1) Bringing in Mexicans and Guatemalans who have kids doesn't "boost the American birthrate" -- it just means there will be tons of Mexicans and Guatemalans in America.
2) Replacing Americans in the U.S. workforce and taking up housing in the U.S. with foreigners actively discourages Americans from having families because it's more difficult to find work and housing that will support families.
3) To suggest that Mexicans and Guatemalans will assimilate to American culture just as Germans and Italiand and Poles have is an incredibly precarious assumption. Not only do they not share in the Greco-Roman philosophical and legal traditions the way Europeans do, but they do not even have an orderly, pro-civilization heritage the way Japanese do. The best they've got is lacrosse as a method for human sacrifice.
1) Wrong, it's well documented that these groups have higher birth rates and typically assimilate into U.S. culture in 2-3 generations.
2) A significant chunk of the construction workforce is comprised of immigrants, and deporting these workers will drive up housing prices. The current unemployment rate is low.
3) I can tell that you did not read my article because I specifically addressed the early 20th belief that Germans, Italians, Japanese, and Poles would never assimilate because their culture was too different and un-American. You'll see some quotes in my article about each of those groups.
I can tell you didn't understand my comment because it already elaborated on each of your responses.
The point of (1) is that they could have 12 kids per woman and they *still would not be Americans*. They would still be Mexicans and Guatemalans. Coming to America does not make them American any more than going to Thailand makes an American Thai. You completely disregarded this in your empty response.
Re: (2) Deported foreigners who work construction -- who got those jobs simply because they could be paid less -- not only still take up housing for themselves and their families, they are occupying jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. If you take jobs away from American men, make jobs harder to get in general for American men, and flood the existing housing market with foreigners, all of those things *immediately* make it more difficult for Americans to support families.
That doesn't even mention the drain of public resources/tax money that foreigners constitute.
3) I already explained precisely why both Europeans and the Japanese are and always were much closer and more able to assimilate than Mexicans and Guatemalans and the like. I explained that very clearly, but you either just chose to ignore it or simply didn't understand.
Thanks for circling back. I will try to address your comments more fully.
1. I disagree with you, for the reasons that I outlined in my piece. There is a long history of people from other countries coming to this country and assimilating into U.S. culture. It usually takes a few generations but it absolutely happens. It's also worth remembering that parts of Texas, California, and New Mexico were *in Mexico* less than 200 years ago. I had a professor in grad school, Steve Lopez, who grew up in AZ and whose family were 13th generation Arizonans - they had been in the U.S. since before it was the U.S. So culturally, those regions are and have always been heavily Latino as well as Anglo-American. It's important to be precise about what culture we're describing when we're talking about "American culture," and it can be regionally specific.
2. The U.S. unemployment rate has been <5% for more than a decade. There is not an influx of American men clamoring for jobs in construction that they cannot get. Quite the contrary. And recent immigrants are not buying $600k houses and making housing unaffordable; private equity and housing speculation are drivers of high home prices. Every real estate industry analyst has said that mass deportation will increase housing costs by hurting the construction workforce.
3. Although you believe that Europeans and Japanese might assimilate more easily and are "less different" than Mexicans and Guatemalans from mainstream US culture, that is certainly NOT what political leaders were saying _at the time_. In my article, I included quotes from Henry Cabot Lodge saying "The Japanese can never be assimilated," that the Italians can "are not our race, religion, or language," or that "The Jews want to turn America into Russia." These were widespread beliefs at the time, and they were wrong; these groups DID assimilate, and went on to make great contributions to society. There is no evidence that Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants cannot do the same. They are actually more culturally similar to native-born U.S. in many ways due to a shared border and long history.
That “long history” of people assimilating are of people coming from western and Eastern Europe. A culture that we shared a common ancestry with. Haitians and Guatemalans are not going to “adopt” western ideals.
I get the point that the Germans weren't that different from Anglo Americans, but the idea that people from eg Poland were really similar 100 years ago seems to be pushing it. Poland is more similar now because it has been modernised and Westernised
Exactly. There was tremendous suspicion of the Slavs, the Italians, etc., whose cultures, religions, and values were considered extremely different from Anglo Americans. I included some political cartoons from the early 1900s in my post and it was a struggle to find ones that weren't overtly offensive because of how "foreigners" were characterized.
If you’ve ever looked at a breakdown of housing cost construction labor is a fairly small portion in the grand scheme of things. Land, taxes, sales, etc are more, and I’m not even talking in the big expensive cities.
