March 4, 2004

SPONGE-WORTHIES:

A question of identity: Despite new arguments to the contrary, the relentless Latino influx is still good for America (The Economist, Mar 4th 2004)

Mr Huntington produces anecdotes about Latinos booing the American side when the United States played Mexico at soccer in Los Angeles in 1998. But much systematic evidence points in the opposite direction. Latinos are not only making slow but steady progress in terms of home-ownership, business formation and education. They are at least as enthusiastic about American institutions as non-Latinos.

A large opinion poll co-ordinated in 2000 by the Washington Post found that 90% of new arrivals from Latin America believe that it is important for them to change in order to fit in with their adopted country. Only one in ten of second-generation Latinos relies mainly on speaking Spanish. Latinos do not see themselves as a monolithic ethnic group. Nor do they necessarily agree with the politics of their countrymen back home. The New America Foundation's Gregory Rodriguez points out that a significant proportion of the American troops being killed in Iraq are Latinos—and that the commander of the allied liberation forces there, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, grew up in a Texan county that is 98% Mexican-American.

Mr Huntington is right to point out that absorbing large numbers of people from a next-door country poses unusual problems. The United States needs to heed George Bush's call to bring immigrants out of the shadow economy where millions of them now work. It needs to scrap the failed experiment with bilingual education which has left so many immigrants unable to speak English. And it needs to stop pandering to ethnic demagogues with special programmes for ethnic minorities.


The problem being that our multicultural, politically correct culture is less absorbent than it used to be, not that this one immigrant group is uniquely unabsorbable. The war should be on the Left, not on the immigrants.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2004 3:27 PM
Comments

I definitely dissent with you on this one.
I'm concerned about a general decrease in the
intelligence of our population (read I.Q.). I am also concerned that abundant cheap labor will have affects on the work ethic of existing citizens. I would rather see technology fill real labor gaps (where they exist)

This amnesty project is a massive piece of social
engineering that can't be undone and it will effectively end the racial integrity of the country.

Posted by: J.H. at March 4, 2004 4:20 PM

Rule number one when posting on IQ: Don't leave grammatical errors in your comment. Such errors can affect the way you are percieved by readers, making it harder to effect the changes you desire.

Posted by: Jason Johnson at March 4, 2004 4:27 PM

C'mon, J.H., that series of arguments has been advanced for every ethnic group that ever waded ashore, including the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Chinese, some of whom figure in your ancestry I would conjecture.

It is possible that the _rate_ of immigration is too large to permit assimilation in a reasonable time. I don't know if that is where we stand today, only that such a figure must exist.

Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at March 4, 2004 4:31 PM

I will say that yes my ancestry is largely
based in the great tide of non-Anglo immigration
(Ireland/Italy/Quebec).

All I can say is that there are some barriers to
assimilation among non-Europeans that are higher
then for European groups. It certainly has been pushed beyond the pale of polite discussion but that doesn't disprove the hypothesis.

Also, I will admit that the disruption of bringing in massive numbers of European immigrants brought along organized crime and an affinity for socialism that was not present in the country previously.

In addtion some groups were outright agitators for
violent overthrow of the American Republic.

Posted by: J.H. at March 4, 2004 4:57 PM

Thanks Jason,

I'll assume your literate if you assume I am and
yes phonetic mangling is an unconscious habit of
mine.

Posted by: J.H. at March 4, 2004 5:00 PM

I've not found it online yet, but there's an unintentionally hilarious essay in the latest Crisis (March 2004)--The Irish Soldiers of Mexico by Michael Hogan--about Irish-American troops who defected to Mexico during the Mexican-American War to help their brother Catholics fight the Protestant Anglos--religion being more important than nationhood.

It's enough to make Pat Buchanan schizophrenic.

Posted by: oj at March 4, 2004 5:29 PM

Those Irish volunteers where probably hoping they
would get a piece of territory after the war.

Irish volunteers were present (both Protestants and Catholics) in both the Union and the Confederacy. Irish volunteers also fought on
both sides of the Spanish civil war.

Posted by: J.H. at March 4, 2004 5:46 PM

Since you concede that society is less able to assimilate than it used to, perhaps you would also concede that it is rational to restrict immigration until this problem is fixed?

Posted by: Carter at March 4, 2004 10:14 PM

Carter:

We won't fix it--they might.

Posted by: oj at March 4, 2004 10:25 PM

J.H.:

Lowering America's average IQ, or merely her IQ test scores ?

If the latter, why is that a problem ?

In any case, the average American isn't doing much with whatever intellect she does have; Lowering it a bit will produce no difference whatsoever.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 5, 2004 8:04 AM

Michael,

Show me a Latin American country that is not
totally screwed up. Now, is America such a
magical place that it can take mestizos and
Indians that have shown no ability to create
civil society in their own homelands and somehow
come here and flourish?

The way you defame what "Average Americans" do with their intellect is a reflection of what
Neo-cons really think about the rabble of this
country.

By the way American schools were better at one
time (prior to 1965)can you guess why?

