# Every Immigrant Suddenly Vanishes from the USA... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 3, 2009, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828 "2009-12-03T08:28:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/41 "2009-12-03T18:51:59Z")
Technically if this happened wouldn’t most everyone in the US disappear and leave just those of American Indian decent left? ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/42 "2009-12-03T18:57:27Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > You’ll have a sudden jump in the number of orphaned children and single-parent families. Our neighbors would vanish. I’d try to convince Mr. Neville that we should take in their daughter and their cat, at least until somebody else showed up to claim them (if anyone ever did). Their daughter comes over when we’re on vacation and watches our cats. Their cat is kind of mean, but I couldn’t turn her out to starve or be euthanized in a shelter. They’d be two of many, many animals and children left with nobody to take care of them. The foster care and animal shelter systems would be even more overwhelmed than they already are. We’d have an abandoned house next door. I’ve heard that’s not good for your property values. The housing market would get much, much worse than it is now. We’d have to find a new doctor. We wouldn’t lose our landscaper or our housecleaner (I know we wouldn’t lose our housecleaner, and I’m 90% sure about the landscaper), but I wouldn’t be too surprised if they raised their prices or left us for better-paying jobs, with so much of their competition gone. The universities would lose a lot of their grad students and faculty. I think Mr. Neville would lose his grader. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Technically if this happened wouldn’t most everyone in the US disappear and leave just those of American Indian decent left? No, because people descended from immigrants aren’t disappearing, just people who weren’t born in what is now the US. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/43 "2009-12-03T19:09:07Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > I might get my actual order at McDonalds because the person who worked there spoke English and wages would rise because there would not be as big a supply of cheap labor. Of course, the price of a Big Mac would therefore go up by 50% or so. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/44 "2009-12-03T19:09:36Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Purely a hypothetical situation that I thought might create a lively discussion. > > Say that, one day, every single person who was not born in the area currently comprising the USA (and dependencies like Puerto Rico and American Samoa) suddenly gets either teleported to an Alternate Earth (with all their stuff) or something. Doesn’t matter if they’re a legal or illegal immigrant, for the purposes of this hypothetical. Point is, one morning the USA wakes up and everyone who wasn’t born there is gone. > > What is likely to happen in the US, both socially and culturally? What do YOU think? If this is supposed to be a debate, what is your position. What do you think would happen? Good? Bad? I must say that I find this a bit of a useless exercise. Unlike, for instance, exploring what would happen if every ILLEGAL immigrant was expelled.) May I ask why you created this thread? ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/45 "2009-12-03T19:10:01Z")
I would be gone along with Senator McCain for similar reasons. Half of my faculty friends would be gone. More than half of the boys in my Scout troop would be gone, and more would lose their parents. The only fast food open would be the local In-N-Out burger based on my ASSumptions of the nationality of the staff. Yes, I am assuming that white kids with no accent where born here, while those with accents of various types at all of the other places were not. The Southern California area would be very empty. My commute would be easier, but I don’t know how many of our customers would still be in business! ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/46 "2009-12-03T19:25:35Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I doubt it. There’s nothing culturally alien about red-haired people. Most of them are of Irish or Scots-Irish or English descent, in other words part of the majority. Real discrimination is about more than just how someone _looks._ I don’t think that all the anti-immigrant racists would suddenly just turn their hatred against someone else. I don’t think it works that way. A discussion of “gingerism” can be found on [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Gingerism_.28prejudice.2Fdiscrimination_towards_redheads.29). ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/47 "2009-12-03T19:29:00Z")
Huh…and I always thought everyone LOVED red heads… \ -XT ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/48 "2009-12-03T19:34:49Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Wow. I’d be a goner. Bye! > > Is this Alternate Earth a nice place? Enquiring minds want to know. Almost certainly. It’s the one where the 43rd President was Al Gore. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/49 "2009-12-03T20:25:10Z")
Well you can’t really know. People say things like, well wages would go up, but so would goods. Not necessarily, goods would simply be imported at cheap prices from countries as they do now. The bigges thing I can see is in inner cities. The immigrant base runs a large number of stores and gives credit to people that can’t get it. For instance, a lot of business in my area of Chicago are marginal. These people barely get by. Often times the only way they get by is because they make use of their kids to help out around the store without having to pay them. In my area, small groups of stores give credit to locals that would never get a credit card or even have enough money to save for a prepaid card. You would also find problems in New York City and Florida. About 35% of Florida real estate is owned by foreingers who only live their part time. In Manhattan a it’s about 60% of all contstruction since 1995 is owned by foreigners that only live there part time. This is one reason for high rental rates in Manhattan, as even when new flats are built not subject to rent control, they’re only being occupied two or three months a year. A lot of things illegals do in this country would simply shift back. In California, crops would go unpicked, or if they were picked, the wages would be higher. Would that incrase prices? Maybe, or simply that the USA would import food from other countries. This is a bad thing as it is not a good idea for a nation to dependent on other nations for foodstuff. In general you can make guesses but you can’t really tell. In Uganda the government forced out all the Asians. This was very hard on the Asians who commercially controlled the country and for a few years brought a lot of problems. But now Uganda without the immigrants is not only back to normal but the middle class has vastly increased, to the point where Uganda has one of the larger middle classes. This was a result of the expulsion of immigrants. So you never can tell how it’s going to work. Uganda may be an example where it worked but the economy of Uganda and the USA are vastly different. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/50 "2009-12-03T20:26:03Z")
