April 28, 2013

Douthat on the real purpose of "immigration reform"

From the NYT:
When Assimilation Stalls 
By ROSS DOUTHAT 
THE immigration legislation percolating in the Senate ... real priority is to accelerate existing immigration trends. The enforcement mechanisms phase in gradually, with ambiguous prospects for success, while the legislation’s impact on migration would be immediate: more paths to residency for foreigners, instant legal status for the 11 million here illegally, and the implicit promise to future border-crossers that some kind of amnesty always comes to those who come and wait. 
Today, almost 25 percent of working-age Americans are first-generation immigrants or their children. That figure is up sharply since the 1960s, and it’s projected to climb to 37 percent by 2050. A vote for the Senate legislation would be a vote for that number to climb faster still. 
The bill has been written this way because America’s leadership class, Republicans as well as Democrats, assumes that continued mass immigration is exactly what our economy needs. As America struggles to adapt to an aging population, the bill’s supporters argue, immigrants offer youth, vitality and tax dollars. As we try to escape economic stagnation, mass immigration promises an extra shot of growth. 
Is there any reason to be skeptical of this optimistic consensus? Actually, there are two: the assimilation patterns for descendants of Hispanic (particularly Mexican) immigrants and the socioeconomic disarray among the native-born poor and working class. 
Conservatives have long worried that recent immigrants from Latin America would assimilate more slowly than previous new arrivals — because of their sheer numbers and shared language, and because the American economy has changed in ways that make it harder for less-educated workers to assimilate and rise. 
As my colleague David Leonhardt wrote recently, those fears seem unfounded if you look at second-generation Hispanics, who make clear progress — economic, educational and linguistic — relative to their immigrant parents.
But there’s a substantial body of literature showing that progress stalling out, especially for Mexican-Americans, between the second generation and the third. A 2002 study, for instance, reported that despite “improvements in human capital and earnings” for second-generation Mexican immigrants, the third generation still “trails the education and earnings of the average American,” and shows little sign of catching up. In their 2009 book “Generations of Exclusion,” the sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz found similar stagnation and slippage for descendants of Mexican immigrants during the second half of the 20th century. 

35 comments:

  1. OT Pizzas rotting in the field:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10023741/Shortage-of-pizza-makers-as-Italians-are-too-proud.html

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  2. Douthat is just too smart not to know this stuff, and and too honest not to write it.

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  3. By MSM standards, that's some gangsta sh*t. Douthat must be stealing some of Andrew Sullivan's testosterone supplements.

    Along with Ed West, he is probably the most honest man is the mainstream opinion biz.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  4. Nothing new here in fact Hispanic cities usually have higher poverty rates, there are some exceptions, I notice mixed raced Carson which is 38 percent Hispanic had lower poverty but lower overall income than Costa Mesa. Costa Mesa Mexicans are more illegal and the poverty rate for the city is 13 percent versus a low 7.8 percent for Carson which also has a lot of Blacks and Asians. Downey came in at a low 11.8 percent for a 70 percent hispanic population but lots of high around 18 percent or higher in more older urban cities or La itself.

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  5. even, arguendo, that the 3rd generation *catches* up, what's sub rossa is that *there will be 2 generations of sub-par performance*. Some ~40 years. 40 years to get to where we are at present seems...untowards

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  6. who cares whether they make progress or assimilate or whatever? One huge reason I want to end mass immigration is because the american people want it to end. or at least that is what many polls showed until very recently. Isn't it just enough that the majority want it?

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  7. This guy is an idiot. Does he want to lose his job, and his kids to starve? Even I know that your supposed to play along with the "narrative".

    I guess he wants to become one of us joe schmoes making jew jokes on isteve. Why else would a man possibly do this? *wink, wink

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  8. And we must all bow down to Mammon.

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  9. who cares whether they make progress or assimilate or whatever? One huge reason I want to end mass immigration is because the american people want it to end. or at least that is what many polls showed until very recently. Isn't it just enough that the majority want it?
    4/28/13, 5:45 PM This is true, I notice some Mexicans marry whites but it isn't always middle class whites, you may see some light Mexicans poor as well since they marry the small group of poor whites.

