Living in Phoenix, my gauge has always been the Home Depot parking lot across the street from work.
Hasn’t changed in the 8yrs I’ve lived here.
this effect is fascinating!
doesn’t really help us to know *why* this effect is true, but we know there’s a global nationalist phenomenon going on, and this pretty much perfectly represents that and how irrational it is.
wish this wasn’t posted on X though, pick literally any other platform, like, say the one we’re already on
I wonder if it’s a small minority that are estimating very high that skews it up so much.
Per capita, Canada, a country of 40 million, has way more immigrants than the US. Immigrants represent 23% of the Canadian population. In the US, they represent 15%, yet we’re the ones going crazy about this as if it’s even close to being the most pressing issue.
The fact that we’ve allowed this climate of fear to horsen political discourse in the country is just sad.
Children of immigrants are considered “immigrants” in many places.
And the argument will be that these are the “official” numbers of those legally entering the country.
Manipulation using fear of The Other is an ancient trick. Still works, too.
I think it depends on how hard is to actually make an estimate without actual number.
Maybe there is a neighborhood with 30% of immigrants and many towns in the countryside with none but you actually visit a lot the first and almost never the second. This can skew a lot a guess.
First generation immigrants. And this is country average, look at larger cities and include 2nd generation. In Vienna, capital of Austria, 70% of children do not speak German at home.
Show Canada…
I would have guessed we were 10%-15%.. google tells me we are 23%..
1/4 Canadians are not Canadian… wow
This is tough because if they interviewed someone in Miami or NYC then that number is very different than if they interviewed someone from Wyoming.
Credit where credit’s due, this is from Our World in Data. The direct link to them is
I’d like to point out 25-35% is generally what people guess in general if they just don’t know
Americans think America is like 30% black, 30% Jewish 25% New Yorkers etc etc.
I can’t find the survey but if you added up Black, Asian and Jewish it leaves like 5% for White Christian’s which if you went back and asked “is America 5% white Christian” people would say no
Interesting. I made a guess about my country and then looked up the official stat. I had over estimated by 5%.
(In Canada if you are curious, I thought we would have been approaching Australia’s 30%)
People are just completely stupid at this point, they can’t figure out anything. It’s like their first day on the internet.
15% of people living in America are immigrants? That’s an incredibly large number. I guess I really do have to vote for Trump.
That’s because we are constantly propagandized into believing that immigrants are somehow dangerous. Not everyone believes it, of course, but enough do that the perceptions of their numbers are higher than otherwise would be. The demonization of immigrants is a tool to increase the perceived value of American citizenship such that people will not question the actual socioeconomic factors that make their lives difficult.
TL;DR Greed of rich people more dangerous to your wellbeing than immigrants nearly 100% of the time and our country can easily afford to have twice as many immigrants per year but that would undermine the farce that there isn’t enough to go around for everyone.
If you live in an ethnostate, you might easily get the impression that any person of another ethnicity you see is an immigrant.
Argentinians really overshot in their perceived estimates
By the way, 15% is an all-time record for the US.
For Australia is it counting New Zealand as immigrants? Because that’s pretty fake data if it is
A bit misleading. When people respond to “immigrants” they have in mind a distinctive group of people, while “immigrant” is just a legal definition. In the us for example, when an immigrant brings a child on USs soil, that child isn’t considered an immigrant from legal standpoint, but I would presume they would in the eyes of the respondent
It’s because the children of immigrants might look like immigrants
This is an issue of the definition. Subject groups should always be provided with a clear scope and definition of a thing they are being asked about. Otherwise, this is all to fabricate controversy and then go around saying, “look, things are not as bad/good/ugly/pretty as people perceive them to be”, depending on the agenda of those conducting such polls.
Immigrants are highly visible because they work outside in construction and municipal services. This makes their perceived numbers appear larger.
U.S., Argentina, Poland and Japan are wild.
