hobbes79

It's so hard to move here, and several times a day I see threads on here shattering another person's dream after starting a thread along the lines of "I want to move to the US, tell me how!" (and rightfully so... no point skirting around the subject).

My manager is Indian. I work in an office setting with Chinese guys, two Russians, a Vietnamese, a few fellow Brits, etc. I overheard the guy in the cube next to me re-arranging his naturalization ceremony date just a couple of days ago.

Just amazes me sometimes. Some are older when things were just easier. One Brit I work with came over on an L1 visa years ago. He said back then, all you had to do was not commit a crime and generally keep your nose clean for 3-years, and you were AUTOMATICALLY converted to a greencard holder. He's since become a USC.

But I still meet many around my age, and I have to wonder how the hell they managed it! And how so many more keep managing it!

jumping doris

I know what you mean. Where I live there are a lot of immigrants....German, Swedish,Turkish, French, Indian, Korean, Chinese, British, Japanese. At most school gatherings it looks like a United Nations convention.

I know a lot of immigrants to this area are sometimes only here for a few years before moving elsewhere overseas and they choose our township because all our schools (K-12 )do IB. That's why we moved here.

newXgate

It was indeed quite a bit easier even a few years back, particularly before the H1-B visa cap became an issue. People also got green cards faster in the past.

Also, although it is hard to come over here, it is not impossible, if you are prepared to put enough time, money and dedication into it. This is especially true of those coming from developing countries where there is much more incentive to immigrate. For example I know several Africans whose families saved up for them to study in the USA, they then got jobs through OPT and then transitioned to H1-B's. This path is rarely trod by those from the UK since we have (relatively) cheap higher education at home and don't usually think about emigrating until after graduating.

People from other countries may come here via such avenues as asylum seeking, that are obviously not open to those of us from the UK. There is also the fact that some (including Brits) are willing to risk illegal mechanisms such as fake marriages and such.

tinaflorida

I was astounded at how many people were at my citizenship ceremony each month.

527 people from 78 countries, and apparently that was a typical number for a ceremony.

They perform the ceremony four times a month. That's just for the Tampa Bay and surrounding areas.

Based on those numbers, that equates to 2,108 people a month.

25,296 people a year. Again, just in central Florida! And just new citizens!

That's truly STAGGERING!!!

another bloody yank

Isn't it much the same in England though, especially in the metro areas? Seems like it would be with every thing I read on BE about immigrants filling up the UK. But maybe I'm getting a lopsided perspective?

Bob

There's loads of Brazilians around here, though impressive the number that are illegal, not necessarily hop the border illegal though, but it's pretty easy for them to get along with the one ssn trick because employers, even big stores do it, you know the one, someone with a number is employed, quits, restarts a day later etc and suddenly everyone is golden.

Bob

depends who's bleating on about the place going to the dogs or not

My mother was saying that the place is lossing a horde of the new EU immigrants because so many others from the newer EU countries were coming in and they'd had enough, these were the skilled workers, mostly Poles, fab carpenters

Octang Frye

There's, like, a Brazilian of them.

lapin_windstar

Yeah, you definitely are.

It's surprising how few BE'ers actually come from the big cities - from my amateur analysis (which is no better than anyone else's btw) most of them tend to come from the peripheral towns/counties where there aren't actually that many immigrants. There's a big crossover between the BE demographic and the demographic of the Daily Mail, a newspaper for aspirational right-wingers with a bee in their bonnet about immigrants (or anyone that's not white and English generally) and a yearning for a mythical past.

There's a lot of immigration to the UK - there always has been - and for years in the 80s and 90s more people left than arrived - and without immigrants the economy over the last ten years would have been screwed. Skilling, education and training outside the liberal arts in the UK is abysmal. And now the market's going cooler, a lot of intra-EU immigrants are going somewhere else - which was entirely the point of a free labour market in the first place.

jumping doris

I didn't meet the variety of different nationalities that I have here. Lots of immigrants but all from the same few places....thats dull!

dbj1000

That's true around here too.

One thing I've noticed is that almost everyone over the age of 30 at my local health club seems to be foreign, and from an enormously broad range of nationalities. I put that down to being in an area full of corporate headquarters and major offices for many multinationals.

Pretty funny to overhear two middle eastern guys in the sauna last week:

"Good to meet you. So where are you from?"
"I'm from Iraq originally. Spent the last few years in Saudi. How about you?"
"Oh, I was born in Syria, and spent a few years in Iraq and Belgium before coming here."
"Hey, that's great. It's amazing how many of us there are from the 'Axis of Evil' right here in Plano, isn't it?"

Heh, made me laugh out loud, that did.

NC Penguin

Depends a lot on where you lived in the UK and where you live now in the US.

To answer your question, for me, I'm not amazed by the number of immigrants in the. That's because I was born and raised in London and now live in Durham, NC.

Over the course of my professional life in London, I worked (face-to-face) with the following foreign nationals (as opposed to ethnicities who were British born or naturalized Brits): Irish, Australians, New Zealanders, Italians, Pakistanis, Americans (of course. That's how I met my spouse), Venezuelans, Japanese, Canadians, Belgians, French, Dutch, and Italians.

Now if I were to include immigrants to the UK, my list would be at least three times as long. Then, if you include my remote colleagues (in overseas offices), I could at least eight more nationalities.

Since moving to Durham, I've worked with Americans (black and white) and Mexicans. It's a big change for me. I'm more accustomed to a more multinational workforce.

NC Penguin

I think the catchment area for the USCIS offices is quite large. For example, at my naturalization ceremony in Charlotte, NC, there were about 20 nationalities represented but the individuals came from all over the state. I live in Durham and that's nearly 150 miles from Charlotte.

snowbunny

At work we have a veritable United Nations, but outside work it's mostly immigrants from Latin America, as you would expect. The University is an area where there's more diversity.

I'm not amazed at the number of immigrants, but I grew up in an area that went from being about 50% "Anglo" / 50% "Mexican" to an overwhelmingly Hispanic population in less than 20 years.

lapin_windstar

Where did you live, and when?

My old part of London has lots of Poles, Turks, Brazilians, Somalians and (longer established) Italians and Irish. Before that, it was the Scottish ghetto (John Stuart Mill was brought up in the railway workers' housing).