Literally nowhere has immigration driven down housing costs. The opposite however is very easy to measure.
What most of this boils down to is the question of what an American is.
According to our founding fathers in the preamble to the Constitution, they *very clearly specify* "ourselves and our Posterity" -- nobody else is mentioned. They did not rebel against the crown for justice, liberty, or tranquility for Mexicans or Italians or Spaniards. Those who fought the crown fought for these things for themselves and their posterity.
If one is not of the American Posterity, one is not an American. None of this is for anyone but the American Posterity, and no others are Americans any more than an Irish or Kenyan person who finangles citizenship papers in Mayanmar is Burmese. To think so is a category error: citizenship and nationality/ethnicity are two completely different things. This is essential to understand, because without it, nobody is fundamentally anything and "American" would mean absolutely nothing in terms of nationality; it would be in an altogether different category than "Spaniard" or "Frenchman" or "Thai".
Not only are they not Americans, but they're here en masse taking up resources. It doesn't matter if they're buying 600k houses or not; housing itself is finite and their mere being here and living under roofs is taking up a significant chunk of that finite resource, thereby stretching it thinner for actual Americans. No other country in the world -- not one! -- is expected to just let any and all in. No other country is called "the land of opportunity" where any and all are supposed to be allowed to come and get their piece of the pie. What? What the fuck? Are we just one giant whore for the world? Of course not -- and that's a demeaning demand to make of *any* nation.
For the record, the Italians didn't really assimilate all that well. Slavs did a little bit better. None of the Asians did. If you think Italians have come to embody the American virtues of justice and personal responsibility, you've clearly never been to New Jersey. As collectives, pretty much none of the immigrant groups have *ever* taken American values seriously, even if some (Slavs, Italians, Vietnamese, etc.) are much more peaceable and easier to live with than Mexicans and Guatemalans.
Wait, so are you seriously saying that Irish-Americans whose ancestors got here in 1850 are not Americans? I’m descended from Germans who got here in the late 19th century…I’m not American? The only Americans are direct descendants of the framers of the Constitution? By that token, the indigenous Native Americans would be the most American, because they were here in the greatest quantities when the Constitution was written. An America that defines itself based on racial purity (which isn’t even a real concept) would have a completely different national character and not be an America that any of us would recognize.
Not my words, the founding fathers' words -- and presumably they apply to the descendants of all the former colonials who fought against the English, not just the framers, after all that is for whose broader benefit the Constitution was written.
If you are not by ancestry a son or daughter of the American Revolution, you're not an American. In your case, you're a German living in America. Which might be why you're especially sympathetic to immigration, but if I'm being honest I don't think *you* should be sent back to Germany. Unless you wanted to, then by all means.
The practical question to pose is: where do we draw the line in terms of who can stay? Well, the founding fathers were divided on immigration, and even those in favor were pro quotas and being selective. Cat got out of the bag in the 20th century, so what now?
1st/2nd gen non-european immigrants for sure gotta go. Not even remotely close to embracing the American ideals, and quite frankly they're a national security issue. Consider that the Chinese state intelligence service incorporates ALL Chinese nationals home and abroad and that Chinese students are interviewed upon their return to China. As someone who has attended both a state school and an Ivy, I can tell you that China knows everything going on in American universities. Letting those foreigners work here after graduation? You just gave Chinese intelligence access to who knows what.
As far as non-heritage Americans of European descent, we'd be wise to adopt a tiered approach similar to the Spartans, honestly. Why? Because nobody cares about America like the Americans whose ancestors fought for it and who, centuries later, have nowhere else to return to. Now you may not be able to return to Germany at this point -- but really, that should entail you wanting to preserve America *as* America; because if you've got nowhere to return to this is it.
On a related note and because you mentioned it, this *was* the Native Indians' land. Was. That's how conquest works. They were conquered and their land was taken from them. Ours, no longer theirs. The desert southwest? America conquered it and took it from Mexico. That is why Mexicans coming across the border explicitly reference the notion of "reconquista" in the context of the desert southwest. They're not here to "become Americans" as if that were a possibility; they're here for conquest.
Man, I really really want you to proclaim this whole "if you're not descended from 17th century white settlers youre not an American" stuff as loudly as you can. Please keep saying it. Post it everywhere. Let everyone - including normal, decent American whatever their ancestry - know what kind of drooling, bizarre freaks you nativists really are.
