Indian Immigration

There's a very interesting article in Forbes about Indian immigration to the United States.

Most Americans know only one thing about Indians--they are really good at spelling bees. When Sameer Mishra correctly spelled guerdon last May to win the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee, he became the sixth Indian-American winner in the past 10 years...

Indian Americans are in fact a new "model minority."...In 2007, the median income of households headed by an Indian American was approximately $83,000, compared with $61,000 for East Asians and $55,000 for whites...

So why do Indian Americans perform so well? A natural answer is self-selection. Someone willing to pull up roots and move halfway around the world will tend to be more ambitious and hardworking than the average person. But people want to come to the U.S. for many reasons, some of which--being reunited with other family members, for example--have little to do with industriousness. Ultimately, immigration policy decides which kinds of qualities our immigrants possess...

A much clearer implication of Indian-American success is that immigrants need not be unskilled, nor must their economic integration take generations to achieve. In sharp contrast to Indian Americans, most U.S. immigrants, especially Mexican, are much less wealthy and educated than U.S. natives, even after many years in the country.

A new immigration policy that prioritizes skills over family reunification could bring more successful immigrants to the U.S...There is nothing inevitable about immigration. Who immigrates each year is a policy decision, free to be modified at any time by Congress. Constructing new legislation is always difficult, but I propose a simple starting point for immigration selection: Anyone who can spell guerdon is in!

The author is Jason Richwine, a student of mine who is getting his doctorate this year. Jason is now at the American Enterprise Institute. I am certain that his continuing insights on immigration are going to be provocative and insightful--and worth keeping an eye on.

Let me say a couple of things about Jason's selection rule. First, I would have failed it. Second, I want to amend it: A.R. Rahman can get a green card anytime he wants regardless of whether he can spell or not.

Comments

[Sohaib]

There are a few more possibilities that I would conjecture. For one, moving to America itself requires a good amount of resources. A large number of Indians simply can not afford the moving procedure and the cost of the flight and shipping of belongings puts moving out of reach for a significant number.

Culture also surely plays a sizable role. Indian culture places enormous emphasis on education and frugality.

[jsalvati]

I've never understood this about your perspective. It seems like you take "the good of the nation" as obviously the relevant goal in immigration policy. Why isn't something like "overall good" the relevant criteria? I think the best argument for drastically increased immigration is that it would be really good for those immigrants and not harm people already here all that much (I would imagine that it hurts them some). You seem unpersuaded by this argument; why?

[Robert Oak]

I cannot even begin to tell you my horror at reading such a, well, racist piece. When U.S. citizens are not invested in, as well as wholesale offshore outsourcing of education and training... or large swaths of highly skilled U.S. citizens are labor arbitraged through guest worker Visas...
magically attributes that used to be assigned to U.S. citizens are now assumed to be "inherent" to the ones who displaced them. Anyone remember clearly in the 1990's how Americans were all geniuses, the best and the brightest? Then labor arbitrage began and now it seems one can only find such attributes in a certain group of immigrants from a certain country! Haven't we heard this faulty reasoning before about various subgroups and cultures....especially during a certain time period in the 1930's? Trying to claim that a group or even a subgroup is somehow superior and therefore should be allowed to immigrate, when there clearly isn't even a shortage in advanced skills in this country is...well, racist.

The issue is opportunity, investment, support for U.S. students and workforce. Stop displacing U.S. citizens and I am sure magically the U.S. would have the best MDs, PhDs and skilled labor in the world and even an American would win the spelling bee.... just as the United States did in the past. ...except maybe in the case of your protege.

[Piper]

I will now offer some testable predictions: (1) the more Indians who arrive, the less impressive they'll be (especially when the ones here now use "family reunification" to bring in kin who lack professional qualifications); (2) the grandchildren and future generations of today's Indian immigrants will be mostly lower achievers than both their immigrant ancestors and native whites.

