Marginal Revolution: Fragments of controversy

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Fragments of controversy

...the newly arrived immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s seem to be particularly unlikely to be involved in criminal activity, consistent with increasingly positive selection along this dimension.

Here is much more.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 10, 2007 at 01:49 PM in Law | Permalink

Comments

They're suggesting that if we create a process for selecting people we like, and apply standards to the selection process -- that we will get a better class of people from that process than we will if we simply chose them at random. Wow.

Posted by: SheetWise at Jul 10, 2007 2:35:17 PM

Sheetwise is being sarcastic, but this is non-trivial. After all, there is doubt that government rules on immigration are ever enforceable. Apparently, on some dimensions, it can work and has been shown to be effective.

A strong argument for proposing good standards and then using them.

Posted by: jn at Jul 10, 2007 2:38:39 PM

Does this article argue for central planning? that the government should determine what skills are desirable? or for a minimum education level sandard for granting work visas? Surely the market can best determine what skillsets are needed for American business, right?

Posted by: JohnDewey at Jul 10, 2007 4:15:07 PM

Yes, but the problem, the world over, is the CHILDREN. The children of hispanic migrants are disproportionately criminal and single mothers. This is in line with global trends. The initial migrants, fish out of water that they are, obey the rules, work, and assume the future is bright. However when their children come of age and their low genetic intelligence kicks in, they realize they don't have any options: there is little hope for the future. The welfare state compounds this by making dependency rational.

So they turn to crime and gangs and all the other roundabout ways young males develop to acquire status. The girls become single mothers, who in turn produce more criminals. Steve Sailer has written about this many times, on this very blog in fact.

Posted by: adrian at Jul 10, 2007 5:56:56 PM

Hey Adrian - I am sure you can point us to evidence on the "low genetic intelligence" you attribute to the descendants of Hispanic immigrants... can you?

Posted by: Ricardo at Jul 10, 2007 7:50:37 PM

Just browsing the internet, very interesting blog

Posted by: Freddie Sirmans at Jul 10, 2007 8:25:06 PM

It seems the children of immigrants have contributed to lower crime rates than when I was a kid back in the 70s.

Posted by: shecky at Jul 10, 2007 8:37:48 PM

1. What percent of first-generation migrants are single mothers, criminals, etc? In comparison with the native-born population?

2. What percent of the next generation are on welfare, are criminals, etc? Again, in comparison with the native-born? Remember the second generation are themselves 'native-born' too...they're adapting to what _they_ are born into...

Posted by: Sudha Shenoy at Jul 10, 2007 11:43:52 PM

Who knows what the genetic component is or is not in this, but here's the best meta-analysis of Hispanic IQ in America:

A 2001 meta-analysis of 39 studies covering a total 5,696,519 individuals in America (aged 14 and above) came up with an overall difference of 0.72 standard deviations in g (the "general factor" in cognitive ability) between "Anglo" whites and Hispanics. The 95% confidence range of the studies ran from .60 to .88 standard deviations, so there's not a huge amount of disagreement among the studies.

One standard deviation equals 15 IQ points, so that's a gap of 10.8 IQ points, or an IQ of 89 on the Lynn-Vanhanen scale where white Americans equal 100. That would imply the average Hispanic would fall at the 24th percentile of the white IQ distribution. This inequality gets worse at higher IQs Assuming a normal distribution, 4.8% of whites would fall above 125 IQ versus only 0.9% of Hispanics, which explains why Hispanics are given ethnic preferences in prestige college admissions.

In contrast, 105 studies of 6,246,729 individuals found an overall white-black gap of 1.10 standard deviations, or 16.5 points. (I typically round this down to 1.0 standard deviation and 15 points). So, the white-Hispanic gap appears to be about 65% as large as the notoriously depressing white-black gap. (Warning: this 65% number does not come from a perfect apples to apples comparison because more studies are used in calculating the white-black difference than the white-Hispanic difference.)

