June 5, 2007

Mexican mediocrity

A chart in the NYT graphically illustrates the mediocrity of the human capital that recent Mexican immigrants (legal and whichever illegal ones the Census Bureau could find) bring. While over 40% of recent immigrants from India have an advanced degree, only about 1% of Mexican immigrants do. Over 60% of Mexican immigrants have less than a high school diploma. While about 20% of African immigrants work in "science, engineering, technology, or health," only about 1% of Mexicans do. Almost three times the proportion of Filipino immigrants claim to speak English "very well" as do Mexican immigrants.

I'm often denounced for drawing attention to the salience of race and ethnicity to immigration policy. Under an ideal immigration system -- limited numbers of legal immigrants chosen for their high human capital rather than for family connections -- race and ethnicity would be much less relevant a question. India, for example, is not a high IQ region on the whole. If we imported millions of random Indians we would have trouble. But, because Indian immigrants tend to be selected for skills, assimilation into middle class America is less of a problem for them.

Highly skilled immigrants without extensive family connections already in the U.S. tend to blend in well to middle class suburban America. Moreover, the fat life in America can corrupt people -- look at the horrible rates of obesity and diabetes seen in many long-established Mexican-American communities, such as in South Texas. Similarly, among Hispanics, the illegitimacy and crime rates go up in subsequent generations. (For Latinos, overall, illegitimacy is about twice the Anglo white rate, and the imprisonment rate is three times as high -- and 13 times as high as the Asian-American rate.)

So, if we thought rationally about immigration, we would want to bring in people with the most human capital to start with so their descendents would be well set to withstand the morally degrading temptations of American life.


In contrast, the current system of massive illegal immigration and most legal immigration driven by "family reunification" makes race and ethnicity extremely useful predictive markers. Because we aren't choosing Mexicans, they are choosing for us, we are getting run of the mill Mexicans. Although there is a lot of hopeful chatter about how the latest Mexican illegals are going to turn into Italians Real Soon Now, that kind of talk is a lot more persuasive to members of the media elite in DC and NYC, where Mexicans are new and exotic, than in parts of the country that have had huge Hispanic presences for many generations, such the Upper Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and Southern California. Recall Tim Russert's recent humiliation of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for New Mexico's dismal rankings on most measures of human welfare -- and that's after 159 years of Hispanic assimilation into the U.S. Richardson didn't suddenly make New Mexico an underachiever of a state -- it's always been that way due to the human capital of the inhabitants.

No wonder Barack Obama is leading the charge against the one good thing in the Senate immigration bill -- the attempt at reforming and rationalizing the current system of legal immigration along the Canadian point-system model. His whole early career was devoted to racially divisive politics, and immigration is a good way to add to the divisions with American society. It's good for politicians, bad for Americans.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

48 comments:

Anonymous said...

No wonder Barack Obama is leading the charge against reforming the currest system. His whole career was devoted to racially divisive politics, and immigration is a good way to add to the divisions with American society.

And that's true whether the immigrants are high-IQ or not. India is a highly corrupt society and that corruption is imported with its immigrants. In the UK, we've had scandals with the Hinduja brothers, Lakshmi Mittal, Keith Vaz and a "conservative" lawyer called Kamlesh Bahl, whose case was snapped up by a Trotskyist lawyer called Imran Khan:

Imran Khan is a luminary of the discrimination industry and was one of the lawyers who represented the family of Stephen Lawrence after his murder [by white racists]. ... The Bahl resolutions and the Lawrence private prosecution form a pattern: in each case a course of conduct plainly misconceived and predictably doomed to failure; in each case actions whose sole practical effect is a further stirring of the pot of racial grievance, animosity and discord.

The Times, 29 January 2002.

In Black Mischief, the Master, always an acute (and even-handed) observer of "diversity", writes of how:

Basil and Mr Youkoumian took their seats in the train... There were six other occupants of the train -- a Greek who offered them oranges and soon fell asleep, four Indians who discussed their racial grievances in an eager undertone... (ch. 4)

Anonymous said...

Where I live (NYC area) much of the hispanic population is from Puerto Rico. Since Puerto Ricans are citizens, they are free to migrate to the US at will. Frankly they aren't such terrible citizens.

I agree it would be nice to accept just educated people. But if the US ends up like a richer version of Brazil, it won't be the end of the world.

