The nativists are rational: In honor of the New York Times fact-free smear of the guys over at VDARE, let's try a novel approach to immigration: statistics.
Our saintly editors mock Marcus Epstein for writing that moderate diversity is good if it brings desirable traditions to the country. So I guess they prefer undesirable traditions? It seems that way. Our cultural elites appear to celebrate the massive movement of illiterates into the country. The more, the better. If I wanted peasants as a political constituency to control and exploit, and if I wanted house servants too dumb to argue with me, I might call immigration restrictionists bad names, too.
The 2001-2003 American Community Survey asked almost 2.4 million people about their birthplace and their educational level. Respondents reported dozens of countries, so let's keep things simple and limit it to the ten most educated groups and the ten least. (Don't ask me who some of these whites are).
Top Ten
Kuwait--nonwhite 13.8
Tanzania--white 13.6
Southwest Asians 13.5
Taiwan--nonwhite 13.4
Malaysia--white 13.4
Cameroon 13.4
Kenya--white 13.4
India--white 13.3
Zimbabwe--nonwhite 13.3
South Africa--white 13.2
Botton Ten
Guatemala--nonwhite 8.03
Laos--white 8.02
El Salvador--white 8.01
Cambodia--white 8.00
Cambodia--nonwhite 7.91
El Salvador--nonwhite 7.79
Azores 7.73
Laos--nonwhite 7.57
Mexico--white 7.49
Mexico--nonwhite 7.14
I'm shocked, shocked that Mexico is on the very bottom of a VERY long list. "7" means the respondents went no further than tenth grade. "13" is for those who completed an associates degree. The New York Times loses sleep over America's educational ills, but welcomes a limitless supply of illiterate, high school dropouts from the south, and libels concerned citizens like Epstein.
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Well obviously the farther away a country is, the more resources it takes to get here. So African immigrants do quite well since they need to be rich or educated enough to qualify for student visas. Mexico will naturally have the lowest level of education since even an illiterate can walk across the border.
ReplyDeleteHow come Canada isn't the lowest then?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSomeday I hope we can find a way to normalize educational attainment by country of origin (or country of instruction, if available). For example, Egyptian immigrants are quite well-educated on average, but based on my lmited interactions with some engineers educated there I would tend to devalue the degrees awarded by their institutions.
ReplyDeleteA. Why would you be surprised, mexico is in shambles and doesn't have the necessary infrastructure to properly educate it's populace.
ReplyDeleteB. Democrats want to provide education to illegal immigrants so they won't become an american serf class.
C. *Insert joke about illiterate high-school drop outs from "the south"*