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  10. Great piece. David Frum has also referred to that Trejo & Groger study from 2002. Who knows, maybe someday they will get some traction?

    http://us.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/03/frum.immigration.education/index.html

    They could also point to the deterioration in California.

    "Perhaps even more important than the collapse of educational achievement among the lower strata is a deterioration of the higher education that was for decades the basis of California's preeminence in science and technology. California currently ranks 40th among the 50 states in college-attendance rates, and it already faces a significant shortage of college graduates. Studies have shown that the economy will need 40 percent of its workers to be college-educated by 2020, compared with today's 32 percent. Given the aging white population (average age, 42), many of these new graduates will have to come from the burgeoning Latino immigrant population (average age, 26). By one estimate, this would require tripling of the number of college-educated immigrants, an impossibility if current trends hold. The state's inability to improve the educational attainment of its residents will result in a "substantial decline in per capita income" and "place California last among the 50 states" by 2020, according to a study by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems."

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112167023

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  11. "Anonymous said...
    By MSM standards, that's some gangsta sh*t. Douthat must be stealing some of Andrew Sullivan's testosterone supplements.

    Along with Ed West, he is probably the most honest man is the mainstream opinion biz."

    What that guy said. Also, Douthat's tone is so reasonable, so sane. It makes him so difficult to dismiss.

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  12. Perhaps even more important than the collapse of educational achievement among the lower strata is a deterioration of the higher education that was for decades the basis of California's preeminence in science and technology. California currently ranks 40th among the 50 states in college-attendance rates, and it already faces a significant shortage of college graduates. Studies have shown that the economy will need 40 percent of its workers to be college-educated by 2020, compared with today's 32 percent. Given the aging white population (average age, 42), many of these new graduates will have to come from the burgeoning Latino immigrant population (average age, 26). By one estimate, this would require tripling of the number of college-educated immigrants, an impossibility if current trends hold. The state's inability to improve the educational attainment of its residents will result in a "substantial decline in per capita income" and "place California last among the 50 states" by 2020, according to a study by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems."
    Asian immirgation is up, so probably a lot of these students found among foreign born Chinese, indians and so forth. The native born Asian population in Ca has low birth rates. Whites are going down but there are small high income white areas like Ladera Ranch which had more kids than even Santa Ana as a percentage but its a much smaller city. By 2020, robots might make maid jobs and even some fastfood less available. See a shift from low skilled hispanics to high skilled asians in California its already started. A lot of low skilled Hispanics will moved inland or moved to states like Nevada and Texas where its cheaper to live.

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  13. Here is a decent set of videos of Professor Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado giving a lecture on exponential growth and how that applies to population growth and the usage of non-renewable resources.

    This is an actual lecture given to a class at CU, so in total it takes about an hour. The professor is trying to stress that our policy makers have no concept of exponential growth.

    For example, he shows how a growth rate of 7% per year results in a doubling every 10 years. Even a modest growth rate of 1% results in a doubling every 70 years.

    So think about this. If we try to increase legal immigration so that we add 1% per year to our population, the US population will double in 70 years. That means it will go from 300 million to 600 million. Does anyone seriously want the USA to have 600 million people?

    If that steady 1% population rate continues due to immigration and the higher fertility of immigrants, then our population will hit 1.2 billion 70 years later. So in 140 years we would go from 300 million to 1.2 billion. Does that sound like something we want to do?

    This guy tries to point out that all these policy makers who push for even low population growth rates of 1% have no clue how much that is going to increase the population. After all, 1% sounds pretty harmless.

    I doubt many of you will watch all 8 videos, but if you watch 1 or 2, you will at least come away with what exponential growth means and how even low rates of growth, like 1%, can have major repercussions within the lifespan of one human being.