Anonymous said...

Steve, stop with these... these... statistics! Mexicans are enriching our nation and that's all we need to know!

I'm not sure how, exactly, but I know that they are because that is what every right thinking person tells me. Maybe they're bringing the complete works of Diego Rivera over the Rio Grande strapped to their backs.

Anonymous said...

A nicely scathing article by Ilana Mercer (another Jewish intellectual who opposes the current wave of illegal Mexican immigration, btw): Please, Can My Sister Become an Illegal Immigrant?

Anonymous said...

Blast the pro-Amnesty crowd with mariachi music until they come to their senses. It shouldn't take long.

Anonymous said...

mexicans are smarter than indians, so relatively speaking the border jumper situation could be a lot worse. indonesia or bangladesh or pakistan could be on the border. if india was on the border, with over a billion people, the US might already be years into a general decline or a civil war.

mexicans are mediocre, but the people in indonesia and bangladesh are below that. they're so not good at anything that they don't even appear on the radar.

it is hypocritical for US politicians to defend mexican border jumpers simply because it is easy for them to jump the border, but at the same time be against ships filled with chinese illegals landing on the california coast all day every day.

not only are the chinese smarter than mexicans, they're harder working too. that's a pretty big problem for anybody defending the mexican invasion. indeed i often wonder if i should start a smuggling operation to bring in chinese illegals to undercut mexican illegals, and on what grounds the US government could possibly prosecute me.

Anonymous said...

'While over 40% of recent immigrants from India have an advanced degree, only about 1% of Mexican immigrants do. Over 60% of Mexican immigrants have less than a high school diploma. While about 20% of African immigrants work in "science, engineering, technology, or health," only about 1% of Mexicans do. Almost three times the proportion of Filipino immigrants claim to speak English "very well" as do Mexican immigrants.'

You call that mediocraty! It is well below mediocraty!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for noticing Obama's divisiveness. The popular media will never shine a spotlight on the real man beneath the facade.

I am sad to admit that the Democratic Party has been mostly taken over by people who have a hard time tying their own shoes in the morning. For a Democrat to be elected, they have to appeal to that segment of society.r

Anonymous said...

But, because Indian immigrants tend to be selected for skills, assimilation into middle class America is less of a problem for them.

True in some cases, but still Indians are very organized politically and can be extremely ethnocentric.

I know a few ethnic Indians who were born and raised in this country, yet have become involved in Indian political organizations. One even has an arranged marriage - from India, of course.

Indians have nil, nada, zero history of oppression in this ocuntry, but the number of Indian political organizations is disturbingly high.

Anonymous said...

...but the number of Indian political organizations is disturbingly high.

This is because they're Indians. Not Americans. And this is true no matter where they were born, and whether or not they hold US citizenship. Or could quite reasonably be considered economically well integrated -- e.g. solidly middle class, or better (arranged marriages are still very common among this subset).

I'm white. Suppose I were to go to live in China. After a while I learn the language and become a citizen of China (no idea if this is possible or not). Then when my nationality comes up, I say: I'm Chinese. Don't you think people would look at me as if I was nuts?

We live in the era of modern nation states. And the reality is that ethnicity and nationality are more closely linked than it is politically correct to mention.

The 2000 census showed that one third of the adults in the San Francisco Bay Area were born in another country. Many areas have a heavy concentration of "ethnics". This includes Indians (and in some places their Sikh temples). On the ground, this means it doesn't really have the 'look and feel' of America anymore. Personally, I find this objectionable, even if a large number of them do have advanced degrees.

eh

Anonymous said...

Steve,

large numbers of mexican immigrants are good for the political future of the Bush dynasties ...

They do not have the intelligence to ever field a challenge to the Bush dynasties, but they help keep the prices high for land and other comodities that the Bush dynasties are involved in.

Anonymous said...

I cannot get the chart to come up even after removing all the JavaScript restrictions on my browser (FireFox with NoScript extension). Here is a link for anyone else having similar problems.

Anonymous said...

"But if the US ends up like a richer version of Brazil, it won't be the end of the world."

Brazil has a couple of advantageous over us right now, in dealing with its underclass:

1) Brazil has a younger demographic, so it's social security and pension costs aren't in as bad shape as ours.

2) Brazil has a trade surplus and primary budget surplus now, due partly to the commodity boom, combined with fiscal responsibility.

