Immigrant diasporas in Albion

Albion is home to significant immigrant communities. A history of openness to immigration from across the world has led to a distinctively multi-ethnic population. Note that, owing to intermarriage, partial ancestry and other factors, percentages listed here will add up to significantly more than 100%.

While Indigenous Albans form a significant part of the population, they are not discussed here, as they predate immigration to Albion by millennia and are the recognized native people of the country.

Ukrainian Albans
Ukrainian Albans are Ukrainian immigrants to Albion and descendants thereof. According to the 2020 census, Albion is home to approximately 1.75 million people of Ukrainian ancestry, or nearly 6% of the population. They form the eighth largest ethnic bloc in Albion by percentage. The country's Ukrainian diaspora is the largest in the world outside the Soviet Union.

The bulk of mass Ukrainian immigration began in the late 1800s, mostly coming from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and the region of Bukovyna, then part of Austria-Hungary. Settlement began in the Alban Prairie, where then-Ruthenian immigrants settled by the thousands. The first wave of immigration, which continued until the First World War, was predominated by Ukrainian-speakers of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic faith. Ukrainian immigrants largely settled in the band of aspen parkland across the Alban Prairie, fringing Palliser's Triangle. Their arrival was initially controversial due to linguistic and religious differences, but was generally supported by governments, particularly by S. George Speurling, Interior Minister under the Liberal-Conservative government of Hugh John Silburn. Speurling famously described Ukrainian immigrants as "good quality."

Ukrainian immigration slowed substantially in 1914, but a second wave began in 1915-16 with the refusal of Edward B. "Doc" Green's government to restrict immigration to refugees from perceived enemy countries. Green's determination to avoid conscription during the First World War led to the formation of volunteer battalions drawing from immigrant communities associated with nominal enemy countries. Ukrainians formed part of these forces and fought primarily in France.

Following the war and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, a second wave of Ukrainian immigration to Albion began. This wave drew more evenly between old Galicia and Russian-controlled Ukraine, bringing a mix of Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians into the country, but was heavily influenced by the arrival of professionals and upper-class people from Volhynia, Galicia and Bukovyna, now under Polish and Romanian control respectively. With much of the farmland in the aspen parklands claimed, these immigrants largely settled in urban areas as labourers. Notable centres of Ukrainian activity included Multnomah and the environs, where Ukrainians formed an important pillar of the metals sector, and Kiottowa. Second-wave immigrants were heavily influenced by their country's struggle for independence following the Polish-Ukrainian and Russo-Ukrainian Wars.

A third wave of Ukrainian immigration was spurred following the Second World War, driven heavily by the devastation of the conflict and by subsequent Stalinist purges. This wave of largely anti-Communist Ukrainians waned in 1952 as exit visas became harder to come by.

While improving conditions in the Soviet Union slowed Ukrainian immigration to Albion in the Kosygin years, a short-lived fourth wave was sparked following the Caucasus Crisis and its effects throughout the USSR. Fourth-wave Ukrainian immigrants are largely modern professionals and western Ukrainian nationalists who fled the country as political or economic refugees.

Ukrainian Albans have exercised a significant influence on Alban politics. In particular the group has produced two Prime Ministers, Eugene Woloshyn and Kathryn Cherniak. The Ukrainian Alban Congress is a particularly notable presence, with a well-demonstrated ability for organizing Ukrainians electorally, particularly for politicians opposed to the Soviet Union and in favour of an independent Ukraine. Ukrainian-Alban activists are frequently put on Soviet no-fly lists due to alleged ties to pro-independence groups in Ukraine proper.

Japanese Albans
Japanese Albans (日系アルビオン人, Nikkei Arubionjin) are Albans of Japanese descent. They comprise Albion's fifth-largest non-Indigenous community and the largest non-White settler demographic. Approximately 2.42 million people, or just short of 8% of the population, claimed at least some Japanese descent in the 2020 census.

Social and economic ties between Albion and Japan were driven largely by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of the early 20th century. Good relations between the British and Japanese Empires, together with Albion's Pacific orientation, resulted in significant trade ties between Windsor and Tokyo. The first Japanese settler in Canada arrived in Victoria, Vancouver in 1868, following the Meiji Restoration. The first wave of immigration settled mainly on Vancouver Island and in the Golden Fishhook region, with Windsor, Peterborough and Granville hosting important diaspora communities. This wave of immigration was driven heavily by increasing population densities on the Home Islands creating poor living conditions and high unemployment. Immigrants were disproportionately drawn from younger sons of families, who would otherwise be disinherited by the Japanese practice of primogeniture. In 1907 alone, 40,000 Japanese immigrants arrived in Albion.

Japanese immigration was curtailed following 1908 by the Asian Exclusion Act, driven largely by the sentiment of racist whites who blamed Japanese and Chinese labourers for "stealing their jobs." The law was partially rolled back by the World War I-era Labour goverment, but while Japanese immigration was allowed again, the restriction on Chinese immigration was maintained due to wartime alliances. A second wave of Japanese immigration took place from 1919 until roughly the onset of the Great Depression.

A third wave of immigration took place following the Second World War, with a number of families coming from Japanese Formosa along with those from the mainland. Japanese immigrants in this period were among a broader wave of migration sparked by the 1946 repeal of the Asian Exclusion Act by the government of Laurence Geddes, part of a broader drive to open the country to Asian immigrants. Nevertheless Japanese immigrants were considered more desirable and welcomed than those from China and in particular Thailand, who were viewed as enemy aliens even for years after the conflict. Japanese immigrants were viewed as friends and integrated more readily into Alban society. Immigration slowed following the 1950s and the beginnings of a massive upsurge in the Japanese economy, but a fourth wave of migration took place beginning in the 1990s, largely consisting of professionals and their families.

Japanese Albans form an important cultural cluster within Albion. Several prominent mayors, first ministers and parliamentarians have been of Japanese descent. In particular, much of the design of Albion's postwar social safety net can be attributed to Ted Sugiyama, head of the Alban civil service under the government of Len Jeffrey.

Significant Japanese districts can be found in most large Alban cities, particularly Windsor and Granville. Granville in particular is a majority-minority city, with Japanese people making up the largest demographic cohort.