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I notice, besides the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand differ somewhat in its composition of newer immigrants.
It seems like some, but not all, of the differences are due to simply geography and proximity. For instance, the United States has had more immigration from Mexico (even though net migration between the countries has evened out now) and Latin America due to geography, than other Anglophone nations, thus Spanish-speaking immigrants shape people's view of what a typical immigrant is in many places in the US. Even in places far from the border, bilingual signs are in Spanish and English. Australia and New Zealand have many Asian immigrants, which again makes sense due to geography as they are closer to the Asia-Pacific area. The UK has EU immigrants due to geography too.
Another main reason why certain immigrants seem to come to more of some Anglo nations and others is colonial legacy: more Commonwealth immigrants to Commonwealth countries. This explains why until recently, even Canada had many UK immigrants and UK immigration still is strong Down Under too. This also explains why say Indians, Jamaicans and other former colonies have immigrants in the UK.
Besides geography and colonial ties, what else explains differences between which immigrants choose to go to the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand?
For some reason, I seem to get the impression that South Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants seem more prominent in the other Anglo nations (Canada, Australia, the UK) than the US, but maybe that is just because in the US, Latin American immigrants are more numerous. In absolute amount, the USA still has many sources of Old World immigration. Also, Canada seems to have more Asian (South and East Asian and Middle Eastern) immigrants than expected due to geography but fewer Latin American ones (I mean, Canada isn't closer to the Old World than the New World after all). Also, it seems like, as some mentioned in another thread I had on Italian immigration, as well as elsewhere on the forum, European immigration makes a stronger presence still in some places like the UK and Australia than the USA.
Immigration from sub-Saharan Africa seems to show not particularly a strong trend: there are numbers of them in many Anglo countries but it doesn't seem like one Anglo country predominates in having more of them.
What do you think accounts for some of the trends of which countries immigrate more to which English-speaking nations? Besides, geography and colonial ties, are there other factors at play?
Within the US, Mexican immigration shows a strong regional pattern. Unlike the rest of the US, Mexico is the main or even of the bigger sources of Latin American immigration
Within the US, Mexican immigration shows a strong regional pattern. Unlike the rest of the US, Mexico is the main or even of the bigger sources of Latin American immigration
The influence of Spanish-speaking immigration is a lot stronger in general in the US than other Anglo countries and it seems so that you find bilingual Spanish writing in most states even if the sources of immigrants are not the same as near the Mexican borders (eg. Puerto Ricans in the New York metro area).
Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants to the US seem to have a stronger influence than the second languages of immigrants to other Anglo countries (I'm not counting French in Canada, because that's official because of the early French settlers rather than to help accommodate "new immigrants"). Italian is the second language of Australia, and Polish that of England, and Chinese and Indian languages make a fair share of immigrant tongues too in Canada, the UK or Australia but the influence of Spanish is stronger in the US (previous immigrant languages in the US like Italian, German etc. seem to have less staying power) than the influence of other immigrant tongues in other Anglo countries.
Only Australia, Canada and USA are in the study but it gives a good overview of where the recent immigrants are coming from.
Some of the figures for Aus seem either wrong or possibly very outdated. For example, according to the ABS the overseas born proportion of the population was 27% as at 2010, which is a quite different to 22%
Also looking at the top four or five source countries is of limited use, simply because of they are only five out of many. If you add together all south east Asian countries for example, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand the result is a fairly sizeable, culturally related population grouping.
Last edited by Richard1098; 02-10-2014 at 02:23 AM..
Some of the figures for Aus seem either wrong or possibly very outdated. For example, according to the ABS the overseas born proportion of the population was 27% as at 2010, which is a quite different to 22%
Also looking at the top four or five source countries is of limited use, simply because of they are only five out of many. If you add together all south east Asian countries for example, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand the result is a fairly sizeable, culturally related population grouping.
I believe the study was done a few years ago and like you said outdated. It says that the data was from Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006, or a direct link here. They are outdated. But It is interesting that in 4 years the foreign born population has jumped from 22% to 27% of the total population.
The numbers from Canada is outdated as well, being from the 2006 census (as they have 2011 data released). The numbers of the USA is from 2010, though I am not sure if a newer statistics has been released yet.
Some of the figures for Aus seem either wrong or possibly very outdated. For example, according to the ABS the overseas born proportion of the population was 27% as at 2010, which is a quite different to 22%
Also looking at the top four or five source countries is of limited use, simply because of they are only five out of many. If you add together all south east Asian countries for example, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand the result is a fairly sizeable, culturally related population grouping.
The Actual responses in 2011 census were
Australia 69.8%
Overseas 24.6%
No Answer 5.6%
Its really a matter of how you apply the people who did not answer, its more than likely that 27% is about correct.
The British born portion of Australia's immigrant population has now dropped below 1/5th of the total immigrant population, and India is now the 4th biggest source of immigrants overall. Italy would have by now fallen out of the top 5 immigrant source countries by now, in 2011 there were only 300 more Italians (5th) than Vietnamese (6th) In Australia.
Last edited by danielsa1775; 02-10-2014 at 04:06 AM..
Aside from Geography, I suppose the biggest determinate of the make up are immigration policies and wars. Both Australia and the USA had racist immigration policies designed to keep Asian's out for long periods of time. It was also the USA's restrictions on southern European immigrants, that may ultimately have led to settlement of them in Australia and Canada.
Australia it self of course has a special visa relationship with New Zealand, allowing the free transfer of citizens between the two countries. About 1 in every 8 New Zealand Citizens now lives in Australia.
The demographic make up of New Zealand might not get much of a mention on this forum, bit it is really quite a racially diverse place, it has special visa categories with a whole host of pacific islands and in portion to total the largest indigenous population of the 4 countries by a long way. The current population of New Zealand is about 66% of European origin. Australia's New Zealand born population is even less European than that.
Last edited by danielsa1775; 02-10-2014 at 06:13 AM..
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