3) Brazil's welfare programs are less generous than ours and are geared toward promoting positive behavior, e.g., poor parents are given money to get their kids immunized and keep them in school (rather than making them work).

4) Brazil isn't being inundated with new low-skill immigrants.

5) The racial politics of Brazil are less divisive than here.

Anonymous said...

Actually Mark raises a very significant point. Based on my limited observations, Indian political activism/ethnocentricity seems disturbingly high.

For example, there was an utterly bizarre situation a couple of years ago in Northern California, where Indian-activists attempted to get all mentions of the traditional Hindu caste-system deleted from all public school textbooks on the grounds that it was a lie concocted by the British colonialists and also "psychologically harmful" to young Indian schoolchildren. A couple of Stanford professors said that yes, there was a Hindu caste system, but they were shouted down as leftist anti-Hindu racists and it looked like the Hindu activists---backed by their large political contributions---would get their way and history/reality would be totally rewritten to claim that casteism were a hoax created by the British

The only reason it didn't happen was that a different bunch of Hindu-activists---from a low-caste background---got organized and denounced the first group as being high-caste Hindu racists affiliated with the quasi-fascist Indian BPN(?) party, seeking to hide the long history of high-caste racism.

With the two groups of Hindu-activists endlessly denouncing each other as vile racists/leftists/fascists, the CA textbook people just gave up on the whole project, and the controversy gradually disappeared from the media.


By contrast---and I fully recognize that the commenters on this website will strongly disagree with me---but I would argue that Latinos in general---and Mexican immigrants in particular---are among the least politically-organized or ethnocentric-activist groups in America today, making some of the critiques of the anti-immigrationists quite ridiculuous. After all, Mexicans come from Mexico where pretty much everyone is Mexican---so ethnic-activism would make absolutely no logical sense as a traditional social custom in that background.

By contrast, Indian come from India, which contains a very large number of mutually competing and hostile castes and sub-castes, hence is extremely fertile soil for ethnic-activism, often of an extreme type.

Ron Guhname said...

High IQ immigrants are not necessarily a blessing. They have the potential for undesirable political and cultural influence, and frankly I'm not too thrilled that of the last 5 doctors my wife and I have had, none has been native-born.

Anonymous said...

By contrast, Indian come from India, which contains a very large number of mutually competing and hostile castes and sub-castes, hence is extremely fertile soil for ethnic-activism, often of an extreme type.

And in terms of ethnic diversity, which is America headed more towwards? India or Mexico?

America has ethnocentric political groups demanding special handouts for themselves. That's an arms race which, once begun, no one can leave themselves out of.

That's why reducing all immigration, period, is crtitical.

Anonymous said...

From my experience with Indian-Americans, most of their organizing is of the business/networking type, rather than political organizing. The idea that somehow they are not American if they join, say, an Indus Entrepreneurs organization is nonsense. Some of you are always going to think of them as Indians first, because of their ethnicity, so it does them no good to pretend that they aren't Indian ethnically. And it does them plenty of good to network with fellow Indian-Americans in similar fields.

Given their level of achievement and financial success in America, Indians are not very active politically. Maybe if white nationalists start giving them the Jew treatment, that will change.

Anonymous said...

...and frankly I'm not too thrilled that of the last 5 doctors my wife and I have had, none has been native-born.

I didn't like the Chinese primary care doctor with a noticeable accent that my HMO assigned to me. So I asked for a list and picked my own.

...Indian political activism/ethnocentricity seems disturbingly high.

It doesn't 'disturb' me at all. It is expected, natural, and their right. After all, they are Indians, not Americans.

What I do find "disturbing" is that even though all of the evidence shows Whites are well on the way to being minoritzed in their own country, they seem almost totally unwilling or incapable of organizing effectively to prevent this. Apparently mostly because they are afraid to be called names.

eh

Anonymous said...

I haven't thought about the high status immigrants in quite some time. I've been out of school for years and have little interaction with the scientific/medical community where I imagine they must be, since statistics indicate they are here, somewhere.

I have had an Indian male call me a white monkey. He made the remark in a university library as he passed me. I don't know what the provocation was and wasn't very upset. I pegged him as an Indian because of the way females near him were dressed, otherwise he could've been muslim. I do worry that enough of these jerks, in high paying jobs could be a problem.