I think one who fully assimilates the culture and values that differentiate America as a nation is an American. Being devoid of such makes one not an American. Because if one won't stand up for justice, truth, and freedom when it's available, it's a kind of cultural genocide. Which people often try to ignore so they can have their fake global village utopia, in the middle of a hellhole of devastation. Culture is the real distinction, race is only periphery. People often focus way too much on periphery. They polish the outside of the cup, while the inside is putrid.
I pointed out that the founding fathers explicitly specified: their posterity.
The further people are from that lineage, the less they seem to acclimate to American values (with some exceptions; e.g., I think Slavs have acclimated better than Italians; frankly, I think Koreans might have acclimated better than Italians if I'm being honest -- and I'm 1/4 Italian...).
As I posted above, I don't think anyone not a heritage American should have to go. But I do think there are two important questions: 1) How much do you champion and embody the American ideas? 2) Has your family been here for so many generations that you don't have anywhere to return to, i.e., America is it for you?
If (2) is answered affirmatively, (1) becomes much more important for the individual in question, and I think that's key.
on (2), the labour market effects are very difficult to study and probably differ by type of worker, but many workers' real wages go up as a result of immigration (and I would probably agree that other types of workers' real wages go down, but the point is that it isn't some straightforward uniform downward drag)
You think the Germans Italiands and Poles who came over here pre 1920 "shared Greco Roman philosophical tradition"? Lol. No. These were mostly illiterate unskilled peasants who didn't know Plato from Pluto
The housing cost mechanism is very minor. By one study, immigration increased house prices by 21% in the UK in the 1991-2016 period. By one estimate, a 10% increase in house prices reduces fertility by 1.3%. So that's a 2.6% hit to fertility...
Not nothing, but hardly the big driver. Obsessing over that mechanism doesn't make sense.
More important mechanisms will include a) immigrants' fertility rate (as Saxbe mentions), and b) the fertility effects of diversity (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4881921). The first is positive, the second is negative. I will have a post evaluating this coming out next week!
Woah—nonononono—this isn’t about the UK. UK’s birthrate has been stagnant since the 80s. You’re point is
In Canada housing multiplied about 3x since the 70s. From 112k to 650k Million (adjusted for inflation). If you look at when the shift happens, it suspiciously matches birthrates. US is less bad but still the case.
So, 1.3% x 30 is 39%. I know you can’t multiply probability like that, but my point stands. Canadian and American housing is a big issues for birthrates.
I'm using the UK as an example of where we have estimates for the share of house price increase _from immigration_. Your model assumes that _all_ of the house price increase is from immigration - which is madness when every country also has mortgage credit expansion fueling house prices.
Oh, my bad, I think I misunderstood your point. I thought you were saying housing has little effect on birthrates, and I just tried to explain why that doesn’t seem to be the case. I wasn’t trying to imply anything about immigration.
Agreed. I think it’s more about how people are going into education without good reason and delaying having children, ideological reasons of not wanting children, not wanting children being they aren’t exposed to them, etc.
Parrently pregnant teenagers are often separated because when one gets pregnant it tends to spread. Exposure to children makes people more likely to want children.
You have a lot of good points about American cultural history that are often underappreciated...yes, the 'founding stock' are exactly the sort of elite liberals conservatives hate!
However, a lot of the attempts to assimilate the Great Wave immigrants primarily came after the wave of nativism, so it may actually be part of a sort of normal way America grows: accept a bunch of immigrants, go nativist and drop immigration rates and assimilate the bunch of arrivals, open up again in 60-100 years. Sort of a physiologic negative feedback loop.
You’ll notice we’re roughly at the 15% level Johnson-Reed happened at.
In which case there’s no need to be nasty about it, but cutting immigration and focusing on assimilation at the present time would make sense. We don’t really have the huge need for low-skill labor we did in the early 20th century, and AI may put even more people out of work. “We do grow through immigration as a nation, but we’re full now.”
Thank you for the thoughtful comment! It’s interesting to think about the need for labor given that there is a push to bring back manufacturing through tariffs and also a need for more housing construction.
I personally still don’t favor increased immigration at this particular point in time just given all the backlash; the last thing this particular nation needs is more ethnic tension. But, there are always tradeoffs, and that may keep us from building all the housing we want. (We already have a large blue-collar recent immigrant population, so we may not need more right now.)
