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Comment by Taniwha | Hacker News Reader

For New Zealand it's 25%, Australia 22%, the UK 14%, France 9%, Germany 12%, Canada 22%, the Netherlands 19%

Frankly 15% is about average for Western Countries

I think talking about averages is somewhat misleading. There has been a steep upward trend in the US and Europe. In the 1960s we'd be talking about less than 5% for the US and Europe so that is a big change. It's fair to say that there have been major policy changes over the past 50 years but it's misleading -- I'm not accusing you, just pointing out -- to say it's an average because that implies a steady state.

I don't think USA/EU is at 15% yet. Europe trends just a little less than the USA (at least from 2016). I was just skimming this article today (below). I may have misinterpreted it so feel free to set the record straight. See Fig 1.

Peri, G. 2016. Immigrants, Productivity, and Labor Markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(4): 3–30.

Canada and Australia have had very high rates for a long time. Australia's is higher though. I'm not sure why Peri chose to combine the series because they are quite different but higher than the US.

The AU/NZ (and Canada too I suppose) cases are interesting because they all have very overheated housing markets and prices are historically high relative to average wages. The USA went through a market correction and let the housing bubble burst but these markets did not. I've heard it argued that increased immigration to major housing markets is considered to be one way to keep the construction industry and house/rent prices sustainable. I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts or insight into this.

Maybe "average" was the wrong word, perhaps "unremarkable" is a better one.

Before Trump the US was proud to describe itself as a nation of immigrants (I was one for 20 years) but Americans have this myth that they take in far more immigrants than anywhere else, it's just not true

Well it does a pretty remarkable job. Recall too that the stats are foreign born as a percentage of the population (Peri, 2016 that I mentioned above).

The USA is larger than all Canada, Australia, UK and NZ combined. So, let's not pretend that the US is not taking new comers at all. We're still in the ballpark of close to 50 million people. This compares to about 7 million in Canada.

I think that percentage gives a reasonable job of looking at the impact that immigrants have on the existing system - NZ takes in far fewer immigrants than the US, but compared with their population they're taking more and would be expected to have a larger impact on society (NZ has lower taxes that the US)

If you look at countries sorted by population [0] - and my justification for that is that communities don't scale up linearly - the US, Germany, Turkey and the UK are clear outliers.

And Australia isn't necessarily a target; Australia is basically importing a new population every century - ignoring natural population growth. That sort of growth requires a bit of thinking to justify; it isn't going to be for everyone. And if it is even achievable off a high starting population (without overwhelming infrastructure, etc) is questionable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...

> France 9%

These numbers don't reflect the complex reality in France. Most of the population descends from immigration (although only 9% directly from their parents).

It's very rare especially in big cities to meet people with only "French" origins (except in the bourgeoisie). And even those "French" origins are ethnically/culturally varied (bretagne/ch'nord/occitanie/martinique/corse...) even though many people from these places will tell you they've been colonized by France and they want to get rid of the imperialist invader.

What i just said is probably true of other countries. I just know more about France.

In the US everyone except for the native Americans are descended from immigrants .... something in the range of 99% - here in NZ it's more like 80%

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