often subject to discrimination and treated as second-class citizens it should come as little surprise that inequality increased as immigrants became more diverse.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

The chart you linked to doesn't support your own point. Immigrants as a percentage of population is no higher after the rise in absolute number of immigrants shown there. In fact for the first few years there, it's signifcantly lower. What I get from that chart is that as a proportion of the population immigration has been relatively constant except for the baby boom period, where local demographics were briefly enough to supply the labour force. As for your second link, I have no idea what you're trying to get at, but it frankly sounds a bit racist. Given that for the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century immigrants could basically get off a boat in New York and enter the US or Canada without much restriction and get citizenship quite easily compared to now, this is beyond silly. Literal boatloads of eastern Europeans and Italians (not "north western Europe") arrived in the first part of the 20th century. And built the backbone of the US and Canadian economies in that period. Finally, northwestern Europeans stopped wanting to _come_ to North America after the early 60s. There was no need for them to emmigrate. My own father's economic fortunes would have been far better off if he'd just stayed in Germany.