It's hard to think of a more WASPy name than "Darby Saxbe". She is exactly the kind of elite liberal that conservatives hate. She's a university professor and the grandson of a Senator and Attorney General.
If natalists want to spend $5,000 per year (or even $200,000 over a lifetime) to encourage each new birth, but they are opposed to increasing migration, it's reasonable to assume that they view migration as extremely costly.
The problem of low migrant productivity could be solved by *reducing* entitlements for immigrants -- making them pay their own way, which would select for productivity and reduce fiscal burden. Natalists, however, make this less likely, because they advocate for *more* welfare in the form of a baby-making reward.
Lots of people who believe in "race science" are still pretty pro-immigration, like Richard Hanania. What's the fear of the national IQ dropping by one or two points from Hispanic immigration, when there are Republicans who want to ban embryo selection for IQ, which is far more destructive?
I'm pretty pro-immigration, but I think we should be very selective when it comes to African and Muslim migrants. Nigerian uber drivers and Haitian workers vetted by the employers are great, and quite honestly few things made me prouder to be American than African Uber drivers who tell me how glad they are to live in the US, but I don't want Haitian asylum seekers. Mass immigration from Africa and the Muslim world causes all sorts of social issues. You often get high rates of rape and crime and a big underclass and such. Black immigrants do well in the US because we are selective. Mass unselected migration from Africa would go badly, and you can see Black Americans have not assimilated after many years. Even with intermarriage legal for two generations, there is not much assimilation.
I think immigration from Latin America is generally a net good, though it should be legal rather than illegal, and I don't want the kind of illegal immigration we saw under Biden.
Why don't you want Haitian asylum seekers? You know the history of Haiti, right? It was one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 1700s. After the slaves revolted and kicked out their overseers, France forced it to pay the equivalent of $21B in reparations, which crippled their economy for over a century. It was occupied by the U.S. for 20 years, who took complete control of all their institutions, a period followed by a brutal dictatorship marked by corruption. In the mean time, the island's natural resources had been stripped and depleted by hundreds of years of plantation slave labor. The story of Haiti is not a story of selection or IQ, it's a story of exploitation by the West whose generational wealth is still linked to centuries of ripping off that country. To whatever extent the people of Haiti now need asylum, we bear some of the blame.
The whole concept of a "national IQ" relies on pseudoscience that was robustly debunked in the 1990s and has received no mainstream scientific attention since then. IQ is a flawed measure that captures environmental/educational context as well as "g"; it's never been universally administered globally so any study samples purporting to reflect different cultures are cherry-picked; IQ is only partially heritable (50-80% at most)- if it was fully heritable, you wouldn't see average IQs increasing in countries as literacy rises. Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Latin Americans are a lot like people in the U.S.: a mixed bag of many different groups who have made genetic contributions, including white, indigeneous, Asian, and Black.
I do know the history of Haiti, yes. I view it as another reason *not* to want large-scale unselected Haitian immigration. The United States already has kind of tense race relations and a substantial black minority with an uncomfortable relationship with the majority of the country. It will not help our social fabric at all to have more poor black people with a (legitimate) very strong historical grievance against colonialism. It would not be good for Americans.
As terrible as the history of Haiti is, I'm really not so convinced that it's the main cause of contemporary low achievement of Haitians, though I wouldn't deny that it plays *any* role. Haiti is certainly a lot poorer than other Black Caribbean countries like Jamaica, though part of that is that Jamaica is more multiracial and has more European ancestry. Countries like Ethiopia which were never colonized are not really richer than their non-colonized neighbors. Kenya is more developed. Granted, the British colonists were much nicer to Kenya than the French were to Haiti, and yes that matters.
Still I'm not so sure and I do think you are exaggerating the role that these things play. The things you mentioned all happened before the 1950s, when Haiti was richer than South Korea. South Korea faced awful mistreatment by Japan for decades, and then a crazy percentage of the Korean population died in the Korean War. The Chinese people faced Moaism and the Great Leap Forward. Historically no one has been more persecuted than the Jews. Jews have been persecuted by everyone for centuries with the pogroms and such and the Holocaust happened, a literal genocide, and yet Jewish Americans are the richest and most educated group in the US, or maybe a close second to Indians. Holocaust survivors won Nobel Prizes. Similarly despite being hated and attacked by all of its neighbors throughout its history, today Israel is a powerhouse in science.
