Irish immigrants to America are often held up as models of successful assimilation, so we can use their history to predict the consequences of mass immigration today.

Mass Irish Catholic immigration to America began around 1830. Almost immediately, Irish immigrants established or revitalized political machines like Tammany Hall and gave them the votes that they needed for dominance—and the ethnic gang alliances, which were needed for intimidating voters and stuffing ballot boxes. There were a lot of Irish gangs, but the most notorious was the Winter Hill Gang, which smuggled weapons to the IRA, infiltrated the FBI, and went to war with another Irish gang—in the 1960s and 1970s.

Irish-Americans were an important source of funding for the IRA, and several Irish congressmen, like Peter King, backed it—until at least the 1980s.

To make the calculations easier, let’s say mass Hispanic immigration to America and mass Muslim immigration to Western Europe began in 2000. Judging by the experience of the Irish, we should expect Hispanic and Muslim gang activity, mass support for corrupt political machines, and perhaps even funding of foreign terrorist groups (which, in the case of the Muslims, are much worse than the IRA) to continue until at least 2150. And this is an unrealistically optimistic estimate: the Irish were more culturally similar to the founding population of America than the Hispanics are, and vastly more so than the Muslims are to the native peoples of Western Europe.

2150. Is it worth it?