Abandoned dogs will run in packs, and packs of dogs will sometimes attack people. Rabies and other diseases that you can get from cats and dogs become more of a problem. Other problems associated with feral cats, like killing birds, urine spraying, and burying feces in people’s gardens and yards, become worse with the increase in feral cat numbers. Disease in general is going to be a problem, since we’d lose 15 percent of all of our health care workers and 25% of our physicians and surgeons, while losing 12% of the overall population. It’s going to be harder to get in to see a doctor. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/51 "2009-12-03T20:31:28Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I must say that I find this a bit of a useless exercise. Unlike, for instance, exploring what would happen if every ILLEGAL immigrant was expelled.) May I ask why you created this thread? If every illegal immigrant were expelled, then the people crying loudest for illegals to be expelled, once they realized they still had no job and no life, would then start screaming for the deportation of legal immigrants. If I had a dollar for every time one of our afternoon regulars told me “oh I don’t mean you” when I bartended and they were discussing immigrants, I would be a rich man. But that would required them to have tipped me, the miserable, fat, wastes of space that they were. Nope, it isn’t Jose in the kitchen’s fault you don’t have a job, its the fact you get fucked up every afternoon and can hardly read your own name. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/52 "2009-12-03T20:38:09Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Well, at least if this all happened magically and immigrants in the US went _poof_ overnight we’d know for sure if Obama was really a Kenyan. So one problem put to rest. 😃 Especially since Oily Taint would be gone also - which is about the only positive thing I can think of for this scenario. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/53 "2009-12-03T20:40:31Z")
You forgot “and also think you are a cut above the level of a worker like Jose, or Imran or Stefan!”. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/54 "2009-12-03T20:59:30Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Of course, the price of a Big Mac would therefore go up by 50% or so. As it should. ---
**Author:** ![Lochdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/edb3f5/32.png) [@Lochdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lochdale)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/55 "2009-12-03T21:03:35Z")
I’d vanish. Prices rise but other costs would slowly start to drop. Increased focused on technology to remove our dependence on cheap labour. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/56 "2009-12-03T21:12:56Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > No birthers have mentioned Obama yet? That was brought up in post 23. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Technically if this happened wouldn’t most everyone in the US disappear and leave just those of American Indian decent left? No, because the OP specifically says people not BORN in the United States. And, BTW, the American Indians were immigrants, too (or their ancestors who came across the land bridge were). They just got here a long time before the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/57 "2009-12-03T21:15:01Z")
> [@Kal](#): > > The first thing that would happen would be a diplomatic shitstorm as other countries start to wonder where their citizens and diplomatic staff have gone. Well in **A Day Without a Mexican** only California was effected and only “Mexicans” (including anybody of Mexican descent) vanished. California was then surrounded by a mysterious fog that nothing (not even radio signals) could penetrate; cutting it off from the outside world completely. ---
**Author:** ![Lochdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/edb3f5/32.png) [@Lochdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lochdale)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/58 "2009-12-03T21:15:19Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:56, topic:519828”] And, BTW, the American Indians were immigrants, too (or their ancestors who came across the land bridge were). They just got here a long time before the rest of us. [/QUOTE] And look what the subsequent mass immigration did for them… The skilled immigrants would be hard to replace. The low-skilled not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/59 "2009-12-03T21:18:25Z")
> [@lochdale](#): > > Increased focused on technology to remove our dependence on cheap labour. The only problem is you’d lose a bunch of engineers and technology workers, too, including one of my brothers and me. [Here’s a link to America’s standards for immigtation visas.](http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_1323.html) Legal immigrants to the US and their families have to have certain skills and meet certain standards before they’re allowed to come here. I think some people might be surprised at who vanished. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828/60 "2009-12-03T21:21:58Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I don’t think that all the anti-immigrant racists would suddenly just turn their hatred against someone else. I don’t think it works that way. Of course they would. That’s exactly how it works. Social conservatives, well, conservatives generally, but social conservatives definitely (yes, I’ve thrown the racists, xenophobes, homophobes, YECs, intelligent designists, creationists (really the same thing) and other Christian-firstists, and anti-women’s rights dunderheads into this pot), need something or someone to hate. It’s what keeps their batteries charged, what gives them a reason to wake up in the morning. Remove one of their pet objects of derision and they’ll quickly seek out another. Blacks would be the logical target because they’re the easiest group to distinguish among the masses by sight alone. Plus there’s the all-too-recent history of civil rights successes for blacks that still burns in the souls of those who pine for a Norman Rockwell America that never really existed, making it less unpalatable than with other groups, while at the same time being still relatively easy to find those with whom one can likemindedly commiserate. I’ve said this before but, come to certain areas in Pennsylvania \Wilkes-Barre\ and I’ll show you people whose seeming purpose in life is to constantly and publicly rant in the most disgusting terms about Mexicans, legal and illegal, and who will admit, if pressed, that they’ve never met a Mexican person in their lives. There are, to this day, areas in Pennsylvania where it’s not smart to travel if you’re Hispanic or black, but especially black. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that if all Hispanics, forget about other immigrant groups for now, just \ disappeared the shift and volume of racist ire toward blacks would be so quick it’d make your head spin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-immigrant-suddenly-vanishes-from-the-usa/519828.md?page=4)