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  14. Perhaps even more important than the collapse of educational achievement among the lower strata is a deterioration of the higher education that was for decades the basis of California's preeminence in science and technology. California currently ranks 40th among the 50 states in college-attendance rates, and it already faces a significant shortage of college graduates. Studies have shown that the economy will need 40 percent of its workers to be college-educated by 2020, compared with today's 32 percent. Given the aging white population (average age, 42), many of these new graduates will have to come from the burgeoning Latino immigrant population (average age, 26). By one estimate, this would require tripling of the number of college-educated immigrants, an impossibility if current trends hold. The state's inability to improve the educational attainment of its residents will result in a "substantial decline in per capita income" and "place California last among the 50 states" by 2020, according to a study by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems I seen that Texas did as bad in some studies, Rick Perry conservative he is is cutting the school budget and even if Texas Mexicans are better they are not that great compared to whites in other states.

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  15. So the ideal is that third and fourth generation non-white mass immigrants would continue to achieve upward mobility.

    In this scheme, who is moving down the social pyramid?

    This is not merely a matter of the provision of material goodies, where everybody can get more. This is a matter of power and status. If someone is moving up, someone is moving down.

    If all respectable people agree that one group should be moving up, there is at least a tacit agreement that another group must move down.

    Who is targeted, (implicitly) for displacement, for loss of power, for marginalization and degradation of status and prospects?

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  16. >gangsta sh*t<

    It's unbelievably weak. Anyone could punch holes in it. For example, he states that third-generation hispanic immigrants might be "stalling" economically. First, who isn't "stalling" economically? The papers are full of how screwed this generation of Americans is, the ones who were graduated ten years ago. Second, while the third generation may be experiencing problems, the first and second presumably did great. So why not the fourth and n generations?

    "Gangsta s*it" isn't even what Steve did recently: highlight the contrast between the Emma Lazurus poem with the Preamble to the US Constitution. "Gangsta s*it" isn't even pointing out that the majority of US citizens, when given a chance to express their will in the voting booth, consistently reject loose borders. No, all that is normal, middle-of-the-road commentary.

    If you want to read the real dynamite, then read Kevin MacDonald on Jewish involvement in shaping US immigration policy here (pdf).

    I'm afraid Mr. Douthat hasn't scratched the surface yet, although the stats he found are worth clipping and saving for future scholars to consider using as footnotes when they write their autopsy of the US.

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  17. S/b "highlight the contrast between the Emma Lazurus poem and the Preamble to the US Constitution" - sorry.

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  18. Very few data sets can capture only the "third" generation. Usually, researchers get a "third-plus" generation, meaning that researchers define as "third" generation everybody whose parents were born in the United States and who identifies as Mexican-American, regardless of whether their families have been American for three generations or 15. But here's the problem. Mexican-Americans, particularly women, historically have a fairly high rate of out-marriage to whites, and the ones who marry whites tend to be more educated. Their children are less likely to identify as Mexican-American. When these children grow up and are surveyed, they may respond that they're white instead of Latino. As a result, many members of the "third-plus" generation who are doing well probably aren't even being identified as Mexican-American. It's hard to know exactly how big this slippage is.
    Interesting comment which is probably true, the most successful Mexicans become more white.

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  19. I thought Douthat's expertly placed link to the "rainbow underclass" meme was shrewd and effective, planting a seed in the mind of SWPL subscribers who treat all questions of optimal social policy as random fungible fuel for tribal intra-white combat. The idea that Kevin McDonald would be the adroit policy master-debater here is quite laughable, but thanks for that bit of spam amusement.

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  20. A more interesting comment on Mexican success, the worst county in the US for foodstamp usage was Hiliago Texas tie with Bronx New York. The Mexicans in the south Texas counties are more likely to be US Citizens than let say in Harris or Dallas counties were overall food stamp usage was lower except for blacks. Legalization would cause more counties in the US with a lot of Hispanics to have the high south Texas County usage even La was much lower. This was data from 2009.
    s sa

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  21. Auntie Analogue4/28/13, 10:46 PM


    The purpose of this latest Shamnesty bill is a coup d'état which will exempt our Dear Rulers from having to enforce laws they don't want to enforce amd allow them to enforce - anarcho tyranny - only the laws they choose to enforce.