I think actually that a lot of the problem with Haiti is brain drain to the US. Haitian-Americans do quite well, with incomes closer to White Americans than to Black Americans, because we are rather selective in who we take. We should be, but this means a lot of elites leave Haiti. I think that this brain drain, while a net good for the world and something that I support, is very destructive to Haiti. It's good for America. I do not want to stop it but one cannot deny it has costs for Haiti. I think that if you want to argue that America has an obligation to Haitians, this is a better argument than things that happened hundreds of years ago.
There's no question whatsoever that IQ while highly heritable is not 100% heritable and the environment affects it. I don't think that Haitians would continue to have a below 70 IQ or whatever Lynn claims. I think after a few generations they would be similar in income, education, and so on to Black Americans today, with measured IQs in the mid-80s. Still given what we know I think it's . When I was talking about "national IQ", I was mostly thinking about America's national IQ, and not those of other countries. I brought it up in the context of NOT being concerned about changes to it, since they are trivial compared to embryo selection.
I of course agree that many national IQs including African national IQs are depressed by the environment and I don't put much stock in the Lynn estimates or whatever. Lynn was an actual racist with sketchy methodology I agree.
Sure, though there are religious Christians who want it banned and they tend to be Republicans. And Candace Owens will probably have a meltdown about it. But anyway I don’t think either party will ban it. Dems are too invested in reproductive choice. I also think Dems are more likely to want to subsidize it so that everyone can afford it, because of these concerns about inequality.
It's hard to see Republicans wanting to fund embryo selection in Africa given that they defunded PEPFAR. Embryo selection in Africa would be amazing.
First of all it's offensive and wrong to refer to human beings as trash. I wouldn't call people with Down syndrome "trash", even though they have a lower IQ than any race of people. They are still human beings. Come on. Furthermore it's tactically terrible. If you want to convince open-minded liberals (like Darby) that hereditarianism is true, you should not refer to people as "brown trash".
You do know that there are very accomplished black people with IQs over 130 right? Do you think that Roland Fryer is not "genetically decent", whatever that means? Or Thomas Sowell? Or Glenn Loury? Since you are also talking about "brown" people, do you think Ramanujan was not genetically decent? Tamil Brahmins probably have average IQs close to the Ashkenazi level.
There are many populations with lower *average* levels of intelligence, and yes it's harder to have a successful country with lower average levels of g and especially with a low "smart fraction" of people with high g. Importing the entire population of Haiti into the US would be a bad idea and we should not do it. You really want to have talented people in your country, and they are not uniformly distributed across populations. The UAE is successful but oil money plays a big role.
When you say really distasteful things like this, you are helping the case of people who say that hereditarianism is the same as racism.
Destroying civilization because you are afraid of hurting peoples feelings is evil.
Being polite has caused zero progress. You don’t get people to embrace hereditarianism by constantly apologizing. Charles Murray failed.
There is no world where people from the shit races just accept that they are dumb and will make up 1% of the elite and 50% of the underclass. There is no argument you can make where they accept that. They will tear the whole system down before they accept it.
You could maybe get the superior races to STOP CARING what they think or feel or what their rights are. But thats racism as understood by 99.9% of people. So you can either be a racist or you can become a third world shithole.
P.s. the accomplishments of every single person you named doesn’t come remotely close to making up for the damage caused by their co-ethnics. A trade where both were gotten rid of would be a good trade.
You say that “real racism has never been tried” but if history and the current state of Twitter/X is any indication “real racism” would be directed at groups like Jews and Indians rather than at black people. Human nature is to punch up.
For what it’s worth even Churchill who was a hardcore race realist and eugenicist (even supporting forced sterilization) talked about treating people as individuals.
There is no world in which what? Singaporean Malays aren’t trying to constantly destroy Singapore because the elite is mostly Chinese. Come on. Arab Israelis feel more Israeli than ever post October 7 and Hamas and Hezbollah target them too, even though Israeli elites are very Jewish. Malay Singaporeans and Arab Israelis strongly prefer to live in Israel and Singapore than elsewhere in their regions. Proof of what’s possible. America needs to be more like Israel and Singapore, not like Nazi Germany.
If you want to convince Darby and other left of center of hereditarianism at least *pretend* not to be an actual racist for crying out loud.
Indians aren’t a good race. The Brahmins aren’t as smart as Jews, the talent pool is very shallow. That’s why mass importing them to Canada, the uk, and AZ has been a total disaster.
lKY was a Chinese supremicist who did t let the other races have any real power.
