Using the latest Census Bureau data from 2010 and 2011, the Center for Immigration Studies recently released a comprehensive report profiling the country's foreign-born population and comparing it with her native children. Parse and peruse as much as you're inclined to. Some points of interest I gleaned:
- Immigrants are more willing to work and work harder when they do so than natives do, right? Among those aged 18-65, yes, technically, by a statistical rounding error, with 67.7% of immigrants holding a job and 67.6% of natives doing the same.
The native numbers, of course, are dragged down by the poor performance of native blacks, only 56.6% of whom are employed. The native white figure, at 70.5%, is a few points better than the immigrant number is.
- While we're on the topic of favored demographic groups, where are the egalitarians on the prodigious gender gap in employment rates among immigrants in the US? The following table shows gender gap employment scores for immigrants and natives (non-Hispanic unless otherwise indicated) by race, calculated by taking the percentage of men aged 18-65 who are employed and subtracting from it the percentage of women of the same age range who are employed. The higher the figure, the wider the gender gap in employment:
By pushing for open borders, the contemporary left is indirectly celebrating traditional gender roles. Only in America!
- Of the 24 major occupational categories listed, the legal profession boasts the smallest share of immigrants (7.1%) among its ranks, with community and social services (9.2%) a few spots up. Small surprise that occupations where practitioners face almost no competition from immigrants (and virtually none at all from those of the illegal variety) in their professional lives tend also to be the most fervent boosters of massive unrestricted immigration. While open borders do not increase the competitive pressures practitioners in these occupations face, they do increase the client base needing their services.
There are occupations all for open borders, like agriculture (47.4%), domestic and commercial cleaning (34.0%), and construction (24.4%) that are significantly staffed by immigrants as well, to be sure. But unlike the legal profession, there are distinct hierarchies and not much in the way of upward mobility in these immigrant-intensive fields. They're characterized by white natives running the operations and menial immigrants doing the dirty work for as little money and as compliantly as possible in the name of fattening the bottom line (at least in the short-run).
- Five years ago, using similarly commendable data from the CIS, I came up with what I deemed a "merit index score" for countries constituted by evaluating how well their emigrants fared in the US. Using four measures included in the report, here's an update. The scores are calculated by adding to 93.3 (set to norm native whites at a score of 100) the percentage of each nation's emigrants to the US aged 25-65 who have attained a bachelor's degree or higher and then subtracting from that the percentages from each that are in poverty, use at least one welfare program, and are without medical insurance:
Half a decade ago, Indians were the cream of the crop. They remain so today. The brahmins most Americans come into contact with here are not representative of the country of over 1 billion from whence they come, a country for which the task of obtaining a "representative sample" seems almost insurmountably difficult to complete. They about perform the Chinese in the states, but I'd guess the smart money is on China outperforming India in the 21st century.
Europeans and East Asians fill out the rest of the top spots, with native whites in the middle of that mix. As we move down into the third world, we see that the people poor, backwards countries send end up being poor and backwards in the country they ultimately settle in, as do their descendants. Mexicans, constituting by far the largest immigrant nationality in the US, come in at rock bottom. With one-fifth of Mexico already here, it's a small wonder that the US is increasingly coming to resemble her southern neighbor.
- It's regularly remarked upon by those in the Steveosphere that political opinion makers in the nation's capital have a skewed perspective of contemporary immigration into the US. Besides being steeped in antiquated images of Ellis Island, immigrants living in states surrounding DC fare better than immigrants in the rest of the country do.
The following table ranks the 16 states with the largest foreign-born populations in the country by how impoverished its immigrants are relative to its natives. The index is calculated by taking the share of a state's impoverished population that is foreign-born and dividing it by the percentage of the state's total population that is foreign-born. A score of 100% indicates that immigrants are as likely to be in poverty as natives; a score under 100% indicates immigrants are less impoverished than natives are; and a score over 100% indicates immigrants are more likely to be in poverty than natives are:
Even in Virginia, immigrants are poorer than natives are. In the US today, importing people is more-or-less synonymous with importing poverty no matter where one travels (with a few notable exceptions like Silicon Valley). That said, distinctions between natives and immigrants are considerably less pronounced in states like Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey than they are in Texas and Arizona.
- There's a certain dignity in a life devoid of material abundance though, isn't there? Perhaps, but that's often an irrelevant question in a country as affluent as the US, where the officially poor have multiple flat screen TVs and iPhones, let alone more food than anyone should eat.
To what extent are we assisting immigrants in obtaining this material abundance? The following table shows the percentages of immigrants, by state, using at least one major welfare program:
Again, Virginia looks great and Maryland's foreign-born do better than those in the country as a whole do.