    The biggest clue to why this is so? When the president of the ICE union asked the Gang of Eight to come to meet with them, he was frozen out while the Gang of Eight met - behind closed doors - with big business moguls, powerful union big shots, advocates and shills for legal and illegal open borders immigration - and Congress even had illegal aliens testify before its committeses without arresting and deporting these lawbreakers. And when the President of the ICE union showed up at the Gang of Eight's glorious Shamnesty announcement press conference and tried to ask a question, the Gang of Eight had him thrown out. Thrown. Out. Like Hitler's Brownshirts threw out anyone who had a question for the Dear Führer.

    Our Founders revolted against King George for mere taxation, now our Dear Rulers expect us to agree to their rigged Shamnesty coup d'état without their having allowed a single opponent of their bill to meet with them? Yes, this is a coup d'état: it is the abrogation of our Constitution by dint of handing to our Dear Rulers the option not to enforce laws they don't wish to enforce and to rule us by enforcing only the laws they choose to enforce.

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  22. The most parsimonious explanation for a wide range of phenomena, including the very significant phenomenon of massive immigration following on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to replace the population lost with the destruction of the middle class along with its total fertility rate during the ensuing generation, is a breeding program getting rid of American individualism in favor of eusocial workers. Individualist tendencies are hard to manage.

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  23. "As a result, many members of the "third-plus" generation who are doing well probably aren't even being identified as Mexican-American."

    Some ... for example, Gen. George S. Patton was 1/8th Californio. A great-grandmother was the daughter of a rich Californio landowner of the Spanish era.

    But ... the 35-year-long "Generations of Exclusion" study largely got around that because it started with a 1965 study of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio, then tracked down their children in 2000. It started off with some people of mixed ancestry in 1965 and tracked as many of their children as they could find in 2000, of which about 10% were in mixed marriages. So, this study didn't lose mixed marriages from the previous generation, although it would have originally missed out on the Pattons.

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  24. Jim Bowery, how does this most parsimonious explanation account for pressure for mass non-white immigration into all white countries and only white countries, and the effective demonization and silencing of those who in their hearts dissent as "racist"?

    Is it that "American individualism" is functionally the same as English individualism, Australian individualism, French individualism and so on?

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  25. Qui bono?
    Why are the US's and Europes' borders being forced open by the usual suspects, whilst Israel's borders are being sewn ever tighter.

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  26. The purpose of this latest Shamnesty bill is a coup d'état which will exempt our Dear Rulers from having to enforce laws they don't want to enforce amd allow them to enforce - anarcho tyranny - only the laws they choose to enforce.

    How many years has it been since the US passed a budget? More an more of what passes for governance is done behind closed doors by a select few. If your elected representative is not one of the key insiders, you have zero voice in what goes on in DC.

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  27. I thought Douthat's expertly placed link to the "rainbow underclass" meme was shrewd and effective, planting a seed in the mind of SWPL subscribers who treat all questions of optimal social policy as random fungible fuel for tribal intra-white combat. The idea that Kevin McDonald would be the adroit policy master-debater here is quite laughable, but thanks for that bit of spam amusement.

    So, "gangsta shit" = shrewd, effective, and subtle. Comedy gold, thanks.

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  28. Between 2008 and 2011, according to the report, poverty has jumped dramatically in many of the state’s counties: Imperial County: 31.2 percent (up 13.2 percent), Los Angeles County: 24.3 percent (up 12 percent), Orange County: 16.3 percent (up 28.5 percent), Riverside County: 21.8 percent (up 34.3 percent), San Bernardino County: 24.9 percent (up 32.1 percent), San Diego County: 18.3 percent (up 19.3 percent), Ventura County: 14.9 percent (up 22.4 percent.) This is stats from a far left site, and is based on the revised 23.3 percent poverty. Noticed the lowest poverty in the revistation is Ventura, Orange and San Diego, though Orange went up a lot. All three of these counties have the most whites and the least Hispanics among the county groups. Ventura and Orange would do good against even Texas in the revised study.

