What if ASB mind-control prevented immigration quota laws of the 1920s?

[raharris1973]

I am invoking the interference of Alien Space Bats, exercising mind-control over American politicians in Congress, because I do not see a simple, plausible way to prevent the tide of American opinion from turning at the end of WWI to favor a very restrictive immigration policy, especially towards the "new immigration" from Southern and Eastern Europe. Any change I could think of would mess too much with all other aspects of early 20th century history, and I'm interesting in looking at this as a prime cause, rather than debating how to make it happen, so, I say it happens by ASB mind-control magic.

This means no emergency quota act of 1921, and no national origins quota act of 1924. The US remains as open after WWI and through the 1920s and beyond to European immigrants as it was in the decades before WWI.

With this one change, what are the demographic, economic, cultural, and political effects on the United States and Europe.

What numbers should we expecting over the course of generally prosperous years in the 1920s to migrate from different parts of Europe to America? In the immediate pre-1914 years, the numbers were above 1 million per year.
Would it stay at or above that rate through all non-recession/non-depression years?

How will the U.S. economy be affected? Will the switch from majority rural to majority urban, which happened during the decade, be even faster? Will It affect Congressional reapportionment after the 1930 census?

How much will the departure of young Europeans looking for better work prospects in America in larger numbers be a drain to southern and Eastern European communities, cities and industry, versus a release valve for potential troublemakers and source for remittances?

By 1928 in OTL, only one state was majority Catholic (Rhode Island) although many northeastern ones had very high Catholic populations, will any more tip over by 1928 in this TL?

By that year how many new arrivals, unrestricted by the quota, especially non-Protestants like Catholics, Jews, Eastern Orthodox and the occasional Balkan Muslim, would have become naturalized?

Do the effects in either North America, or Europe, of assumed continued mass migration work at cross purposes with the trends that in OTL led to the Great Depression, delaying it? Or could they somehow accelerate the coming of a Great Depression.

I tend to assume a Great Depression would slow down trans-Atlantic migration because of the drying up of job prospects and a reversal of the 'streets of gold' narrative rumor mill. Would you agree?

Supposing the Great Depression comes on time, and that limits immigration, followed by the rise of political extremism and conflict similar to OTL. If we get to WWII, what countries' military manpower and workforces will be reduced because of the migration? Could we put a figure on how many 100s of thousands, or millions, or European civilians or potential draftees, especially in eastern or Southern Europe, who would have "gotten out of dodge" before WWII?

 

[Atarlost]

Unrestricted immigration is really bad. It depresses wage which makes the trade unionists really angry and it frightens the cultural conservatives.

An ASB making elected officials unresponsive to their constituents is also really bad. It destroys confidence in representative government.

This is how you get American Fascism. You don't want American Fascism. Immigrants don't stop coming because of the Great Depression. They stop coming because they don't want to be lynched.

 

[raharris1973]

Unrestricted immigration is really bad. It depresses wage which makes the trade unionists really angry and it frightens the cultural conservatives.

An ASB making elected officials unresponsive to their constituents is also really bad. It destroys confidence in representative government.

This is how you get American Fascism. You don't want American Fascism. Immigrants don't stop coming because of the Great Depression. They stop coming because they don't want to be lynched.

So you figure that two to four years of politicians being unresponsive to public opinion on the immigration issue will cause instability? Maybe the Republican administration and Congress, hamstrung by the ASB spell, never passes restrictions in ‘21, so the Democrats ride resentment with a Klan backed Congressional slate and Presidential candidate to victory in ‘24.

But then the ASB spell stops those politicians from keeping any promises on restrictive laws. So by 1926 or 1928 all faith in democracy is lost and there’s support for a dictatorial coup.

In the meantime, after several years of no desired legislation being passed, mob actions and lynchings against immigrants escalate and those become the principal deterrent to migration.

Of course that violence is not 100% one sided. Isolated immigrants are vulnerable, but urban ethnic enclaves can fend off nativist attacks.

The violence messes with assimilation processes in areas where it occurs.

 

[Buba]

Top of mind effect - the USA is whiter than OTL?
If c.10M Europeans come over in the 1920s this pushes down the percentage of blacks by a percent or two? Or would any longer term changes in the racial composition be driven by birthrates anyway?
On a regional scale - the north is whiter, with a smaller 2nd Great Migration?

 

[Atarlost]

So you figure that two to four years of politicians being unresponsive to public opinion on the immigration issue will cause instability? Maybe the Republican administration and Congress, hamstrung by the ASB spell, never passes restrictions in ‘21, so the Democrats ride resentment with a Klan backed Congressional slate and Presidential candidate to victory in ‘24.

But then the ASB spell stops those politicians from keeping any promises on restrictive laws. So by 1926 or 1928 all faith in democracy is lost and there’s support for a dictatorial coup.

In the meantime, after several years of no desired legislation being passed, mob actions and lynchings against immigrants escalate and those become the principal deterrent to migration.

Of course that violence is not 100% one sided. Isolated immigrants are vulnerable, but urban ethnic enclaves can fend off nativist attacks.

The violence messes with assimilation processes in areas where it occurs.

That's about the shape of it except about urban ethnic enclaves fending off attacks. The key adjective here is 'urban'. If people refuse to sell them food they have a big problem. Probably some of the Irish and Italians can pass for WASPs, but if they're trying to shop for their whole community they're going to be either identified as foreign or targeted as race traitors if they aren't.

If there are any rural enclaves they're probably safe, but I think most of those are not recent and are northern european Protestants. The other safe place is a company town where the company wants cheap immigrant labor and the local elections are already as crooked as can be before ASB takes a hand.

 

[raharris1973]

Top of mind effect - the USA is whiter than OTL?
If c.10M Europeans come over in the 1920s this pushes down the percentage of blacks by a percent or two? Or would any longer term changes in the racial composition be driven by birthrates anyway?
On a regional scale - the north is whiter, with a smaller 2nd Great Migration?

Agreed. It should have that regional effect of "whitening" the urban areas of northeastern and midwestern inner cities and urban areas for the rest of the twentieth century.

There would still be some notable black neighborhoods in the north. Harlem was 1/3 black already by 1920, and the Harlem was considered to have started by then. It was 70% black by 1930. It might not reach that proportion by that point, but here's a 1925 article referring to it as the black capital of the world. Wayback Machine

However, the overall great migration is probably reduced with less labor-recruiting by less labor-starved northern industry, and simply greater proportions of white "ethnics" assimilating into generic whiteness by the end of the 20th century. I don't know if the reductions of the great migration, which also involved white southerners, are enough to allow any deep southern states that had black majorities for several decades, like Mississippi or South Carolina, to keep those majorities.

 

[WolfBear]

You could easily see something in the range of 500-750 thousand additional European Jews, primarily from Eastern Europe, immigrate to the US in the 1920s in this TL. AFAIK, the number of Polish Jews who came to the US in 1921 was almost 75,000, but this number subsequently massively decreased due to the imposition of immigration quotas.