AHC/WI: Maximize immigration to UK, minimize immigration to US?

Right as the agricultural revolution gave way to the industrial revolution, a great deal of factors allowed America to become one of the highest population importers in the world. Britain, now able to support a higher population also managed to become host to a wide degree of immigration, but significantly less so than the U.S.

Your challenge is to create an environment politically and economically in which the historical immigration to the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries is successfully transferred to an alternate Britain, making Great Britain a melting pot and keeping the U.S. population from expanding from immigration as in OTL. This includes Irish, German, Italian, etc.

Also, if sustainable, what effect would this have on the economy, culture, industry, politics, etc. of the U.K.?

And of the U.S.?

Thanks.

Balkanize the US and have the various states in a near constant state of war so it's not attractive? Maybe have xenophobes such as the know-nothings gain more influence?

You could have less immigration to the U.S., but how much more could you bring to the UK when it's already incredibly crowded IOTL? England in particular has an extremely high population density.

I think a country like Canada, Brazil, Argentina or Australia would be a better alternative.

funnyhat said:

You could have less immigration to the U.S., but how much more could you bring to the UK when it's already incredibly crowded IOTL? England in particular has an extremely high population density.

I think a country like Canada, Brazil, Argentina or Australia would be a better alternative.

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I never understood this part of British history.

It always seemed to me that, yes, urban areas were historically overcrowded, but there was also plenty of open countryside (still is, I believe) and plenty of room for residential buildings to grow 'up' as opposed to 'out' in places where the ground can handle skyscrapers.*

If America is anti-immigration and Britain is somehow very for it, surely there would be room for new towns, rural settlements, and taller cities to accommodate.

Or am I wrong?

*Granted, I realize there are fewer good foundations geologically than in the U.S. I remember reading somewhere that London is on far worse ground for skyscrapers than, say, the granite(?) of Manhattan. Still, it's a big island. There has to be some place where large vertical cities can develop.

I think you are overlooking that Britain has been a pretty big immigrant destination over the past 150 years. Even as it was sending emigrants to settle elsewhere, it was taking in very large numbers of immigrants from Ireland, and later from its former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia (and now also from Eastern Europe).

Britain is about as "wanked-out" as it can be. In 1800 it had 10 million people; now it has about 64 million. That's a crazy level of population growth for a long-established country whose geographical borders didn't change, and it occurred even as the country lost several million emigrants to various colonies and other places. It's pretty hard to get it to grow even more than that.

Most US population growth has not been due to immigration. In the 18th century, the US had barely any immigration, and yet population grew from 250,000 to 5 million. It was almost entirely about natural growth: the US had a surplus of land relative to European farming practices, so it had very low mortality rates even before Europe's demographic transition.

England had a lot of immigration in the 19th century, too. Less than the US, but more than, say, Germany. The biggest source of migration was internal to the UK, from Ireland, and there was no population explosion that would drop the population's ethnic profile to only 20% Anglo-Saxon as in the US, but there was immigration.

More fundamentally, it's really hard to raise Britain's population any further in an alt history. Despite industrializing early, it did not have as high wages as North America, or Australia, or the Netherlands. Since the late 19th century it's had very high population density; today the right-wing rags are demagoguing about how England has higher population density than any EU member state (except Malta, which they neglect because they're rags), even the Netherlands. This involves large food imports, unlike the Netherlands, which has about zero net food imports because of its high agricultural fertility.

If you're trying to wank Britain to have something like 70 or 80 or even 90 million people instead of OTL's 60 then it's possible - have it take in more postwar South Asian immigrants for a start - but you're not going to get any higher than that. The only way to maintain such a massive population density gradient with the rest of Europe would be to maintain a massive productivity gradient, and that's inherently unstable, because a) it would lead to anti-immigration sentiment (as happened in the US and as happened in Europe once the nonwhites from the colonies started coming), and b) it would require a good explanation for why the rest of Europe never caught up to British productivity.

And bear in mind that OTL's 19th century was basically a massive Britain-wank and a France-screw. If you mess with your POD too much you might end up butterflying France's uniquely early fertility rate decline, and then France would grow at the same rate as Britain or Germany or the Low Countries or Italy, which would put its present-day population somewhere around 150 million, give or take.

The Admiral Hook said:

I never understood this part of British history.

It always seemed to me that, yes, urban areas were historically overcrowded, but there was also plenty of open countryside (still is, I believe) and plenty of room for residential buildings to grow 'up' as opposed to 'out' in places where the ground can handle skyscrapers.*

If America is anti-immigration and Britain is somehow very for it, surely there would be room for new towns, rural settlements, and taller cities to accommodate.

Or am I wrong?

*Granted, I realize there are fewer good foundations geologically than in the U.S. I remember reading somewhere that London is on far worse ground for skyscrapers than, say, the granite(?) of Manhattan. Still, it's a big island. There has to be some place where large vertical cities can develop.

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It depends on what period you're talking about. Before the Second World War, the main issue simply was that the economic opportunity wasn't particularly large relative to newly settled countries like the US, Canada, Australia, or Africa.