Why do I make these predictions? Because I know about reversion toward the mean as applied to human qualities mediated by genetics.

Today's professional immigrants from India (or Bangladesh; I know a Bangladeshi scientist + engineer couple) are mostly 3+ SD above the IQ mean of their source populations (and I realize that Indians of different castes, different religions, and different regions display different IQ mean and SD). Really, we're seeing the creme- de- la- creme, a few thousand out of India's more than 1 billion people.

Smart parents make (fairly) smart kids, but you really cannot count on passing a 3+ SD advantage down through many generations. Even in the spelling bee generation-- the children of two PhD parents-- the spelling whizzes are balanced by twice or three times as many bright, likeable kids who probably aren't smart enough to end up in graduate school, much less win spelling bees. Some of those kids are dolts. In the out generations, the ratio of whizzes to nice kids, and nice kids to dolts will likely fall... until 50 years from now the descendants of the model immigrants are just another squalling ethnic lobby whose members are overrepresented in the crime statistics.

[Pete Murphy]

Our policies of admitting more than one million legal immigrants per year ignores the fact that it exacerbates more urgent problems. The challenges presented by rising unemployment, cutting our dependence on foreign oil and reducing our carbon emissions will only be made more difficult by importing more workers, more oil consumers and more carbon emitters. And it ignores the fact that worsening overpopulation, while fueling macroeconomic growth, erodes the economies of individuals as over-crowding erodes per capita consumption.

Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"

[Rohan Swee]

"...but I propose a simple starting point for immigration selection: Anyone who can spell guerdon is in!"

That is a sufficient condition only for someone who assumes that a nation is no more than its economy. Here, for example,

http://sify.com/news/thethursdayinterview/fullstory.php?id=13511287

is a very able immigrant who is obviously never going to be a welfare burden or contribute to crime stats. Yet, he is quoted saying "I became an[sic] U.S. citizen only recently for professional reasons, but in my heart, I am still very much an Indian." Now, I have no objection to that latter sentiment, it is human, right and proper to feel attachment to one's own - just as it is natural that new immigrants maintain an emotional tie to their country of origin. But that is not the same thing as regarding citizenship as merely a professional convenience, and I resent the hell out of anyone who regards my country is such a light. This country was a great deal more than a economic convenience to my immigrant ancestors, as it is to me. This man has done far more praiseworthy things than "spelling guerdon"; for all that he debases citizenship.

A nation is not merely a labor exchange, and any immigration policy that refuses to recognize that is setting up its citizens for future misery as nothing but a dysfunctional marketplace of "squalling ethnic lobbies" as Piper states above, regardless of what I consider the unlikelihood of the descendants of these "best and brightest" joining the underclass in 50 years time. I will echo Robert Oak's anger at the utter contempt the leadership of this country - political, business, academic - has been showing for native-born Americans of any race in these last decades. Labor arbitrage, endlessly escalating tuition burdens, other kinds of refusals to invest in the existing human capital of the nation, and finally, the belief we can just keep "importing talent" while willfully shutting down as many career fields as possible for the native born, are attributes of a decaying nation. I'm sure among the billions of non-Americans on the planet we should have no trouble finding 100, 200, 300 million who are "better and brighter", by labor exchange criteria, than most of us already here. I have a great idea - why don't the powers that be just ship us out and replace us all with these high-performers? And if any of your objections to this plan involve any references to anything but the Great God Growth -well, spare us your candy-ass whining about inconsequentials.

jsalvati: "Why isn't something like "overall good" the relevant criteria? I think the best argument for drastically increased immigration is that it would be really good for those immigrants and not harm people already here all that much (I would imagine that it hurts them some)."

Let me introduce you to a concept known as "human nature". While I'm sure you are very proud of your lofty and universalistic conception of the (economic) good, you should perhaps remember that such views are sincerely held by a vanishingly small class of (detached-from-reality, Western) thinkers, and insincerely held by a rather larger class that finds it to be useful as propaganda in the service of looking out for *their* own. Any nation's immigration policy should be based on the best interests of its own citizens. I suspect that you, too, would become "unpersuaded" by your own argument if you or yours began to experience real harm from it, regardless of how much it benefitted others.

