Many people overestimate the percentage of immigrants in their country | Hacker News Reader

Many people overestimate the percentage of immigrants in their country

ourworldindata.org

17 pointstherabbithole14 comments

Is it also because people count citizens of foreign origin as immigrants too?

Go to somewhere like Bradford or Birmingham in the UK, I'm sure vast majority of people there are born in Britain, yet some people would call all of them "immigrants" regardless.

People think 33% of US are immigrants? To me even the 15% seems high. I would have guessed less.

I believe the problem lies in clustering and assimilation. In some areas of the USA, the immigrant population exceeds 30-40%, and these tend to be the loudest voices.

Small towns are hit the hardest, but even large cities are not immune to sudden, rapid population fluctuations and the strain this puts on local resources (just look at New York).

The history of the Irish in the United States serves as an excellent example. Driven by the Potato Famine, they poured into the US in massive numbers. When too many people from unrelated cultures arrive too quickly, conflict becomes inevitable.

Add 10 to 20 million people over a four-year period, and you have a perfect storm for conflict.

I think this heavily depends on what people perceive as immigrants. If they considered every non white person to be an immigrant, even if their families have been here for generations, then it would approach 33%.

If you consider 1st and 2nd generation immigrants since most 2nd generation immigrants can speak their parent language and share some culture, these numbers usually get close to 30% in the US. People are not far off.

On a related note people tend to massively overestimate the global "white" population. People do the same, put it at 25%-50% when it's only about 7%-10%.

This chart isn't broken down by ethnicity but it will do in a pinch. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-7-5-billion-people-c...

I generally see one black person per month, but according to internet trolls, my country is flooded with Africans.

1) IMHO, people use quantifiers like majority, mostly, rarely, etc not because its the absolute truth, but because its their subjective PoV

2) Dont trust everything you read on the internet. A lot of it is skewed by personal biases.

Just out of curiosity, where do you live?

Must be a lot of light skinned South African, Algerian and Namibian immigrants then /s

I suspect why this is overestimated has a lot to do with media treatment. Different people than you moving in is scary to people, scary things get engagement, engagement gets eyeballs in front of ads. I don't know how to measure this though because this model is so ubiquitous, where would you find a control?

They’re probably concentrated in your capital’s ethnic enclaves.

Both are true. A lot of those posts you think are from internet trolls are actually real concerns, mostly from poor people, whose neighborhoods the immigrants were sent to, and it's they who are feeling the costs of that.

But who cares what poor people think though, right? lol

They're Russian troll farms. If you go on their profile, that's all they do. Post about immigrants, how the EU is turning people gay, and how Trump will save the world. It's quite simple to tell them. Like who the hell posts 2000 political memes on their profile without taking about anything else. It's so obvious

Of course, that’s how fear mongering works.

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