Source: Roth, P. L., Bevier, C. A., Bobko, P., Switzer III, F. S. & Tyler, P. (2001) " Ethnic group differences in cognitive ability in employment and educational settings: a meta-analysis." Personnel Psychology 54, 297–330.

This fits well with lots of other data. For example, Hispanics generally do almost as badly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress school achievement tests as blacks, but that average is dragged down by immigrant kids who have problems adjusting to English. The last time the NAEP asked about where the child was born was 1992, and Dr. Stefan Thernstrom of Harvard kindly provided me with the data from that examination. For foreign-born Hispanics, the typical gap versus non-Hispanic whites was 1.14 times as large as the black-white gap. But for American-born Hispanics, the gap between non-Hispanic whites and American-born Hispanics was 0.67 times as large as the gap between non-Hispanic whites and blacks, very similar to the 0.65 difference seen in the meta-analysis of IQs.

Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jul 11, 2007 4:13:19 AM

"you can point us to evidence on the "low genetic intelligence" you attribute to the descendants of Hispanic immigrants... can you?"

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations.
Mexico IQ is 87, USA's 98.
It is very likely that Mexican immigrants have lower IQ than Mexico
average, after all many of them cannot write and some cannot speak
Spanish. Assuming that the second generation's IQ raises to Mexico average,
it is still way below US average.

Posted by: mik at Jul 11, 2007 4:13:39 AM

It is very likely that Mexican immigrants have lower IQ than Mexico average, after all many of them cannot write and some cannot speak Spanish.

I don't see why speaking Nahuatl would make you any dumber than speaking Spanish.

Posted by: Joshua Holmes at Jul 11, 2007 7:49:38 AM

Illegal immigrants have de facto amnesty from the federal government on a number of crimes, including use of phony SSNs, use of phony documents, and federal income tax evasion.

Not to mention the 20,000 or so members of MS 13 who are running the streets.

Failure to enforce the law is not the same as not committing crimes.

Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Jul 11, 2007 9:45:14 AM

Rustbelt,

As a whole, illegal immigrants are likely paying more payroll taxes than is required by law. Taxes are being withheld from the paychecks of at least 60% of all illegal immigrants. Few are collecting the earned income credits to which such low income workers are entitled.

All such workers who use a phony SSN are contributing to the social security and medicare funds. As undocumented workers, they will never be able to collect benefits.

The victim in the crime - the crime of using phony SSN's - is actually the perpetrator of the crime himself.

Posted by: John Dewey at Jul 11, 2007 10:03:17 AM

"I don't see why speaking Nahuatl would make you any dumber than speaking Spanish."

It's not a cuase; it's a correlation. Those Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans would tend to have less higher-IQ Spanish or Sephardic ancestry.

Posted by: ben tillman at Jul 11, 2007 10:44:01 AM

1. What percent of first-generation migrants are single mothers, criminals, etc? In comparison with the native-born population?

Posted by: TGGP at Jul 11, 2007 12:29:01 PM

This doesn't remotely surprise me. Illegal immigrants are generally hardworking and don't want any trouble. They're just people trying to improve their lives.

As others have said, it's the children and grandchildren of the illegal immigrants who are more of a concern. I'd be very surprised if they didn't have higher than average rates of most social dysfunctions. And it's pretty difficult to import the immigrants without importing their descendants.

Posted by: ed at Jul 11, 2007 2:01:27 PM

The problem is that you've already stacked the deck against the children of illegal immigrants. Because they are illegal, their parents are:

- unlikely to own residences, a factor consistent with social stability;

- likely to demonstrate disrespect for the law and authority which seeks to take away their means of survival;

- unlikely to move into more rewarding occupations, from which to provide a better living standard for their children.

IMO, using results of illegal immigrant families to predict success of potential legal families is just not valid.

Posted by: JohnDewey at Jul 11, 2007 3:18:13 PM

Factoid: 10% of arrests in Orange County, CA are illegals. Perhaps they mean only legal ones that can be expelled.

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