Immigration and the New World

Back in the 18th-19th century, North America was the “New World”. It was the place of green pastures for many Europeans to immigrate to. Many who grew tired with the incumbent system moved to the wondrous Wild West.

Some say space is the next frontier. The child in me still believes in the possibility of underwater societies like Atlantis or flying civilizations like Laputa from Gulliver’s travels.

This made me think about immigration. It’s a known phenomenon that cities experience a kind of network effect where they have a virtuous cycle of talent flowing in. Respectively, many fast-growing countries will face mass emigration as people become ‘able’.

It’s the simple phenomena that despite rapid growth in South Korea or China, most well off individuals will emigrate out or at least send their kids abroad. I don’t know if it’s because the world of developing countries is so harsh that those who lived through it want to provide an easier life for the next generation in developed countries.

I am fully in the belief the kids who hustle to succeed in Nairobi will easily outsmart the soft-bellied here in Toronto. So with that immigration of talent, does that translate to some cities becoming more innovative and becoming more economic superpowers than others?

I mean, intuitively, it’s easy to imagine Silicon Valley and NYC being hotbeds for talent immigration. Though one has a culture of experimentation and other one of wealth exploitation. I digress.

But it made me curious enough to see where immigration was following to now. Pre-COVID specifically.

The UN has a massive report on migration and it tells the obvious story of the U.S. dominating the globe in regards to the amount of immigrants making up the total population. It’s followed by Germany at a distant second place. Berlin did feel like the centre of Eurasia (probably because I haven’t been to Istanbul which would fit closer to the technical definition).

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find information that was specific to cities. This is of great importance because cities have unique cultures of their own despite being in the same country. Just like how Vancouver and Toronto have very different cultures and industries that make up the voice of the city, the same can be said of many other countries.

Quite frankly, if Shopify were to be based in Toronto instead of Ottawa I don’t think it would ever have succeeded. It needed to be far away from the conservative financial culture that underpins Toronto. Sometimes, a city so small without a distinctive voice is what’s required for weird things to pop up. Yes, I do think Ottawa is devoid of any meaningful ‘voice’….at least one that will unconsciously guide mass behaviour. This is not a bad thing. Keeps the city from being too one dimensional (despite Ottawa predominately being a gov’t town).

Back to cities and immigration. According to 2016 data, 49% of Toronto’s population consists of foreign-born individuals. Your writer is a contributor here. Globally, the GTA ranks 4th in the largest foreign-born population. The leaders are NYC, LA and London. There are slight differences here with urban areas vs. Cities (i..e GTA vs. Toronto etc…)

Along with Toronto, Vancouver has 42% of its population consisting for foreign-born individuals. Hong Kong’s is ~36%. Just looking up places I’ve lived…and naturally, my biased view may have something to do with living in places that are immigrant hotbeds.

From the list I linked, what stuck out as the ‘odd duck’ was Sweden. You expect US, Canada, Australia to make it there since these are technically immigrant countries (since every caucasian there has ancestral roots to immigrants). But Sweden has three cities in the list of top 33 (by foreign-born population size) that have foreign-born making up 25%+ of the total population.

I wonder why….

Now I know the number of immigrants doesn’t necessarily correlate to fast-growing cities. I wanted to use this is a proxy to possibly find investable companies in fast-growing areas. But then again…that’s a tough ask. At the very least, I would imagine this list of 30 something cities with a high density of immigrants to be places where future fast-growing, world-changing companies will come out from.

Naturally….just like how stable bureaucratic institutions never innovate….cities that attract outsiders (and are known to be great places for it en masse) will give birth to fast-growing companies and communities.