Mass vs. Slow Immigration

In the United States and many Western countries today, we are seeing mass immigration. Hundreds of thousands and even millions come into our country per year, changing the local demographics and increasing costs. Frisco, in the Dallas metropolitan area, and Boise, Idaho, offer a useful comparison: how does the size of an immigrant community affect its members’ daily contact with the wider city?

An Indian family in Boise or Frisco

An Indian family moving to Boise enters a different local environment from one moving to Frisco. In the Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 estimates, 27.3% of Frisco residents were born outside the United States, compared with 7.9% in Boise. Among residents age five and older, 33.6% in Frisco spoke a language other than English at home, compared with 11.1% in Boise. Those figures cover the whole city, not just Indian residents, and speaking another language at home does not mean someone cannot speak English.^[1][2]

The difference matters because people adapt through ordinary contact. Children make friends at school. Adults meet coworkers, customers and neighbors. A family’s experience of America depends partly on whom they spend their time with.

A small immigrant community has fewer people available to support separate businesses, clubs and social circles. A larger one can offer more of daily life through familiar languages and connections. That can make settling in easier. It can also reduce the need to build relationships outside the community.

For an Indian family, the relevant question is how much of its life takes place among other Indian families. The answer can differ between neighborhoods, schools and workplaces within the same city. Boise and Frisco show different levels of concentration; their citywide figures do not tell us which children have predominantly Indian friends or which language they use together.

Community networks can slow assimilation

America has seen this before. European immigrants also built neighborhoods around their own churches, businesses and associations.

A 2025 working paper by Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan and Osea Giuntella studied ethnic Catholic churches during the age of mass migration. After a church opened, residents of the same ethnic background developed stronger ties within their group. The researchers found more marriage within the group, more ethnic naming and lower earnings relative to comparable neighborhoods. Some effects persisted into the second generation.^[3]

That is evidence that the institutions around a family can influence assimilation. It does not establish the size of the effect in present-day Frisco. It does explain why counting arrivals alone misses part of the issue: where people settle, and the networks they enter, also matter.

A useful community organization can help a newcomer find work and learn how the country functions. The concern is when most opportunities and relationships remain inside the same circle, year after year.

Children need time and contact

English should be a language children can use confidently at school, at work and with friends throughout the country. Parents passing on another language does not prevent that. A child can speak to grandparents in their language and still grow up with English as the stronger language.

The National Academies’ review found that immigrants’ children and grandchildren generally acquire English, with a transition to English alone commonly occurring within three generations. Even large immigrant concentrations do not stop that process altogether.^[4]

But a generation takes years. When new families keep arriving, a city can have a continuing need for language instruction even while earlier arrivals become fluent. Schools are teaching the next group of newcomers before the previous group has finished growing up. A changing citywide language figure can therefore conceal progress within individual families.

Slower admissions would give communities more time between arrivals. The policy argument is to make the adjustment manageable for schools, neighborhoods and the families already here. It should be judged by whether children become fluent, participate in the wider community and build lives beyond the networks their parents first relied on.

Admissions should leave room for integration

The federal government controls admission rules. Local communities handle much of what follows: school places, language teaching, housing and public services. An admissions policy should take that work seriously.

Nation of Settlers supports lower immigration levels and a slower pace of arrivals. Employers’ demand for additional workers should not be the only consideration. The ability of communities to accommodate newcomers and bring their children into a shared civic life belongs in the decision too.

That means pairing lower admissions with effective English instruction and opportunities for newcomers to participate in ordinary schools, workplaces and neighborhood activities. Moving people to a smaller city is no substitute for jobs, housing or those everyday connections.

The goal is for immigrants and their children to become part of the country they have joined. Policy should allow time for that to happen and expect participation in return.