http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070701_diversity.htm

  • Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…Oh, Wait, Make That “Weakness”
    By Steve Sailer

    [Discussing a book/immigration-study by former Clinton official David Putnam, bending its conclusions about immigration to acquiesce to politically correct false notions about immigration: ]

    Putnam ignores the obvious difference between elite immigration by, say, Enrico Fermi and Alfred Hitchcock, compared to illegal immigration. In contrast, the almost thirty million residents of America of Mexican origin have contributed remarkably little creativity to American culture and science. For example, although Mexicans are by far the biggest immigrant group, they don't even rank among the top 20 immigrant groups in the U.S. in terms of patents awarded.

    But Putnam's third section -- "Becoming Comfortable with Diversity" -- is even worse. It mostly repeats the Ellis Island clichés about how the immigration of a century ago all worked out fine and dandy, so what's to worry about the new immigration "in the medium to long run?"

    But how can the “medium to long run” arrive to overcome the negative effects of diversity if the government continues to keep the pedal to the metal on letting in low human capital immigrants?

    Not surprisingly, Putnam only vaguely mentions the immigration restriction acts of 1921 and 1924 that played such a huge role.

    Furthermore, I am tired of intellectuals in Boston, New York, and Washington D.C acting as if Mexicans in America are such an utter novelty that nobody could possibly have any indication of how they will turn out, so who can say they won't progress just like Italians and Jews?

    Well, anybody in the Southwest can.

    In reality, we've had sizable Hispanic communities in the United States since the 1840s, such as in the Upper Rio Grande River valley of New Mexico. That state has long been the most Hispanic in the nation.

    So how is New Mexico doing after seven generations of Hispanic assimilation? On Meet the Press recently, Tim Russert gave New Mexico governor and Presidential candidate Bill Richardson an unfairly hard time that said less about the politician than about his constituents:

    "They rank states in a whole variety of categories from one being the best, 50th being the worst. This is New Mexico’s scorecard, and you are the governor. Percent of people living below the poverty line, you’re 48. Percent of children below, 48. Median family income, 47. People without health insurance, 49. Children without health insurance, 46. Teen high school dropouts, 47. Death rate due to firearms, 48. Violent crime rate, 46."

    Richardson has his faults. But not turning New Mexicans into Minnesotans isn't one of them.

    Similarly, East Los Angeles has been heavily Mexican since the Mexican Revolution. PBS reported:

    "Its present day population also has been one of the most entrenched and stable communities of the greater Los Angeles area over the past 50 to 75 years. East Los Angeles is … the largest Hispanic community in the United States."

    East LA is not Detroit -- which the forest is partly retaking -- but hardly is it New Jersey, which the Ellis Island immigrants have made into one of the most successful states in the country.

    Here's a good test of the chestnut that Mexican immigrants are going to turn out just like the old Jewish immigrants: Long ago, East LA had a Jewish immigrant community, which arrived about the same time as its Mexican immigrants. According to PBS, in East LA after WWI:

    "In many instances, Jews and Mexicans went to school together, played sports together, traded with each other, and particularly among the left wing thinkers, met and organized together."

    For some reason, though, eighty years later, the descendents of East LA's Jewish immigrants are living in Beverly Hills and Malibu, while the descendents of East LA's Mexican immigrants are in Van Nuys or still stuck in East LA.

    In summary, the first rule of rationality when you find you are digging a hole for yourself is … stop digging.

    Unfortunately, when it comes to immigration and diversity, that's not a rule that many of our Establishment intellectuals such as Putnam have figured out. Or care to.

    Steve Sailer is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website http://www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog.