Except in general people from other countries may be more amenable to union organizing and joining, since they often come from cultures where unions are viewed more positively than in the US, and where more of the workforce is unionized, and may possibly even have experience themselves with unions, or else have family members who do -- or if not with unions, with other kinds of collective political action of sorts that have become less common in the USA
I think this has been shown to be true in grad student unionization drives in the US.
Speaking from my personal experience - which includes involvement in unionization drives, that has never been true. I think this is supported by the evidence.
Maybe if you're talking about immigrants from Western Europe. Otherwise, no.
Is this fact coming from the weighted average of how unionized is the workforce in the diferented countries from which workers comes to USA? Is this true for high and low paying jobs? Are the migrants from these countries representative of the workforce of their country?
Could you provide proof? My first reaction is to be agnostic upon this claim.
I know from observation that international students are often involved in grad student unionization efforts, especially in leadership positions -- anecdotal but generally noted by anyone else paying attention.
The rest is, yes, a theory I have that I don't currently have the data to back up -- and the theory is not just about union density in countries of origin, although that's part of it.
But as far as that part, just for some quick napkin math sanity check, if we're talking "countries from which workers come to USA" -- let's choose Mexico for example. First google hit (this is just a sanity check) says "Approximately 90% of Mexican production workers in industrial enterprises that employ at least twenty-five employees are unionized."
As far as international students, the top countries are China and India. China is it's own thing where unions exist in a completely different context. First google hit for India says "Over all, in India, 34.13% of regular non-agricultural workers are trade union members" -- this is of course much higher than the US. (First google hit says 10% USA, although that may be general not "non-agricultural").
The US is very low in unionization rate compared to most countries, most countries on the planet are going to have higher rates.
But I'm definitely not going to convince you of anything in this HN thread, it would require actually doing some research, like probably original research,, probably including sociological qualitative research actually talking to immigrants and such, not just the off-hand googling I am willing to put the time into now. It's just a theory I am sharing, yes. It would be an interesting research topic... for a grad student in some social science field. :)
Reading my post again, I think to be fair we should say that Mexican unions can often definitely be corrupt in a way that doesn't serve the interests of workers. While this could result in people from there being very cynical about and uninterested in unions -- that is often my personal experience with people from former soviet countries -- my personal experience with people from Mexico (totally anecdotal and subjective sense, not proof in any sense) is still that they come from a culture where it's generally understood that collectively organizing as workers -- and collectively organizing for grassroots political power in other ways -- is a good thing, and a culture where they may have some experience doing so, very differently from most people in the USA.
It's just my theory based on my personal observations and thoughts though, yeah!
And then there's the argument they use to justify why immigration is good, like diversity, inclusion, globalization, ... which may be valid or not.
But isn't it just perfect when your objectives are so closely aligned with what is considered morally right.
To regard these agents as moral actors instead of self-serving profit seekers is just lunacy.