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  29. Between 2008 and 2011, according to the report, poverty has jumped dramatically in many of the state’s counties: Imperial County: 31.2 percent (up 13.2 percent), Los Angeles County: 24.3 percent (up 12 percent), Orange County: 16.3 percent (up 28.5 percent), Riverside County: 21.8 percent (up 34.3 percent), San Bernardino County: 24.9 percent (up 32.1 percent), San Diego County: 18.3 percent (up 19.3 percent), Ventura County: 14.9 percent (up 22.4 percent.) Here's another interesting fact, the three best are politcally moderate, Ventura and San Diego only went 5 points for Obama, Orange went 9 point for Romeny. Riverside the next lowest at 21 percent went 1 point for Romeny. The worst group particulary La and Imperial went heavily for Obama over 20 points. And San Bernardino moderately for Obama at 5 percentage. Among the three best in terms of poverty Obama won moderately. Among the worst Obama won bigger with the exception of Riverside. Granted, the Bay area which is heavily Democratic has a pattern closer to Ventura or Orange with cost of living.kn

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  30. David said: It's unbelievably weak.

    I don't agree, but the strength of Douthat's arguments are a secondary issue anyways. The fact that he makes them at all is what counts. With a few exceptions, much of the "respectable" public discussion on immigration revolves around hammering out the details of how best to implement amnesty. Douthat helps keep the debate alive as something more than a brainstorming session for the open-borders crowd.

    As for Sailer not being gangsta enough, n*gga please.
    .................................................................................

    hbd chick said: here is much insanity:

    On the topic of showing love for a down a** gangsta, everyone be sure to hit like on JayMan's comment in the discussion section of that awful Atlantic piece.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  31. Svigor said:I thought Douthat's expertly placed link to the "rainbow underclass" meme was shrewd and effective, planting a seed in the mind of SWPL subscribers who treat all questions of optimal social policy as random fungible fuel for tribal intra-white combat. The idea that Kevin McDonald would be the adroit policy master-debater here is quite laughable, but thanks for that bit of spam amusement.

    So, "gangsta shit" = shrewd, effective, and subtle. Comedy gold, thanks.

    The anonymous commenter to whom you wrote this reply is not the JPF. The term gangsta shit was my comedic way of saying that Douthat is unbowed, at least as compared against his peers. It was neutral as to his skill as an opinion journalist.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  32. JPF, no criticism of Steve implied. I said he's normal and middle-of-the-road. In my book, these are synonyms for "sensible." For example, the NYT's pov should be congruent with Steve's. In a sane world, he would write a regular columnist for them and (thru syndication) others.

    "Gangsta s*it" implies the far-out stuff, the bomb material of the intellectual world.

    That anyone would regard Mr. Douthat's effort as "gangsta s*it" in any context is what moved me to comment.

    Albeit not on the Steve plane, it's something noticeable, but please, "gangsta s*it"?

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  33. David said: JPF, no criticism of Steve implied. I said he's normal and middle-of-the-road. In my book, these are synonyms for "sensible." For example, the NYT's pov should be congruent with Steve's. In a sane world, he would write a regular columnist for them and (thru syndication) others.

    That was my point. It is a sad fact that the range of published opinion has narrowed to the degree that putting one's name on even a toned down version of Steve's sensible observations is an act of professional courage.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  34. True dat, JPF. (Btw my "columnist" s/b "column" - sorry. I'm in Mexico City, drinking vodka coolers named after a piece of Finnish classical music [NB: not me] until my fingers work w/o command.)

    How much flak will Mr. Douthat receive, really? I think it was expected he should write his remonstrance just to touch on the sour side of the subject, so that the NYT can claim (if anybody cares) that it's not an advocacy paper. After which it's back to invasion as usual.

    I dislike the NYT.

    A great column for Mr. Douthat w/b the responses he got, if any: their tone, the presumably spittle-flecked argumentation in much of them. That's how he could play it IMO.

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