AHC: A country enacts female-biased immigration.

[Rhymehouse]

Immigration has been a hot topic in various countries since the turn of the 20th Century. There's been a lot of fearmongering about immigrants somehow "ruining" the country they came to in various ways or causing other issues. This is especially true of refugees.

I have read multiple articles about immigrant men causing issues and how European countries should only allow women and children to immigrate for non-occupational purposes. I also remember Mao Zedong's offer to send 10 million Chinese women to the USA. It made me think, what if a country did have an immigration filter that mainly allowed only women to come? Most historical immigration filters have been about ethnicity, but not sex.

The primary reason to do this is because female immigrants and refugees are seen as less likely to commit crime or cause disruptions in the country they move to. Women also aren't generally seen as occupational competition. A secondary reason that everybody is thinking but nobody will say out loud is that single men would love to have a huge influx of desperate and ignorant young women come into their town; this way they can befriend the women and later on start intimate relationships with them.

Is there any country that would have the will and the means to pull off such an immigration policy? It would probably have to be a post-WW2 POD since countries in the early 1900s were quite xenophobic. The closest real life example was the reverse, Australia in the early 1900s only allowed Chinese men to come to Australia, they would have to return to China if they wanted to marry a woman. This was to prevent Chinese immigrants from setting up roots in China; Australian women were shunned and arrested if they tried dating a Chinese man.

 

[CV12Hornet]

The best way to do this is to have the population pyramid skew male. The problem is you generally don't get a population pyramid that skewed towards men unless a. conditions are just that bad for women or b. You're importing male migrant workers wholesale like most of the Arabian peninsula. Neither is super conducive toward such a policy, as things are.

But that's not to say you can't get such conditions. Based on real-world causes, probably the most likely option is a country skewed male due to migrant workers immigrating in, resulting in unrest and then successful revolt that replaces the existing regime with one more receptive towards the migrants. And a natural policy would be to encourage women to immigrate in to solve this skewed gender ratio.

And the best place for that is probably something during the Arab Spring in one of the Gulf States.

 

[Chapman]

Interesting concept. I know lot of the virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric tends to center around "young men of military age" supposedly entering various western countries as a means of destroying them from within, and of course also converges with generic white supremacist ideas that all non-white men want to deflower lily white virgins with their filthy paws. So in some sense I wouldn't be terribly surprised if you had a nation adopt this kind of policy - but I think there would have to be some kind of necessity before it could become reality. As has already been noted, if you skew the gender population heavily in favor of men then I could see some places adopting a policy like this. In the US context I would say it's still likely they would try to keep it limited to "desirable" immigrants, meaning of course primarily Western Europeans. But I could see some Asian women ultimately being seen as acceptable, what with the stereotypical view of them as "submissive" which might make them good wives in the eyes of white men.

 

[Jiraiyathegallant]

Canada has accidentally done the opposite of this OTL and now has a gender imbalance of 1.09 males to 1.00 female among young adults because of lack of gender selection in immigration.

Can a country merely establish an system that accidentally creates an imbalance in favor of a large female population? Or does this have to be intentional?

 

[Nivek]

Canada has accidentally done the opposite of this OTL and now has a gender imbalance of 1.09 males to 1.00 female among young adults because of lack of gender selection in immigration.

Can a country merely establish an system that accidentally creates an imbalance in favor of a large female population? Or does this have to be intentional?

I think genuinely have to be on purpose, unless somehow the country have jobs that are inclined to female inmmigrats..

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

Are we talking only women or women with children under, say, 10 or so?

Only Young women, would it be possible for a sudden loss of male population due to war to resolve in a lot of women entering the workforce? And therefore a lot of women being asked to come from another country to be nannies, au pairs, etc? Before an effective daycare system is created I can imagine this being possible, not only for that but also for women who are good at teaching in the schools.

The question then becomes, how does this happen? You have to have a small enough population where you can't just figure that it evens out because there are a lot of women from other parts of the country, like you would have a lot of female Farm Workers come to the city in the United States if this happened. By the country the size of the Netherlands, perhaps. I think even France would be too big.

As for women who have young children, I was thinking that a rash of immigrant crimes could lead to a temporary decision to limit the people who come in as refugees from certain places to only women and women with young children, but that would only be a temporary measure until they found some way to detect who was likely to be a criminal.

But then, as someone noted above, it is not just a problem of that because if it was, you would see more political leaders talking about that very possibility, instead of just wondering it stopped altogether.

Now, would it be possible to develop a political system where that is one of the possibilities? I suppose theoretically, but you would probably have to have a somewhat matriarchal system in place to begin with in order for the idea to even be presented, because without that you don't even have men considering the possibility. Maybe if you had a strong female queen or prime minister or someone who became very renowned, they might be able to develop the idea as a compromise between the sides on the issue. Believe in there you are going to have her having been shaped by the customs of the day.

 

[GuildedAgeNostalgia]

Could see Arab countries doing this to ease the social problems of a lot of single men caused by polygamy.

 

[Don Corleone]

You'd probably want childless women of childbearing age if you're going this route. Then your own citizens can marry them and they'll have assimilated children.

The women would be viewed as less threatening and the type of government most likely to do this wouldn't want to risk the "purity" of native born women.