If we all looked out for our own, with a due, if lesser, regard for the entire planet, humans in general would probably all be better served.

[Rory Pirrie from getyourgreencardstatus.com]

It is natural for someone to feel a close attachment to what is theirs, however there is nothing wrong with using professional reasoning and deciding on betterment of one's self through immigration. It does not mean that one takes their adoptive country for granted, merely they still feel a connection with their roots. If they improve the status of the econonmy and are law abiding then we should not be so arrogant as to think someone from the outside might not do a better job.

But in saying all that i still believe in promotion from within and feel we shgould exhaust internal resources before looking to the outside to fulfill our needs.

[Immigration Attorney]

It is interesting to read what we value in immigrants from this article. If your sentiments are factual, it is disheartening to see that we don't let them in because they are human, but only if they offer us something unique or profitable.

[MS]

Rohan, excellent response. Glad to see rationality prevail here.

About this article, Indians are a diverse group just like any other. The self selection was such that only certain high-paying professions had the EB green cards available so they are concentrated in those. Glorifying some groups is politically correct only if they happen to be non-white.

[MS]

The natural propensity of looking out for your own extends from oneself to one's family to one's neighborhood to the country. There is no such thing as an abstract overall good. Only be self-interest do all benefit.

[Learn to put on deodorant!!!]

I just simply do not like Indians with more than 10 pages resume. The GPA of this person was high, but I'm glad that he didn't get hire!!!

[Shyamsunder]

2003 USA new immigrant children IQ survey

Digit span data (IQ equivalents) by U.S. immigrant group:

Europe 99, Northeast Asia 106, Southeast Asia 104, India 112, sub-Saharan African 89, Mexico 82, Central America/Caribbean 83, South America 86.

--

The children IQ above already shows regression to the mean

Regression to the mean of IQ is 80%, meaning a 150 IQ man is likely to have a 110 IQ kid

--

The caste blend of the US diaspora is
25% brahmin ( 5% in India ), 35% other upper caste ( 15% in India) , 35% peasant ( 40% in Indian ) and 5% Muslim, Dalit, Tribal ( 40% in India )

--

given that 60% of the US Indian diaspora consists of upper castes, and given the uniformity or narrow IQ spread within castes,
even if the current diaspora brings in their relatives, it is likely that the 112 IQ as shown in the Indian immigrant children will be maintained

[Barry G]

I'm only responding because I wish to deflate the comment made above -- The guy who broke out all the IQ stats like a frickin' geek. I think people might read too much into "IQ" -- or more specifically "individual IQ". Simply put, if one really wants to believe asians are so much more intelligent than say, Africans, then you have to accept you've just subscribed to racial determinism for intelligence.

That being said, I wish to blow a hole in the idea that indians and asians, in general, are so much brighter than the rest of us. I pose this simple question: If asians are so smart, why have they overpopulated and polluted their countries so much? (To the extent the Chinese government had to create a 1-child policy law). If they are so smart, why do so many of them live in poverty? If europeans have a mediocre score of IQ 99, why then were they the inventors of electricity, the motor car, vaccines, computers, telephones, cameras, skyscrapers, democracy, etc? Why weren't all these inventions invented by indians? They weren't! Perhaps all that "smartness" in asia has made that continent, ummh...how shall i put this...a little stupid? Perhaps "individual IQ" has less gravitas than "collective IQ"?

In my country of Canada, I know many women that I know, that have had abortions. One young lady I know had 3 abortions in 2 years. Those children, had they been given the chance to live, could have been in spelling bees, spelling the word "guerdon" correctly, and I would have clapped for them. Unfortunately, they didn't have the chance, hence why Canada now has 20% immigrants. And yes, asian and indian immigrants.