Silly divergence: Have a huge community of Georgians (Caucasus) in Georgia (US)

[Coiler]

To make fun of the (English) name similarities, I figure: How do you get a large number of Caucasus Georgians in the US state of Georgia? POD can be any time after American independence.

 

[Ricardolindo]

To make fun of the (English) name similarities, I figure: How do you get a large number of Caucasus Georgians in the US state of Georgia? POD can be any time after American independence.

While interesting, this is hard for two reasons: 1. Being poorer and more xenophobic, the US South was not attractive for immigrants, especially non-Protestant ones.
2. Georgian peasants were generally too poor to buy tickets to emigrate to the United States. They were servants until 1871. This applied to most ethnicities in the Russian Empire.

 

[Catalunya]

To make fun of the (English) name similarities, I figure: How do you get a large number of Caucasus Georgians in the US state of Georgia? POD can be any time after American independence.

Perhaps a great war in the Caucasus following the fall of the USSR, and the Americans mostly taking in Georgian refugees, spreading them across the US, but mostly in Georgia.

 

[Roger II]

Perhaps a great war in the Caucasus following the fall of the USSR, and the Americans mostly taking in Georgian refugees, spreading them across the US, but mostly in Georgia.

Or anytime really, just chaos-->Georgians fleeing-->a few wind up in Atlanta or Savannah or wherever (or get formally resettled there like Hmong in the upper Midwest, Bosniaks in Des Moines and Richmond, etc). Lots of odd immigrant concentrations out there like Arab-Americans in Michigan or Armenians in Watertown MA, and there's actually a pretty large Persian Jewish community in Atlanta.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Or anytime really, just chaos-->Georgians fleeing-->a few wind up in Atlanta or Savannah or wherever (or get formally resettled there like Hmong in the upper Midwest, Bosniaks in Des Moines and Richmond, etc). Lots of odd immigrant concentrations out there like Arab-Americans in Michigan or Armenians in Watertown MA, and there's actually a pretty large Persian Jewish community in Atlanta.

There are the two problems I mentioned, though. The South was less attractive for immigrants and Georgian peasants were generally too poor to buy tickets to emigrate to the United States.

 

[Coiler]

There are the two problems I mentioned, though. The South was less attractive for immigrants and Georgian peasants were generally too poor to buy tickets to emigrate to the United States.

If it's after 1991, there are multiple wars in Georgia (the country) IOTL, Georgia (the state) has improved from its earlier nadir, and Georgians are a lot wealthier than the czarist/Old South era (which Georgia? Yes.)

 

[Japhy]

While interesting, this is hard for two reasons: 1. Being poorer and more xenophobic, the US South was not attractive for immigrants, especially non-Protestant ones.

I'm not going to try and claim the US South doesn't have problems of poverty or xenophobia but the Delta Chinese, West Virginia Italians, the Hill Country Germans of Texas and dozens of other such communities show that while not easy immigrant communities can and did thrive in the US South.

 

[Steve Brinson]

It occurs to me that one way to do this would be to have ambitious young governor Carter, anxious to prove his anticommunist bona fides, become an enthusiastic proponent of something like Jackson-Vanik at the same time as an uptick in Soviet repression of nationalist groups and the people they think would be receptive. No reason that Georgia SSR would be particularly overrepresented in the numbers there, but I’m guessing that it would work better in the headlines than talking about Moldovans in Macon or whatever.
(On the other hand, the response to Cubans being processed in Arkansas IOTL indicates that politically this might be a tougher lift then it might appear.)

 

[SinghSong]

I'm just wondering- one of the reasons why Australia got a bunch of ethnic White European settlers was on account of the White Australia Policy, and concerted efforts to bring them over to 'mitigate the risk of being overrun and out-bred by non-Whites', via the 'Populate or Perish' program. And if you look at the political history of the US State of Georgia, I'd say that it could well be quite viable and plausible for its leaders to embark upon a similar sort of 'Populate or Perish' program, to (further) diminish the proportionate size of the state's African-American population as much as possible as quickly as possible, with "the end of era of racial segregation" being nigh. As for a starting point to get that ball rolling- how about a significant portion of the Georgia Legion of the Wehrmacht, most of whom surrendered to the Americans after having been assigned to occupy the Netherlands, being granted sanctuary back in the USA (rather than summarily being repatriated back to the Soviet Union, often by force, where the majority would wind up either being executed, banished or sent to the gulags)?

Most plausible founder group would be the survivors of the Georgian Uprising on Texel, in an ATL where the landing to support them in liberating the island by the US Marines- which had been anticipated by the Georgian rebels beforehand but which failed to materialize IOTL- actually took place to rapidly support them in freeing Texel from the Nazis (rather than it being left to the Canadians to come in and mount a clean-up operation almost a full fortnight after VE Day, after the overwhelming majority of the mutineers had already been rounded up and executed by Nazi reinforcements over the course of the 5-6 weeks prior). If they get resettled in the US state of Georgia, most likely in the vicinity of Albany or Augusta (facilitating an active Georgian independence movement in-exile continuing through the Cold War, sponsored by the USA, and perhaps fellow NATO member Turkey as well) perhaps that could provide the impetus needed, and really cement the state's position as the center of the Georgian-American community before the fall of the Soviet Union?

 

[Charles EP M.]

The WW2 ones are a goodie to establish a base for later immigration. How about a way to get Georgians fleeing the Soviet invasion in 1921? Get a reason, you can also have the government-in-exile go to the US to follow the countrymen rather than France and the US keeps it as a way to poke Moscow.

 

[Francisco Cojuanco]

Maybe some refugee resettlement thing at the end of WW2? Or alternatively, the post-independence tensions erupt into chaos, allowing for the same thing?

Yes, it's the South, but then again, you have plenty of Persian Jews in Atlanta, not to mention the Gulf Vietnamese, and heck, the Gulf Chinese.