Nativist Know-Nothings

James Taranto again:

Blogger Harry Forbes notes something quite interesting:

The Boston Globe website published the pictures of each valedictorian in Boston's high schools and other high school programs. As you thumb through the pictures, it is striking how many of these students are immigrants. So many, that I decided to take some statistics. The Globe listed the country of birth for each student. For some US-born students I guessed that they were 2nd generation immigrants (for instance if they were Vietnamese). Almost 2/3 of the Boston valedictorians are either immigrants or children of immigrants. From my analysis: here is the breakdown of the 38 valedictorians.

1st or 2nd generation US 63.2%
Later than 2nd generation US 32.8%

Born in the US 52.6%
Born overseas 47.4%

Maybe the anti-immigrant slogan should be: "Keep America stupid--seal the borders!"

My response:

Mr. Taranto:

Who are these nativists you speak of?  And why do you characterize people who want our laws enforced as anti-immigration?  And how many of the valedictorians are illegal aliens or the children of illegal aliens?

Mr Taranto, you pride yourself on being ultra-rational, so it's surprising when you resort to a one-note, inaccurate portrayal of the enforcement side of the "immigration" debate, which is about, among other things, our relationship with Mexico, the way Mexicans run their own country,  business interests wanting a source of cheap labor, the rule of law, and both political parties wanting to curry favor with a growing demographic.

For the non-nativists, it's convenient to label all people born outside the US but living here as "immigrants."  That we have an overwhelming problem with illegal human traffic from Mexico, increasing violence along the border with shots being fired from the Mexico side at people on the US side, incursions by armed groups that may or may not be Mexican soldiers and police, trespassing, on a huge scale, with its concomitant environmental degradation, drug and arms trading in Mexican border towns, overwhelmed service infrastructure in border states due to demand from "immigrants,"- the list of serious, costly problems goes on and on, and are basic, salient facts.  My impression is that the Libertarian, pro-business elites in the Northeast would change their minds very quickly if they lived in a border state.

In fairness, have your research assistants search for high school valedictorians who are illegal immigrants, or even Mexican-born.  I'm sure you'll be overwhelmed by the numbers just as I'm sure that they will be proportionate to the numbers of immigrants from say, Cabo Verde, who achieved that honor.

Sincerely,
Barbara Moeller

Perhaps we can work up a slide show of the mug shots of all of the illegal aliens incarcerated in the US.  It goes without saying that they are jailed for crimes they committed once they got here, not for living here illegally, which almost never merits detention in and of itself.  My guess, and this is just a guess, is that illegal alien inmates outnumber illegal alien valedictorians by a statistically meaningful margin.  But Mr. Taranto is an expert in statistical analysis.  He should give this one a try.

Comments

[Michael]

My comment rather touches on both of these essays. On the one hand, I still welcome the "wretched refuse of your teaming shores," while recognizing that in the sixties we made a lot of wretched refuse of our own. Is there anyone among us who doesn't know one or many of these human wrecks? Note the baby at home and the son in Iraq. I don't say this to dump on Itchy Brother or any of the others. It's just a very disturbing phenomenon, and I have to wonder why we see so much of it in our Boomer generation. Did Howdy Doody do this to us? Was it Madalyn Pugh, the Communist who wrote for Desi and Lucy? I am a Conservative, which means, as part of the simplest of definitions, that I believe we are responsible for our own choices. Still, when you have so many people making the same or similar choices, you have a trend. Why this trend?

[dchamil]

If academic honors, such as being valedictorian, go to immigrants, that doesn't mean that immigrants must be smarter than the native-born. In a high school which is 50% immigrant, we expect half the valedictorians to be of that group over, say, a ten-year period. There are a lot of immigrants in the Boston area.

[bbmoe]

Of course. Another one of many things wrong with Jimmy's take on this.