Just remember though. The more Indian's we import to take technical jobs, the lower the wages for those jobs will be. If anyone else experiences this kind of rudeness, hit back with a comment about their salaries.

Anonymous said...

Again, Mark raises another good point, one rarely made by anti-immigrationists.

During the current debate, it seems like about 95% of the anti-immigrationists are mostly complaining about the entry of immigrants of lower education/ability/wealth, and frequently even defensively praising the immigration of high education/ability/wealth immigrants. The reason given is that the former group become a "burden" on our society, while the latter are beneficial.

But this is actually a complicated calculation. Higher education/ability/wealth groups are much more likely to be able to seize political/economic/social control of the society they enter, and often move it in ways that the previous inhabitants find very disagreeable. By contrast, even vastly larger numbers of lower education/ability/wealth immigrants are much less likely to be able to achieve such a transformation of control.

This was part of the reason that the Chinese and Japanese immigrants were historically so hated and feared by California's white population, while relatively little resentment or concern was directed toward California's large Mexican-American population.

I'm personally much more in the pro-immigrationist camp---though strongly opposed to Bush's ridiculous Amnesty Plan---but I think these sorts of issues should at least be given at least some thought by both sides of the debate.

Anonymous said...

I can think of plenty of other countries having problem with low-status immigrants. I can't think of many having problems with high-status ones (chrysoperil's post was news to me, I thought it was just Muslims forming and underclass and whatnot with Sikhs and Hindus not rocking the boat). Uganda didn't get any better after kicking out the Indian "exploiters" either, it went down the tubes all the faster.

togo said...

You're wrong -- we aren't getting "run of the mill" Mexicans. We're getting the ambitious, hard-working, responsible ones, just as we did over the past two centuries with the Irish and Germans and Jews and Poles and Italians and Swedes . . . .

Can you prove that ANY of that is true?

meep said...

It seems a little obvious to me... it's just a wee bit easier for your average Mexican to get to the U.S. than your average Indian or African. It takes quite a bit more money to get here physically and there are more barriers.

Even if there were absolutely no demographic differences in the home populations of these immigrants (indeed, if you're looking at the overall home population, the Indians and Africans probably come off worse - the per capita income is less, and the vast majority probably don't get much schooling), we'd get a different profile for those who end up here permanently, as those from father away and with more barriers have to work a lot harder at getting in and spend a lot more money.

Anonymous said...

"Send me your poor..." the lady says, and that's exactly what we do. Middle class and rich Mexicans live much better in Mexico than in the USA, and those who decide to cross the river illegally are not the elite. They hardly know how to read or write.

Unknown said...

You call that mediocraty! It is well below mediocraty!

'While over 40% of recent immigrants from India have an advanced degree, only about 1% of Mexican immigrants do. Over 60% of Mexican immigrants have less than a high school diploma. While about 20% of African immigrants work in "science, engineering, technology, or health," only about 1% of Mexicans do. Almost three times the proportion of Filipino immigrants claim to speak English "very well" as do Mexican immigrants.'

I call that innumeracy. I don't know the mean IQ of Mexico, but India's is 85 so the former could well be higher.

Indian immigrants != Indian general population. The world is bigger than your suburb.

Unknown said...

Given their level of achievement and financial success in America, Indians are not very active politically. Maybe if white nationalists start giving them the Jew treatment, that will change.

Now I understand why you never sign your posts. I don't blame you, I wouldn't want that baggage following me around either.

Anonymous said...

"You call that mediocraty!"

Maybe you should learn to spell before you criticize the intelligence of others.

Anonymous said...

"India, for example, is not a high IQ region on the whole. If we imported millions of random Indians we would have trouble."

Aight there, Kipling...reality begs to differ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AverageIQ-Map-World.png

Also, if you're going to attempt to fit an entire race into a box crafted of moron, you'd be well-served to not have glaring grammatical mistakes in your text, i.e. the missing 'a' article that was added (in bold) in the quote above.

Anonymous said...

You're wrong -- we aren't getting "run of the mill" Mexicans. We're getting the ambitious, hard-working, responsible ones....

....who have unambitious, uneducated, irresponsible kids.

Anonymous said...

