my coworkers saw jets flying over soldier field headed east from our office on randolph. Saw another video on twitter and it looked like 4 F 15s, which is weird because there arent any f15s stationed nearby.

I chuckled a lot at this, thank you :)

Didn't realize 30k Ukrainians moved to the city. Including the 20k Venezuelans who moved here, that's 50k new people in the past year and a half: https://abc7chicago.com/venezuelan-m...news/13982778/

Chicago and Canada has a natural large population of Ukrainians.
My grandparents moved to Chicago in the 20's from a rock scrabble farm town that took whole Ukrainian villages in and relocated them to the prairie providences. In my family's case from Roblin Manitoba.

And yes they did move to and live in Ukrainian Village hood where my father was born.

Lots have diverted out of that hood but Chicagoland still has a lot of Ukies. So Chicagoland a natural place to find people in common.

I'm one of them, at least 75% ethnically.


Russians and Ukrainians are the same Slavic race. Which is why I hate this war so much. Brother vs Brother


https://www.myjournalcourier.com/new...s-17018740.php





Number of Ukrainians, Russians in Illinois among nation's largest

Tom Emery

Contributor
March 22, 2022

Illinois has some of the largest numbers of both Ukrainians and Russians in the nation.

Illinois has the fifth-most Ukrainian-Americans of any U.S. state, with 47,623. The overwhelming majority of those are in the Chicago metropolitan area, which ranks third nationally in Ukrainian population.


Many live in Ukrainian Village on the near west side, which boasts one of the highest concentrations of the ethnicity in the U.S. and is home to the Ukrainian National Museum and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art.

Other Illinois cities with high clusters of Ukrainians include Buffalo Grove, Wheeling, Hainesville, Northbrook and Vernon Hills.

In 2019, there were an estimated 1.01 million Americans of Ukrainian descent, the second-largest total outside the Eastern Bloc, trailing only Canada.

...

Russian-Americans also are prevalent, ranking 19th in the U.S. among ethnic groups, with 2.9 million. Some 16% of those are in Illinois, the third-highest in the nation and behind only New York and California.

...
















https://www.axios.com/local/chicago/...-mexico-border


Why Ukrainian and Latino migrations to Chicago worked out so differently


Chicago has absorbed more than 30,000 Ukrainian refugees over the last 18 months with little controversy, but the arrival of 19,000 Latino migrants over roughly the same period has triggered a crisis in the city.

...

At a NYC Reticketing Site, Some Migrants Are Choosing Chicago
https://southsideweekly.com/at-a-nyc...osing-chicago/


^ Here's a depressing weekend read. It pisses me off how much of a failure the US immigration and asylum system is. Even at the local level, pretty much every city with a sanctuary status has given up on helping migrants and is kicking them out in the streets as winter looms. Just as bad, city's are now paying them a one-way flight to leave. While the recent announcement by Pritzker in helping Chicago house migrants is a relief, every state should be stepping up and helping. This paragraph really filled me with despair:

The number of migrants arriving from Texas has grown to almost 29k people. Fortunately, the number of people sleeping at police stations & O'Hare is at a low of 575, down from a high of over 3300 people. The number of people who were able to resettle or found sponsors is almost 12k people: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/site...Dashboard.html

Texas doing its part to make Chicago the fastest growing city in the midwest by 2030

Yes, please!

The great thing is as Venezuelans and Columbians become established here in Chicago, they will send for their friends/relatives to come up, and house them until they get on their feet, who will then send for *their* friends/relatives, etc. just like the Mexican community did in the 70s-90s, growing their numbers through this immigration pipeline. Chicago will reap population dividends by establishing a Central/South American community, and potentially set us up for an immigrant population boom in the coming decades. This time, hopefully, it wont simply be offsetting losses in white and black population, as the city's white population has more or less stabilized while the black population losses will (hopefully) gradually slow by the next census, but actually grow the city and metro population in aggregate. Very exciting how all this could potentially turn out.

That, and I would love to have a Little Caracas or Little Bogota in our city. Bring all the immigrants, we want to share in their rich culture and tasty cuisines! :cheers:

I think about this a lot, in terms of potential parallels with current migrant/refugee/immigrants making their way to Chicago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...0%93Saint_Paul

If assimilation can be done right, the potential benefits to Chicago, other than increased population, can far outweigh the short-term struggles, for both the City and incoming peoples who have nowhere else to go.

^ 100% agreed.

Immigrants are typically harder working than native born populations, and engage in small business creation at a rate many times that of native born Americans. I know this first hand, being a second generation American myself with a large extended family that has emigrated to Chicago over the past 40 years. Having a healthy supply of immigrants coming into the city will absolutely supercharge our local economy over the long run, and is absolutely worth the initial struggles of finding housing and work for the newcomers.

^ You guys are spot-on. It's just the reality of the situation that metro Chicago - much like metros Los Angeles and New York - are absolutely dependent on foreign net migration to have any realistic chance to grow at all. Absolute best case scenario - and this is a stretch - is that we might with tremendous effort and luck be able to get domestic net migration to be relatively close to back to zero over time. That's absolute best case scenario, and perhaps quite unlikely. In these parts, foreign migration is absolutely vital for economic dynamism, business establishment creation, desperately needed reinvestment in existing housing stock, etc etc etc.


Also, isn't it funny how, on average, a person who uproots their world, risks their very life on an arduous months-long journey walking through jungle crossing treacherous rivers, dodging cartels, and all manner of natural dangers might be more motivated, resourceful, hardworking, and entrepreneurial than the native population. Go figure!

^ That's what we're starting to see happen now

Despite warning of cold temperatures, migrants choose to come to Chicago
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...hoose-chicago/

Part of me wouldn't be surprised if many migrants who've arrived from central and northern south america would be sick of the weather there primarily because it reminded them of the hardship they faced back home :shrug:
Not based in anything empirical, just thinking about how it would feel to be in their shoes, leaving a hostile environment (especially when you are among the poorest of the poor) to go to a better where the weather has seasons, even if the winter months are freezing...yes please!

Am I the only one who thinks the city is pretty much doing the best it can with respect to the migrants?

I’m not going to say that there hasn’t been rank incompetence in government, because oh boy has there ever.

However, I will say that the very nature of mass immigration probably leads to similar outcomes at some point regardless of who is in charge.

Migrants aren’t stupid. They continue to arrive in Chicago because paths to opportunity are opening up here. And much of that opportunity is not necessarily from government, but from regular people.

I honestly think weather hang-ups is a U.S. thing. Migrant are more likely to prioritize opportunity.

Lots of Americans think all decisions are made based on weather and taxes. Meanwhile, the happiest countries on earth (Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden) are in cold climates with high taxes.

Awesome! Keep the immigrants coming! Time to revitalize the south and west sides!

I’ve heard West Englewood has a burgeoning Venezuelan community now. Any truth or stats behind that? Would love to see that area gain population and investment which, hopefully, spreads outward to other struggling neighborhoods on the south side (Englewood specifically).