The article says Poles did have ethnic identity: “What little has been written about Poles suggests that the Wolfinger view may be correct: Polish Americans still vote for Poles if they have the opportunity to do so.” The article’s thesis is that Poles were unable to effectively exercise power as a block because the Irish got there first and froze them out of the ethnic grifting.

Whether or not tribalism exists among white ethnics today is besides the point. Corruption is self-perpetuating. The real question is what Chicago would look like today if it had never experienced mass immigration, starting with the Irish. I strongly suspect it would be a better governed city today, like Toronto before the recent mass immigration.

There is a single well-governed city in the world that has experienced mass immigration from multiple ethnic groups, and that’s Singapore. And that’s got an authoritarian, top-down government, and seems to be engaged in selective immigration to maintain a stable ethnic composition and Chinese supermajority.

> But LCN is not in fact the story of Italians in America, and wasn't replicated by other ethnic blocs.

There’s two different things. Mass immigration alone gives rise to ethnic, religious, and cultural conflict, which undermines democracy. Then sometimes you import specific problems from specific places. Organized crime is a bigger problem in Italy even today than in England or Scandinavia. And it was a definitive part of the story of Italians in America. It took decades to eradicate that problem.

I didn't say they didn't have an ethnic identity! I live just outside of Berwyn! I used to live on the north side! There are obviously Poles in Chicago. I asked if you could point to a way in which Polish concentration in Chicago had distorted our politics, especially since your source is mostly about how the Poles got stuffed by people who were here longer than them.

Now we're talking about Singapore for some reason. Is that a concession that you can't identify the aldermen who are illegitimated by their immigrant support?