U.S. I kinda understand, they have a large number of immigrants, they just imagine it to be higher, but the other three is a laughable bad estimation.
This is a disingenuous language trick to try and convince people to not believe their lying eyes about the number of foreigners (distinct from immigrants) they see in their lives.
Is this only legal immigrants? The source is pretty vague.
Pretty pointless data when many people consider immigrant and foreigner the same. Take Japan for example, they are certainly guessing the percent of foreigners.
This definition of immigrant sounds a bit misleading imo. This will exclude any child born in the country to immigrant parents, but a native will still see and know that person as an immigrant as long as they main connection to the immigrant parents’ home country and that child will likely identify with both countries. To add to that, immigrants on average have more kids than the locals.
So people thinking there are more immigrants are probably not wrong and their eyes are not multiplying the immigrants they see.
Maybe a better way would be including their children in the count.
How come Poland has only 2% of immigrants? A number of officially registered Ukrainian refugees is 950K, which is 2.47% of all population. And there was a substantial migration beforehand, plus of course from other countries.
Now do Sweden and take 2nd gen immigrants with 2 non swedish parents.
I think people think there are fewer illegals than there are
“Tend to think” you mean media brainwash people with fake news?
Conveniently omitting Canada cause we know that reality is 2x what the average Canadian perceives it to be.
I mean no not really. Most people live in areas with higher amounts of migrants and so they’ll base their estimate off of that. Someone in Paris would probably guess something like 50% which is correct for Paris but much less so for the country. For now atleast
Why post this on X?
Uhg stop supporting that shitty company.
People thinking 33% of the US population is of immigrants is an insanely high number. No wonder it’s an effective topic for right wing voters.
My boss: “Immigrants are stealing everyone’s jobs!”
Also my boss: “We can’t retain staff because everyone expects too much money!”
I thought the illegals would work any shitty paying job. Then why can’t we retain staff? Should be flush with illegals.
40 comments
Living in Phoenix, my gauge has always been the Home Depot parking lot across the street from work.
Hasn’t changed in the 8yrs I’ve lived here.
this effect is fascinating!
doesn’t really help us to know *why* this effect is true, but we know there’s a global nationalist phenomenon going on, and this pretty much perfectly represents that and how irrational it is.
wish this wasn’t posted on X though, pick literally any other platform, like, say the one we’re already on
I wonder if it’s a small minority that are estimating very high that skews it up so much.
Per capita, Canada, a country of 40 million, has way more immigrants than the US. Immigrants represent 23% of the Canadian population. In the US, they represent 15%, yet we’re the ones going crazy about this as if it’s even close to being the most pressing issue.
The fact that we’ve allowed this climate of fear to horsen political discourse in the country is just sad.
Children of immigrants are considered “immigrants” in many places.
And the argument will be that these are the “official” numbers of those legally entering the country.
Manipulation using fear of The Other is an ancient trick. Still works, too.
I think it depends on how hard is to actually make an estimate without actual number.
Maybe there is a neighborhood with 30% of immigrants and many towns in the countryside with none but you actually visit a lot the first and almost never the second. This can skew a lot a guess.
First generation immigrants. And this is country average, look at larger cities and include 2nd generation. In Vienna, capital of Austria, 70% of children do not speak German at home.
Show Canada…
I would have guessed we were 10%-15%.. google tells me we are 23%..
1/4 Canadians are not Canadian… wow
This is tough because if they interviewed someone in Miami or NYC then that number is very different than if they interviewed someone from Wyoming.
Credit where credit’s due, this is from Our World in Data. The direct link to them is
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/many-people-overestimate-the-percentage-of-immigrants-in-their-country
I’d like to point out 25-35% is generally what people guess in general if they just don’t know
Americans think America is like 30% black, 30% Jewish 25% New Yorkers etc etc.
I can’t find the survey but if you added up Black, Asian and Jewish it leaves like 5% for White Christian’s which if you went back and asked “is America 5% white Christian” people would say no
Interesting. I made a guess about my country and then looked up the official stat. I had over estimated by 5%.