 

[Beatriz]

Why can’t the children be considered assimilable? After all the US ran Indian boarding schools at the early 20th century

 

[Don Corleone]

They could be. People adopt overseas orphans all the time.

But importing brides is a more rational basis for a women only immigration policy and the children are in the new country from birth which makes it easier.

 

[Chapman]

They could be. People adopt overseas orphans all the time.

But importing brides is a more rational basis for a women only immigration policy and the children are in the new country from birth which makes it easier.

Perhaps the most sickening extension of this logic, though, could be to "import" female orphans from overseas to be groomed for later marriage. With the example of the boarding schools for Native American children in my mind I could see the possibility for bringing in, say, Chinese girls and assimilating them to white American culture to make them more desirable brides.

 

[Jellico]

You want men so you can send them to work in mines, factories, farms, and all manner of dirty, physical jobs the locals are proving unwilling to do. Put crudely, at the turn of the 20thC the women are there to increase the population and keep the men preoccupied.

That is the basic problem in the time period you are looking at. You get better, more immediate economic bang for your buck out of men. Unless you have an excess of men (given your Australian example, see the Second Fleet), or want to dive into polygamy, female immigrants are a bad investment.

 

[Sam R.]

What is gulf states servitude? OTL for $200?

 

[Fratsup]

You want men so you can send them to work in mines, factories, farms, and all manner of dirty, physical jobs the locals are proving unwilling to do. Put crudely, at the turn of the 20thC the women are there to increase the population and keep the men preoccupied.

Depends I would say, since a lot of jobs could in theory be made by the already existing young population, or even better just import the resources from overseas and move towards a service based economy. At that point those jobs become increasingly less important, although due to fears of being dependent there would always be a small sector of said jobs that would be supported even if they make not sense to keep economically.

As for how to do this, I would say if a place is suffering from a mass genocide or at least mass death scenario I could see people allowing women and children first simply due to the massive amount of people demanding entree into a nation. This could be driven even further if the ones doing this effectively target the male population while leaving the female population to themselves and letting the excess leave. Of course this is the most extreme example.

Another less extreme example is how in some places due to man working outside of the cities and women moving into the cities, an increasing number of men are just marrying outside of the nation to gain a wife. You would just have to extend this to a greater degree and gender based immigration becomes far more acceptable.

 

[Fratsup]

Why can’t the children be considered assimilable? After all the US ran Indian boarding schools at the early 20th century

They can but once you bring families it becomes harder for the immigrants to not just demand for all of their family to immigrate as well and join them. This makes it more difficult to assimilate these people since they tend to make their own communities and self-segregate from the rest of the community.

That and I assume most women with families would have a harder time just leaving since they have to make sure their children can make it and not suffer or die during the situation. At that point they might as well just send their children by themselves since they will probably have a greater chance of staying as the whole migration situation in our world has shown.

 

[Nivek]

Why can’t the children be considered assimilable? After all the US ran Indian boarding schools at the early 20th century

they could, but the main thing you dont' want families, of course single mom with kids or big sisters with lil bros with nothing to take care, would be prefered

 

[DukeofSwabia]

I wonder if you could have this in a refugee like situation from an allied power. The men are expected to help liberate the country or the host country is facing pressure to not accept (male) draft dodgers and thus only females may immigrate freely.

 

[Fatt Shea]

One way would be a country allowing only women and children refuges from a country going through a civil war or something of the like perhaps motivated by the idea that the men there should stay behind and fight or as a compromise between a pro and anti refugee faction, as immigrant men have often been blamed for more problems as you pointed out.
Another way would be a country where they have more men than women, this can happen due to female selective abortion which is practiced in many countries in Asia for example India where after ultrasound technology spread women would often get abortions if the fetus was female due to high levels of sexism, this made it harder for men to get wives and so in states with higher rates of female foeticide they often import women from other states to marry, this could easily happen in a smaller country without other states to import women from which would result in the need to import women from other countries, combine that with xenophobia preventing this country from wanting male immigrants and you get a policy that only allows female immigrants.

Female foeticide in India - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The same thing could happen if female infanticide was practiced instead of abortion this was a huge problem in China before the 1900s and returned with the one child policy as people could only have one child and preferred a male. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China#19th_century
Another option is a country where polygamy is the norm for wealthier men as allowing women from poor countries would be a good way of getting extra wives for average men to make society more "equal" for the men, they would also need to be xenophobic so as to not want men coming in.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

Couldn't help but think of this:

 

[Alex1guy]

This might closer to current politics, but isn't China and India the issue that there is a much higher population of young men than young women?

I understand that many young women are enticed from South East Asia to find better opportunities offered in China and India. However this had led to issues of whether or not being incentivized by better prospects is true consent, and there are major issues around trafficking and abuse/sexual violence that some women face.

However, is it somehow possible for these gender imbalances to be realized earlier and have some sort of genuine government run incentive to attract young women? It feels icky and would likely lead to the same issues around consent and potential abuse, but is that a possibility? Maybe a misguided paternalistic attempt to manage the issue.

However I grant that this imbalance seems to be a phenomena that is only realized in a more modern economic and social context following decades of specific cultural and policy factors.