To anonymous who posted at 6/05/2007 8:01 PM:

Your wikipedia reference does not mean what you think it means. I assume you meant to imply that because India and the U.S. are the same color on the map, that the present populations have the same mean I.Q. You neglected to read the explanatory note below the map:

"Values are average IQ scores for the indigenous peoples of each region. For example, the values for Australia are for Indigenous Australians, not the immigrants of European ancestry that now make up the majority of the Australian population."

Anonymous said...

Actually, all the data I'm aware of indicates that the Indian Subcontent has the world's lowest average IQ scores after Africa, being something around 5-10 points below the average for Latin America or the Mid East/North Africa.

However, there's also a good deal of evidence that malnutrition and even cultural deprivation can have a significant lowering effect on such scores, and the absolutely dreadful poverty faced by the average Indian are probably an important factor in those scores.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the enormous number and social diversity of the different semi-self-contained Indian population groups---the castes and subcastes---render it quite likely that the Indian ability distribution curve is highly multi-modal. Thus, average Indian abilities might be pretty low, but some particular indian subgroups could certainly have distributions with a mean above (say) the European average.

Finally, remember that there are a billion-odd Indians, and the ones who come to the U.S. are probably in the top 1% or 0.1%, meaning that they are certainly very smart indeed compared to the average American.

Anonymous said...

From my experience with Indian-Americans, most of their organizing is of the business/networking type, rather than political organizing.

What if whites did this kind of organizing? Can you imagine whites in this country forming an ethnocentric, whites-only business association and getting away with it?

Uganda didn't get any better after kicking out the Indian "exploiters" either, it went down the tubes all the faster. - tggp

When Uganda kicked them out, what entrepenurial class was left? Without indians, America would still have plenty of entrepeneurs.

You're wrong -- we aren't getting "run of the mill" Mexicans. We're getting the ambitious, hard-working, responsible ones.

The problem isn't that they don't work hard. The problem is that they lack self-motivation - they only work hard when forced to by circumstances and when others make them do so. As we're already seeing, the second generation, who have access to welfare handouts and to the ballot box, doesn't do as well. What will happen when they are so politically powerful that they can redistribute even more of the wealth?

All of the (alleged) economic gains from immigration will be lost.

Anonymous said...

"What if whites did this kind of organizing? Can you imagine whites in this country forming an ethnocentric, whites-only business association and getting away with it?"

There are plenty of white networking groups: most evangelical churches have business networking groups; there are also the Knights of Columbus, who tend to be white, and similar groups.

Anonymous said...

"Now I understand why you never sign your posts. I don't blame you, I wouldn't want that baggage following me around either."

That's an interesting non-response. No WN 'scholars' yet for you to crib off for posts on this market-dominant minority?

Anonymous said...

Anon at 6/05/2007 10:33 PM

I thought Svigor's put down was quite apposite.

Are you suggesting without those horrid white racists (who stupidly thought they had a country of their own) had been really nice to Jews, the Jews would have intergrated nicely into the Euro population?

So in effect you are admitting that they, the Jews, do currently pursue a group strategy at varience with the welfare of the majority white population. Thanks for clearing that up.

Anonymous said...

So...at least some of you oppose even legal, skilled immigration because you don't like those "doctor(s) with a noticeable accent" coming over here and building their "temples" in areas with "a large concentration of ethnics", ruining the "'look and feel' of America".

To those commenters: either explain how any of this hurts you, me, or anybody else...or just give up the veneer of respectability and join the Klan.

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of white networking groups: most evangelical churches have business networking groups; there are also the Knights of Columbus, who tend to be white, and similar groups.

None of these groups are oriented around race and none of them exclude non-whites from membership. The fact that they are mostly white is incidental not intentional.

Anonymous said...

Midwesterner:

"To those commenters: either explain how any of this hurts you, me, or anybody else...or just give up the veneer of respectability and join the Klan."

The Chinese immigrant doctors with the temerity to treat white people are lowering the wages for white nationalist doctors?

Anonymous said...

To those commenters: either explain how any of this hurts you, me, or anybody else...or just give up the veneer of respectability and join the Klan.

I don't have to explain anything to you or anyone else. It can be nothing more than my personal preference -- a preference for a majority white America. Which is what is at stake (whether you agree it's worth preserving or not). Maybe not yet in fly over country, but it's already happening in some places, and you may not have long to wait to experience one aspect of it yourself.

Mexico, China, and India have, between them, about 2.5 billion people. If, say, only 10% of them were able to both score enough points in the new system and had the desire to come here, that's a pool of 250 million potential immigrants from these three countries alone. It is insanity.