- Open borders apologists like Russ Roberts and Tyler Cowen don't cross paths with a large swath the socioeconomic spectrum, though. They don't experience poverty firsthand in any capacity, so discerning difference in poverty rates is an exclusively academic exercise for them. They do spend more time with those in the upper echelons than the average layperson does, however. And in these circles, immigrants are overrepresented.
The following table shows an immigrant "eduscore" calculated by taking the percentage of a state's immigrant population that has attained a bachelor's degree or higher and dividing it by the percentage of a state's native population that has done the same. A score of 100% indicates a state's immigrants are exactly as likely to have at least four year degrees as natives are; a score under 100% indicates they are less likely to have done so; and a score of over 100% indicates they are more likely to have done so:
The predominately Mexican incursion into the Southwest has little in common with immigration into Fairfax County. In Virginia and Maryland, and more saliently still in the district they engulf, foreign-born educational attainment surpasses that of natives. It also does so in Minnesota, though I wonder how much of that is due to degrees in Islamic studies among vibrant newcomers to cities such as Minneapolis. In most of the country, however, immigrants tend to be less educated than natives are.
- Immigrants are more willing to work and work harder when they do so than natives do, right? Among those aged 18-65, yes, technically, by a statistical rounding error, with 67.7% of immigrants holding a job and 67.6% of natives doing the same.
The native numbers, of course, are dragged down by the poor performance of native blacks, only 56.6% of whom are employed. The native white figure, at 70.5%, is a few points better than the immigrant number is.
- While we're on the topic of favored demographic groups, where are the egalitarians on the prodigious gender gap in employment rates among immigrants in the US? The following table shows gender gap employment scores for immigrants and natives (non-Hispanic unless otherwise indicated) by race, calculated by taking the percentage of men aged 18-65 who are employed and subtracting from it the percentage of women of the same age range who are employed. The higher the figure, the wider the gender gap in employment:
| Group | Sex Gap |
| Immigrants | 21.1 |
| Native whites | 6.9 |
| Native Hispanics | 5.5 |
| Native blacks | (4.7) |
By pushing for open borders, the contemporary left is indirectly celebrating traditional gender roles. Only in America!
- Of the 24 major occupational categories listed, the legal profession boasts the smallest share of immigrants (7.1%) among its ranks, with community and social services (9.2%) a few spots up. Small surprise that occupations where practitioners face almost no competition from immigrants (and virtually none at all from those of the illegal variety) in their professional lives tend also to be the most fervent boosters of massive unrestricted immigration. While open borders do not increase the competitive pressures practitioners in these occupations face, they do increase the client base needing their services.
There are occupations all for open borders, like agriculture (47.4%), domestic and commercial cleaning (34.0%), and construction (24.4%) that are significantly staffed by immigrants as well, to be sure. But unlike the legal profession, there are distinct hierarchies and not much in the way of upward mobility in these immigrant-intensive fields. They're characterized by white natives running the operations and menial immigrants doing the dirty work for as little money and as compliantly as possible in the name of fattening the bottom line (at least in the short-run).
- Five years ago, using similarly commendable data from the CIS, I came up with what I deemed a "merit index score" for countries constituted by evaluating how well their emigrants fared in the US. Using four measures included in the report, here's an update. The scores are calculated by adding to 93.3 (set to norm native whites at a score of 100) the percentage of each nation's emigrants to the US aged 25-65 who have attained a bachelor's degree or higher and then subtracting from that the percentages from each that are in poverty, use at least one welfare program, and are without medical insurance:
| Rank | Country | Merit index |
| 1. | India | 137.6 |
| 2. | Great Britain | 129.6 |
| 3. | Germany | 120.5 |
| 4. | Philippines | 115.7 |
| 5. | Canada | 113.3 |
| 6. | Japan | 103.4 |
| x | Native white | 100.0 |
| x. | Native Asian | 98.3 |
| 7. | China | 91.1 |
| 8. | Korea | 88.0 |
| 9. | Russia | 79.6 |
| 10. | Iran | 79.3 |
| 11. | Pakistan | 71.0 |
| 12. | Poland | 67.7 |
| 13. | Colombia | 58.6 |
| 14. | Jamaica | 49.2 |
| 15. | Laos | 48.3 |
| 16. | Peru | 35.7 |
| 17. | Vietnam | 35.5 |
| x | Native black | 32.1 |
| 18. | Cuba | 25.4 |
| x. | Native Hispanic | 21.0 |
| 19. | Ecuador | 12.8 |
| 20. | Haiti | 8.2 |
| 21. | Dominican Republic | 4.5 |
| 22. | El Salvador | (22.2) |
| 23. | Honduras | (38.9) |
| 24. | Guatemala | (40.4) |
| 25. | Mexico | (42.5) |
Half a decade ago, Indians were the cream of the crop. They remain so today. The brahmins most Americans come into contact with here are not representative of the country of over 1 billion from whence they come, a country for which the task of obtaining a "representative sample" seems almost insurmountably difficult to complete. They about perform the Chinese in the states, but I'd guess the smart money is on China outperforming India in the 21st century.
