Poll: How many generations removed are you from immigration?
I originally ran this poll a little over 2 years ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=688053), so I thought it might be interesting to run it again...
Here's how this works: Go back along your family tree until you reach the first immigrant. That is, the first person who eventually settled in a country other than the one they were born in, regardless of country (i.e. this is not intended to be US-immigrant-centric).
Choose only the one answer which corresponds to the most recent immigration. So, for example, if your father is the 3rd generation since immigration but your mother is, herself, an immigrant you would choose "1 generation". The hypothesis we're testing is that the sort of entrepreneurial, adventure-seeking personality that is overrepresented on HN correlates with a willingness to pick up and leave your comfort zone completely.
136 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 213 ms ] threadI did study in the US and then came back, so what does that make me :) ? Oh, I'm trying to do my own startup now.
If you don't mind, let me guess: You are from an Iyengar family. Your ancestors emigrated from Tamilnadu to Karnataka?
Correct-aa? :)
Although that means if I count my move to blr, that's 0 on this poll.
But given the age I immigrated at, It's more akin to being a 0 generation dual-immigrant.
We've managed to trace our family tree back 12 generations through family documents, etc. and our family are still in Ireland (where I'm from).
From what we know though our family have had a presence in Ireland for over 500 years on both sides.
It's actually remarkable when you consider the earliest record of our surname in Ireland is in the 13th century.
Myself, I've emigrated to the UK, twice. But now I'm back in Dublin.
Were there several countries in Ireland back then? Kings of Lenister/Munster/Meath, etc.? We'll get our cow back, etc.
And, I'm in the process of emigrating to England.
Hmm...
My parents have barely lived in The Netherlands since early adulthood, so I guess I'm a second generation permanent expat.
I think you'll find a lot of non-immigrant expatriates as well because with modern travel & communications options, moving countries is no longer the huge deal it was in the past.
The thing is, Japan is far from being an immigrant country like US, Canada or Brazil. For instance, you don't automatically get permanent residence even if you're married to a Japanese citizen. Even ethnic Koreans who were born here, have Japanese blood and speak only Japanese have a different status. There's no such thing as anti-discrimination laws, etc.
Search here: http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry.com/dynamic/immigration
(I have no connection, financial or otherwise, to Ancestry.com)
Going by the first definition, I've lived in 2 foreign countries for lengthy periods, so have I immigrated twice? But I still am a citizen of where I was born (India) and I do intend to eventually move back to home country, so am I not an immigrant at all?
And there are other ways of doing that besides emigrating between nations, like leaving home for college in a different time zone at 16 years old and despite your parents forbidding it.
If they couldn't even look after for its mental integrity it shouldn't have reproduced. Chances are the newborn child will get consumed to please the "parent" sexually, emotionally, or whatever means possible.
If they couldn't even look after for its mental integrity it shouldn't have reproduced. Chances are the newborn child will get consumed to please the "parent" sexually, emotionally, or whatever means possible.
So either 2 or a probably much higher number, depending on how you count. (I haven't voted yet).
I mean, it's quite difficult not to find a single inmigrant in 16 (4th generation) or 32 (5th generation) ancestors, and I don't think it matters much anyway.
I worry that people who don't know if one of their ancestors was an immigrant have answered incorrectly.
I think the way to reduce confusion would be to label the options as "1 generations (One of my parents was an immigrant)", "2 generations (One of my grandparents.. )", "3 generations (One of my great-grandparents was an immigrant)", etc.
Much less residents of older countries, which can probably go back a whole lot further than that.
[Edit: Of course the reality can't be as simple as that - I have a slightly Asiatic appearance that is fairly common in the part of Scotland I am from - a Chinese doctor once thought I was Chinese (much to my amusement and his horror at potentially causing offence). I'm hoping for something interesting like a Orcadian Hudson's Bay man marrying an Innuit and returning home with his family... or something like that.]
I was born in brazil but my great grandfather came as a war refugee fron Sweden (he had two brothers: one stayed in Sweden and the other fled to the Us). At that time there were refugees from all over europe arriving in latin america so it is very common where I live for someone to bear family names from 2 different countries (my wife has german and portuguese last names, for example).
Hence it is very difficult to trace our family trees past a few generations (although my family was very lucky to find relatives living in the Us and Sweden recently).
Btw, what do you mean by over-zealous (sorry, I'm not familiar with Scotish history).
The minister would have been some university educated outsider who presumably thought he knew better than the locals how to spell their names. After all if you see ten families called "Slater" and one called "Sclater" you might think that the last lost simply made a spelling mistake - and what the church said was law (effectively).