These people are all free to become as happy and wealthy as they are able. But I'd strongly prefer that they do it back in their own countries.

No one is suggesting that here in America everyone is not equal before the law, so your smear, implying advocating immigration restriction is akin to membership in the KKK, is pathetic.

eh

Doug1 said...

6:17am anonymous said:
I agree it would be nice to accept just educated people. But if the US ends up like a richer version of Brazil, it won't be the end of the world.

A good deal of why the US is richer than Brazil is because it has historically had a very different ethnic mix and percentages, and a very different dominant culture.

We should accept just educated/higher IQ people to the degree possible. We’ll always get lots of uneducated ones due to seepage we can’t stop even with much more rigorous and enforced methods (including employer sanctions). We could however get a lot fewer of the uneducated, which would be very good four our own less educated / left side of the bell curve citizens.

Anonymous said...

6:17am anonymous said:
"I agree it would be nice to accept just educated people. But if the US ends up like a richer version of Brazil, it won't be the end of the world."

Then move to Brazil, rather than forcing Brazil onto us.

Anonymous said...

"

So...at least some of you oppose even legal, skilled immigration because you don't like those "doctor(s) with a noticeable accent" coming over here and building their "temples" in areas with "a large concentration of ethnics", ruining the "'look and feel' of America".

To those commenters: either explain how any of this hurts you, me, or anybody else...or just give up the veneer of respectability and join the Klan.

By Midwesterner, at 6/06/2007 7:57 AM"

It hurts me if my doctor can't understand me, nor I him. It hurts me, if he feels no great responsibility to patients of another ethnic group, but just sees me as a source of income. Large numbers of such as him, building their temples in what was once a predominantly christian country hurts us by turning our home into someone elses home. Finally, they hurt us, because they don't trust us, and we don't trust them, and trust is integral to a cohesive, prosperous country.

Anonymous said...

"Uganda didn't get any better after kicking out the Indian "exploiters" either, it went down the tubes all the faster. - tggp"

When Uganda kicked them out, what entrepenurial class was left? Without indians, America would still have plenty of entrepeneurs.

This is a good factual reply to the New America Narrative which was manufactured by the hard Left and now propagates through the media and around the internet.

The New America Narrative says that the American people pre 20th century mass immigration - the founding Anglo-Saxon American stock plus other northern europeans, were always, and continue to be, dullards.

The astounding, unparalleled political achievements of these people in the 18th century, and the astounding, unparalleled industrial achievements of these people in 19th century America simply do not matter. It is all trivial detritus now. Like, for example, modern representative democracy, light bulbs, telephones and about a million other breakthroughs.

Follow this logic far enough and you get to a point of base idiocy where if we, the citizens, had the temerity to attrit and deport whatever "entrepreneurial" illegal immigrants are living in the USA today, that action will cause the the US economy to collapse! Just like Uganda!

Get it? Traditional white America is at the intellectual level of native Ugandans.

Do we all understand how insulting, ignorant and contemptuous this line of argument is? It is beyond shame. But that is the hard Left. No shame. No honesty. Only seething hatred.

America from 1600-2000 will be studied as a civilizational miracle in the history books for thousands of years to come. But today's elites would prefer to flush the first 300+ years of that period down the memory hole, in order to better facilitate the dispossession of the people who built the country. The country which, ironically, became such a magnet for the immigrants in the first place.

Anonymous said...

"They busted their asses on farms and in factories; the smart ones taught themselves science and engineering."

And they did so for THEIR posterity, not someone elses. They labored to build a country for their descendants, not the descendants of people half a world away in India.

And today this country teaches the world science and engineering in our universities.

If this WASP-derived country is so distasteful to you, why don't you pick up and move to a more vibrant, dynamic nation, like guatemala, or perhaps your beloved Uganda - you could be the new model minority there.

Anonymous said...

It hurts me if my doctor can't understand me,...

This is exactly right, and I would have thought obvious. In addition, I have some feeling for the quality of medical education in the US, but not for other countries. If a doctor treating me has such a heavy accent that I have trouble understanding everything he says, then I logically also have a question about where he was educated. However, I chose not to ask, which I thought would be rude. Instead, and in this one case, I asked to change my assigned primary care doctor, and picked an American sounding name from a list. Who happened to be black. And with whom I am perfectly satisfied.