Europeans and East Asians fill out the rest of the top spots, with native whites in the middle of that mix. As we move down into the third world, we see that the people poor, backwards countries send end up being poor and backwards in the country they ultimately settle in, as do their descendants. Mexicans, constituting by far the largest immigrant nationality in the US, come in at rock bottom. With one-fifth of Mexico already here, it's a small wonder that the US is increasingly coming to resemble her southern neighbor.
- It's regularly remarked upon by those in the Steveosphere that political opinion makers in the nation's capital have a skewed perspective of contemporary immigration into the US. Besides being steeped in antiquated images of Ellis Island, immigrants living in states surrounding DC fare better than immigrants in the rest of the country do.
The following table ranks the 16 states with the largest foreign-born populations in the country by how impoverished its immigrants are relative to its natives. The index is calculated by taking the share of a state's impoverished population that is foreign-born and dividing it by the percentage of the state's total population that is foreign-born. A score of 100% indicates that immigrants are as likely to be in poverty as natives; a score under 100% indicates immigrants are less impoverished than natives are; and a score over 100% indicates immigrants are more likely to be in poverty than natives are:
| State | Poverty |
| Virginia | 104.5% |
| Maryland | 131.1% |
| New Jersey | 132.4% |
| Georgia | 132.5% |
| New York | 136.3% |
| Nevada | 136.7% |
| Florida | 138.2% |
| California | 139.1% |
| National | 151.2% |
| Massachusetts | 153.7% |
| Texas | 158.8% |
| Illinois | 160.6% |
| North Carolina | 164.9% |
| Washington | 168.2% |
| Arizona | 187.4% |
| Colorado | 197.5% |
| Minnesota | 263.7% |
Even in Virginia, immigrants are poorer than natives are. In the US today, importing people is more-or-less synonymous with importing poverty no matter where one travels (with a few notable exceptions like Silicon Valley). That said, distinctions between natives and immigrants are considerably less pronounced in states like Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey than they are in Texas and Arizona.
- There's a certain dignity in a life devoid of material abundance though, isn't there? Perhaps, but that's often an irrelevant question in a country as affluent as the US, where the officially poor have multiple flat screen TVs and iPhones, let alone more food than anyone should eat.
To what extent are we assisting immigrants in obtaining this material abundance? The following table shows the percentages of immigrants, by state, using at least one major welfare program:
| State | Welfare |
| Massachusetts | 19% |
| Virginia | 25% |
| Nevada | 31% |
| Arizona | 34% |
| Georgia | 37% |
| Florida | 39% |
| North Carolina | 39% |
| Maryland | 41% |
| Washington | 42% |
| New York | 43% |
| New Jersey | 44% |
| Colorado | 45% |
| Minnesota | 45% |
| National | 47% |
| California | 55% |
| Illinois | 55% |
| Texas | 58% |
Again, Virginia looks great and Maryland's foreign-born do better than those in the country as a whole do.
- Open borders apologists like Russ Roberts and Tyler Cowen don't cross paths with a large swath the socioeconomic spectrum, though. They don't experience poverty firsthand in any capacity, so discerning difference in poverty rates is an exclusively academic exercise for them. They do spend more time with those in the upper echelons than the average layperson does, however. And in these circles, immigrants are overrepresented.
The following table shows an immigrant "eduscore" calculated by taking the percentage of a state's immigrant population that has attained a bachelor's degree or higher and dividing it by the percentage of a state's native population that has done the same. A score of 100% indicates a state's immigrants are exactly as likely to have at least four year degrees as natives are; a score under 100% indicates they are less likely to have done so; and a score of over 100% indicates they are more likely to have done so:
| State | Eduscore |
| Virginia | 111.5% |
| Maryland | 102.0% |
| Minnesota | 101.1% |
| Washington | 98.3% |
| Florida | 94.1% |
| Georgia | 90.8% |
| National | 90.4% |
| Massachusetts | 86.2% |
| Illinois | 85.5% |
| New York | 84.8% |
| New Jersey | 82.5% |
| Nevada | 78.4% |
| North Carolina | 70.5% |
| California | 70.2% |
| Texas | 69.4% |
| Arizona | 63.2% |
| Colorado | 57.0% |
The predominately Mexican incursion into the Southwest has little in common with immigration into Fairfax County. In Virginia and Maryland, and more saliently still in the district they engulf, foreign-born educational attainment surpasses that of natives. It also does so in Minnesota, though I wonder how much of that is due to degrees in Islamic studies among vibrant newcomers to cities such as Minneapolis. In most of the country, however, immigrants tend to be less educated than natives are.
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