(In Canada if you are curious, I thought we would have been approaching Australia’s 30%)
People are just completely stupid at this point, they can’t figure out anything. It’s like their first day on the internet.
15% of people living in America are immigrants? That’s an incredibly large number. I guess I really do have to vote for Trump.
That’s because we are constantly propagandized into believing that immigrants are somehow dangerous. Not everyone believes it, of course, but enough do that the perceptions of their numbers are higher than otherwise would be. The demonization of immigrants is a tool to increase the perceived value of American citizenship such that people will not question the actual socioeconomic factors that make their lives difficult.
TL;DR Greed of rich people more dangerous to your wellbeing than immigrants nearly 100% of the time and our country can easily afford to have twice as many immigrants per year but that would undermine the farce that there isn’t enough to go around for everyone.
If you live in an ethnostate, you might easily get the impression that any person of another ethnicity you see is an immigrant.
Argentinians really overshot in their perceived estimates
By the way, 15% is an all-time record for the US.
For Australia is it counting New Zealand as immigrants? Because that’s pretty fake data if it is
A bit misleading. When people respond to “immigrants” they have in mind a distinctive group of people, while “immigrant” is just a legal definition. In the us for example, when an immigrant brings a child on USs soil, that child isn’t considered an immigrant from legal standpoint, but I would presume they would in the eyes of the respondent
It’s because the children of immigrants might look like immigrants
This is an issue of the definition. Subject groups should always be provided with a clear scope and definition of a thing they are being asked about. Otherwise, this is all to fabricate controversy and then go around saying, “look, things are not as bad/good/ugly/pretty as people perceive them to be”, depending on the agenda of those conducting such polls.
Immigrants are highly visible because they work outside in construction and municipal services. This makes their perceived numbers appear larger.
U.S., Argentina, Poland and Japan are wild.
U.S. I kinda understand, they have a large number of immigrants, they just imagine it to be higher, but the other three is a laughable bad estimation.
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-12/ipsos-perils-perception-prejudice-conspiracy-theories-december-2023.pdf
This is a disingenuous language trick to try and convince people to not believe their lying eyes about the number of foreigners (distinct from immigrants) they see in their lives.
Is this only legal immigrants? The source is pretty vague.
Pretty pointless data when many people consider immigrant and foreigner the same. Take Japan for example, they are certainly guessing the percent of foreigners.
This definition of immigrant sounds a bit misleading imo. This will exclude any child born in the country to immigrant parents, but a native will still see and know that person as an immigrant as long as they main connection to the immigrant parents’ home country and that child will likely identify with both countries. To add to that, immigrants on average have more kids than the locals.
So people thinking there are more immigrants are probably not wrong and their eyes are not multiplying the immigrants they see.
Maybe a better way would be including their children in the count.
How come Poland has only 2% of immigrants? A number of officially registered Ukrainian refugees is 950K, which is 2.47% of all population. And there was a substantial migration beforehand, plus of course from other countries.
Now do Sweden and take 2nd gen immigrants with 2 non swedish parents.
I think people think there are fewer illegals than there are
“Tend to think” you mean media brainwash people with fake news?
Conveniently omitting Canada cause we know that reality is 2x what the average Canadian perceives it to be.
I mean no not really. Most people live in areas with higher amounts of migrants and so they’ll base their estimate off of that. Someone in Paris would probably guess something like 50% which is correct for Paris but much less so for the country. For now atleast
Why post this on X?
Uhg stop supporting that shitty company.
People thinking 33% of the US population is of immigrants is an insanely high number. No wonder it’s an effective topic for right wing voters.
My boss: “Immigrants are stealing everyone’s jobs!”
Also my boss: “We can’t retain staff because everyone expects too much money!”
I thought the illegals would work any shitty paying job. Then why can’t we retain staff? Should be flush with illegals.
Which people? City people?
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