Others are free to use whatever criteria they want to choose their medical care providers. But please don't imply that I'm some sort of KKK-esque bigot because I want to be treated by a doctor with whom I can confidently communicate.

eh

Anonymous said...

"They labored to build a country for their descendants, not the descendants of people half a world away in India."

They probably did so assuming that their descendants would be as hard-working as themselves, but, in most cases, they were wrong.

"If this WASP-derived country is so distasteful to you, why don't you pick up and move to a more vibrant, dynamic nation..."

I never said I found this country distasteful -- this is a great country. My point is that today's WASPs aren't capable of keeping it great by alone: they need smart immigrants from India, Europe and elsewhere to do the jobs that not enough WASP Americans are smart enough or ambitious enough to do themselves anymore.

"If a doctor treating me has such a heavy accent that I have trouble understanding everything he says, then I logically also have a question about where he was educated."

It's logical if you don't know much about the licensing and residency requirements for physicians in the United States. American physicians make it extremely difficult for foreign-trained physicians to work here: even an experienced physician from a first world country like the U.K. or Sweden would have to re-do his residency in America to be licensed as a physician here. More likely, your physician with the foreign accent was educated in a U.S. medical school, because there weren't enough qualified Americans applying to that school.

Anonymous said...

"To those commenters: either explain how any of this hurts you, me, or anybody else...or just give up the veneer of respectability and join the Klan."

India is not forced to explain to anyone why it won't let me, an educated WASP, become a citizen.

South Korea is not forced to explain to anyone why it won't let me, an educated WASP, become a citizen.

Japan is not forced to explain to anyone why it won't let me, an educated WASP, become a citizen.

Saudi Arabia is not forced to explain why it won't let me, an educated WASP, become a citizen.

How does it hurt me? Me and my descendants have pretty much nowhere to go but here. This is our home. We let them overrun us, but they wouldn't even take a handful of our citizens, even if they did want to move there.

Our population - at current rates, before the massive increases in immigration that this bill will enact - is headed for 600 million by the end of this century.

We just celebrated the 400th anniversary of the settling of Jamestown. Even that 400 years is just a historical blip.

When considering immigration policy, let's behave as if time will continue beyond the end of next year - because it will.

Anonymous said...

American physicians make it extremely difficult for foreign-trained physicians to work here:...

Good for them; I wish American engineers had some of the same lobbying clout, although the situations, e.g. regarding economic need and safety concerns, are obviously not identical.

...even an experienced physician from a first world country like the U.K. or Sweden would have to re-do his residency in America to be licensed as a physician here.

Residency isn't the same as medical school. I know nothing about the admissions process for foreign medical schools, e.g. what the standards ('qualifications') are. Or the quality of instruction (to be fair, I'm not an expert on the same in the US, but like I said I have a feel for it). As I understand it, GME (internship) can be as short as one year, and after that passing a test gets you a license. But I am not an expert on licensing of foreign medical graduates. I don't really want to be; I just want a doctor I can communicate well with, preferably one who went to medical school in the US. And English understandability/fluency is one clue to that -- one criterion I will use. If that's OK with you.

More likely, your physician with the foreign accent was educated in a U.S. medical school, because there weren't enough qualified Americans applying to that school.

Regarding the 'more likely' part in a slightly different context, I have no idea whether it is true or not that most foreign-born doctors were educated (attended medical school) here or abroad. But your specific point is total nonsense. Every medical school has minimum requirements for applicants; these minimum requirements are met by all who are eventually considered for admission -- i.e. if you don't 'qualify', i.e. meet the minimum requirements, then it is senseless to apply. Typically, you don't even have to have a degree to 'qualify'; practically, almost all do. Many more 'qualified' people apply than can be admitted. In the US, it is no doubt also true that many more 'qualified' Whites apply than can be admitted. So it is clear that a class of 'qualified' students could consist entirely of Whites. Of course this never happens, for a number of reasons, among them competitive admissions. But it's not clear to me that someone with a 3.9 GPA will necessarily make a better doctor than someone with a 3.8. (In a similar vein, dentistry is largely hand work, but there is no test for that ability.) The personal interview may help here. Anyway, there are plenty of 'qualified' Whites to fill up every medical school class in the US. And the vast majority of these people would make perfectly good doctors.

eh