Post-war very tough restrictions were made on city expansion (the green belt laws) preventing urban sprawl. The English feel their green countryside is something that defines them as a country, and don't feel very keen on building over it. There have been additional movements that go against this (the new town push, and now a current one on garden cities), but they are operating in a difficult context. In addition, our cities are low density because we also value our gardens ("an Englishman's home is his castle"), and there are line of sight laws protecting historic views (e.g. for St Paul's for big parts of London) which prevent building high. Also we have a long history of local democracy, which means planning permission is done at a local level, via councillors that could easily get kicked out of office if they put a big tower block in your street.

And in the UK new settlers can't just displace "redskin savages" to acquire land...

Alon said:

Most US population growth has not been due to immigration. In the 18th century, the US had barely any immigration, and yet population grew from 250,000 to 5 million. It was almost entirely about natural growth: the US had a surplus of land relative to European farming practices, so it had very low mortality rates even before Europe's demographic transition.

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You must be joking !

What about the scotch-irishmen ? What about the germans ? What about the slaves ?

There were hundreds of thousands of migrants that came to the 13 colonies in the 18th century.

No population can multiply by 20 in a century just by natural growth.

Matteo said:

You must be joking !

What about the scotch-irishmen ? What about the germans ? What about the slaves ?

There were hundreds of thousands of migrants that came to the 13 colonies in the 18th century.

No population can multiply by 20 in a century just by natural growth.

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What about the Scotch-Irish and the Germans? Well, they didn't come to New England, and yet New England and the areas settled from it underwent population explosion. The slaves were different of course, but they were never more than 20% of the national population - their high immigration rates were balanced by very high death rates, to the point that the Founding Fathers thought that if the slave trade were banned, the slaves already present in the US would die out in a few decades and end America's black people problem forever.

Populations can, in fact, multiply by 20 in a century by natural growth. Colonial North America's fertility rate was about 7, marriage happened earlier than in Europe, and life expectancy was much higher than in Europe so more than 2 of those 7 children survived to adulthood.

See PDF-p. 91 of this study, about US growth in the 19th century. Until 1840, immigration wasn't much more than 10% of US population growth, and in no decade until the 1970s was it more than one third of population growth. The rate of population growth in the 1790s and 1800s, with barely any immigration, would have been sufficient for 20-fold population growth in a century. This didn't quite happen in the 19th century, despite higher immigration, but only because (as noted in the text of the study and on PDF-p. 94) fertility rates declined sharply in that century, from 7 to 3.5.

Simple, have America remain a UK colony/client-state.

That way, it's technically not immigration to an independent US, but rather emigration to a UK colony.

Alon said:

What about the Scotch-Irish and the Germans? Well, they didn't come to New England, and yet New England and the areas settled from it underwent population explosion. The slaves were different of course, but they were never more than 20% of the national population - their high immigration rates were balanced by very high death rates, to the point that the Founding Fathers thought that if the slave trade were banned, the slaves already present in the US would die out in a few decades and end America's black people problem forever.

Populations can, in fact, multiply by 20 in a century by natural growth. Colonial North America's fertility rate was about 7, marriage happened earlier than in Europe, and life expectancy was much higher than in Europe so more than 2 of those 7 children survived to adulthood.

See PDF-p. 91 of this study, about US growth in the 19th century. Until 1840, immigration wasn't much more than 10% of US population growth, and in no decade until the 1970s was it more than one third of population growth. The rate of population growth in the 1790s and 1800s, with barely any immigration, would have been sufficient for 20-fold population growth in a century. This didn't quite happen in the 19th century, despite higher immigration, but only because (as noted in the text of the study and on PDF-p. 94) fertility rates declined sharply in that century, from 7 to 3.5.

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I have not read the document yet. But ad John Mac Enroe said many times : you can not be serious ! ;-)

Natality and fertility can't be considered alone. You have to take mortality, especially child mortality, into account.

And you must also take into account the fact that migrants make children too.

Matteo said:

I have not read the document yet. But ad John Mac Enroe said many times : you can not be serious ! ;-)

Natality and fertility can't be considered alone. You have to take mortality, especially child mortality, into account.

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Then read it first, and then tell me what is or is not possible.

Yes, child mortality is important. And it was very low in colonial America - more like 19c Europe than like preindustrial Europe. Go back to the table I referenced and look at the natural growth rate of early-19c America.

Sorry. 100 pages is a bit too long for me tonight.

The fact is that hundreds of thousands of migrants came to the 13 colonies in the 18th century.

There were around 250,000 people in these territories in 1700.

In this century, there came around 500,000 migrants from the british islands. There also came many settlers from german territories. And there came several hundreds of thousands slaves from Africa. That's basically close to 1 million migrants.

I don't mean natural growth was not decisive. It really was and was more important than immigration in the demographic growth.
But immigration to the future US has always been important, except during the american revolutionary war when immigration almost halted.

It gave a real boost.

Matteo said:

Sorry. 100 pages is a bit too long for me tonight.

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Then read the page references.

The fact is that hundreds of thousands of migrants came to the 13 colonies in the 18th century.

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Not all 13! New England received very little immigration after the English Civil War, and still doubled its population every 20-25 years, until net emigration to other states did it in. See some data on PDF-p. 16 here. The Germans were in Pennsylvania, not New England. The Scotch-Irish immigrants were mainly in the South, where death rates were higher, requiring some immigration to maintain 3% annual population growth. The black slaves had very high death rates as well, and the North had very few of them anyway.