There are classes of people in America that benefit from the disruptions caused by massive
immigration. These disruptions wreck our institutions and allow Hollywood rubbish peddlers
to educate our children.

Posted by: J.H. at March 5, 2004 9:27 AM

J.H.

"Show me a Latin American country that is not
totally screwed up. Now, is America such a
magical place that it can take mestizos and
Indians that have shown no ability to create
civil society in their own homelands and somehow
come here and flourish?"

Perhaps. If you look at the history of Chinese, East Indian, Irish, Italian, Greek, Haitian, Iranian, Russian etc. immigrants and compare their successes with the political and social conditions of their homelands, you might start to believe in magic.

Posted by: Peter B at March 5, 2004 9:43 AM

J.H.:

Schools have declined even where there are no immigrants, because it is we who are the problem, not they.

Meanwhile, we should be so lucky as to have Chiles welfare system instead of ours.

Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 9:43 AM

We will not be getting immigrants from Chile (which still has a reasonable racial balance
and I knew you would mention them as an example).

We will be getting desperate Guatemalans and
Mexicans that are not a creative force
in their home societies.

Part of my point was that the INSTITUTIONS have
suffered because of an overall culture which is
damaged by multiculturalism and mass immigration.
This is exemplified by the fact that here in NH
(few or no immigrants or minorities as you know)
our children spend an innordinate ammount of time
studying trivia about non-western cultures and
learning about trumped up minority history instead
of learning about the significant facts of American history.

How will mass immigration help rebuild our
institutions and bring them more in line with
our old values? Where you see a multi-colored
tapestry on the horizon, I see a "Blade Runner" nightmare as our future. Do you really think
Mexican immigrants will care if their kids learn
about our "Gringo" history?


Posted by: J.H. at March 5, 2004 10:12 AM

If Latinos are genetically incapable of a decent society how did Chile manage it?

Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 10:18 AM

You and I both know that "Latino" is a made
up word of the multicultural left. There are
Whites, Indians and Mestizos in Latin America
In various proportions. Chile is probably second
only to Uruguay and Souther Brazil in
overall whiteness.

That said we are getting played for fools by
white elites like VINCENTE FOX and every Mexican
president of recent memory, by trying to export
their own demographic problem. It used to be
that Mexican immigrants tended to come from
the northern regions (the classic American vision
of adobe and sombreros Mexico). These tended to be mostly Hispanized and were similar to their cousins already in the U.S since before the U.S. In recent years the Mexican govt. has facilitated the emigration of non-Hispanized Indians from Yucatan (that don't even speak Spanish) up through the country and into the U.S.

I want to be clear. I consider my self a tolerant
and well travelled person. I have a great interest in the history and Archaeology of the
world, but I am very concerned that the outpost
of Western civ. in North America is on its deathbed and I wish our leaders would tread with
more caution in matters of immigration and
demographics.

Posted by: J.H. at March 5, 2004 10:34 AM

I'm untraveled and intolerant, but I have worked with illegal immigrants from Latin America--on a geoseismic crew in Texas, as a caddie in NJ and MA, and elsewhere--and they generally worked much harder than the whites and had quieter private lives. Interestingly enough, they tended to be contemptuous of blacks--we've all gotta have someone to hate.

Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 10:50 AM

Clearly you have some experience with certain
types of Mexican immigrants and they may in
fact be the good-natured peasants that you describe. But having come from Mass. and having
a brother who is a cop, I have realized immigration definitely brings along the bad and the ugly along with the good.

Posted by: J.H. at March 5, 2004 11:19 AM

Whites don't commit crimes?

Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 12:24 PM

Not disproportionately (as do some other
groups).

Posted by: J.H. at March 5, 2004 1:56 PM

What proportion of those implicated in the dot.com scandals are white? 100%? What proportion of the criminals during Prohibition were white? and Catholic or Jewish? Proportions don't mean much.

Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 2:06 PM

>I'm concerned about a general decrease in the
>intelligence of our population (read I.Q.).

By that, do you mean "The Marching Morons Syndrome"?

Posted by: Ken at March 5, 2004 4:24 PM

The properly framed question would be: what proportion of whites were implicated in dot com scandals.

Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 5, 2004 6:09 PM

In which case the similar question is what proportion of immigrants commit crimes.

Posted by: oj at March 5, 2004 6:15 PM

J.H.:

No need at all for me to defame the average American.

The statistics tell the story.

How many smokers actually believe it isn't harmful ?
Does anybody believe that being morbidly obese is NOT a problem ?
How about those fat kids, 1/3 of America's children ?
From a post on the 5th, parents upset because their kids are assigned homework, or denied a "gimme" A.

Please, enlighten me about the astounding intellectual accomplishments and pursuits of the average American.

In any case, you misunderstand my point. The average American does what's necessary to get by, then kicks back. A person who's three IQ points shy of the average American is fully capable of doing the same thing.

Nothing wrong with that approach to life.
It's just not exemplary.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 5, 2004 6:34 PM
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