Were your parents immigrants?

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I read some interesting research which indicated higher rates of autism amongst immigrant families.
So I thought I'd ask the question:

Were your parents immigrants?

This poll applies to immigration to any country, before you were diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition.
Feel free to share your family history, too!

(Mine's boring, my parents were English born and bred and I was brought up there).

Neither of my parents are immigrants.


My father migrated elsewhere.

The plan was, supposedly, my whole family migrating with him right after.
But that didn't happened -- it's been over 18 years now.

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No, my parents were both British.

Why is everything a cause for autism? Premature birth, birth complications, C-section, older parents, teenage parents, having an older sibling, having a younger sibling, having a twin, now parents being immigrants..

Yeah, to be fair I don't think they said immigration was a cause of autism.
They'd just found higher rates of autism amongst immigrants - with unknown reason for the link.

The only link I could think of would be if maybe the immigration process was really stressful and maternal stress affected an unborn child? Or it could be related to the different environments moving from one country to another, or from country areas to a city? But nobody knows*.

The poll is really just for discussion and to get some interesting stories on family history.

*(Actually, I did come across a blog claiming that autism arose from the mixing of races and that it was never seen in racially pure populations, but decided the blogger was, at best, a crackpot).

My parents are both Canadian.

My mother’s mother came to the US as a child. Both my parents were US born.

My father was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and American father and brought to the US as an infant.

yes and i am an immigrant too

I'm an immigrant.

I think immigrants are generally associated with higher educational levels and mathematical, medical and scientific skills. That's what they prefer here. I guess I can see those career tracks being more correlated with autism.

Neither parent was an immigrant nor were my grandparents.

My father’s side came to the US about the 1840s. My maternal grandmother arrived in the US from Russia in 1910 at age 6.

The majority of Americans will have an immigrant background. Does America have higher rates of autism than nations with lower rates of immigration?

Also, it would be nice to see a link to the study.

Here is an article that might make this discussion a bit deeper:

Why autism seems to cluster in some immigrant groups

This issue is not about immigration per se, but particular immigrant communities. The data also seem to be a bit ambiguous.