Singapore Chinese and Israeli Jews are RACISTS who keep their inferior minorities in line through strength and fear. They know that if they get out of line they will be crushed by the iron fist. They do this because they are confident in their own superiority and right to rule. They also have been careful not to allow the trash to outnumber them demographically.
LKY was much more polite than you are. So is Netanyahu who bragged about affirmative action for Arabs, and he is distinctly on the *right* of Israeli politics.
Lky called Mexican immigrants to the USA “fruit pickers” that would be bad for America ok Charlie rose. He said that Americas problem with crime was because of black people. He said that if he could start Singapore from scratch he would make it 100% Chinese and only puts up with diversity because of his starting position.
He subjects guest workers to monthly fertility checks and deportation anyone that gets pregnant (no birthright citizenship there). The Israelis sterilized a bunch of Africans.
Netanyahu has run an apartheid state that periodically carpet bombs the Palestinians (I don’t criticize, I wish they would genocide the entire race).
Lky firmly stood against affirmative action, he allowed a tiny number of token positions with no authority to go to brown trash, but firmly stood against AA in 99% of cases.
They are pretty benevolent “racists” who implement affirmative action. There’s affirmative action for Malay Singaporeans and Arab Israelis. I’m certainly not the world’s biggest fan of affirmative action but it’s ok to have a moderate amount for the sake of social cohesion in some contexts.
Why do you think Israel has such high fertility rates?
Do you generally agree with the fertility memes hypothesis? This very interesting article argues that religious Jews have a lot of kids, and secular Jews learn from religious ones, which is why even secular Jews are at replacement.
There are peer-reviewed papers about hereditarianism like https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2021-warne-2.pdf but all you do is engage in personal insults rather than try to change peoples' minds. Come on. Petty.
Legal immigration from Latin America and yes also from black countries like Haiti and Nigeria has been a net good for the US. But yes, unselected mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa would be a bad idea. It would be nice to argue this with data rather than personal insults.
It's titled "Between-Group Mean Differences in Intelligence in the United States Are >0% Genetically Caused: Five Converging Lines of Evidence". I thought you would like it.
If you are advocating for unrestricted immigration for white Europeans, as a German I'm all for it. Would be nice to have an out for good people (or myself), as things are deteriorating here. Capable young people are trapped in an ever-more oppressive gerontocracy here. Which is of course our fault as it's our home, but even at our worst, the average German immigrant will be far better than the average Mexican or Guatemalan.
Well yes, birthrates increase as wages go down, so if you import additional poor people you both reduce the average income and drive down wages amongst the working class, which increases birth rates.
Thank you for this thought-provoking comment! I think you make a lot of great points, but you are also taking my argument a little bit farther than I intended. I'm not arguing that we should endeavor to import a whole bunch of new immigrants in order to do all the hard work of maintaining our birth rate for us as a shortcut to making childrearing better for everyone. My previous Substack was all about the importance of funding paid leave, childcare, healthcare, and other safety net benefits that support families. In this piece, I was trying to argue that it is hypocritical for folks in the MAGA-adjacent pronatalist movement to claim to want a baby boom while ALSO taking really cruel and punitive steps towards the immigrant families that are already here.
"We should be able to face our problems ourselves instead of asking other people to do it for us because we fundamentally think of their lifestyles as lesser than ours."
This is an excellent argument and I definitely agree. I guess I'm both/and about this-- I think we should make life better for people who want to have kids, but we should also appreciate the contributions of immigrants to sustaining our birth rate and putting us in a stronger position than many countries whose birth rates are dropping even faster than ours.
1) Bringing in Mexicans and Guatemalans who have kids doesn't "boost the American birthrate" -- it just means there will be tons of Mexicans and Guatemalans in America.
2) Replacing Americans in the U.S. workforce and taking up housing in the U.S. with foreigners actively discourages Americans from having families because it's more difficult to find work and housing that will support families.
3) To suggest that Mexicans and Guatemalans will assimilate to American culture just as Germans and Italiand and Poles have is an incredibly precarious assumption. Not only do they not share in the Greco-Roman philosophical and legal traditions the way Europeans do, but they do not even have an orderly, pro-civilization heritage the way Japanese do. The best they've got is lacrosse as a method for human sacrifice.
1) Wrong, it's well documented that these groups have higher birth rates and typically assimilate into U.S. culture in 2-3 generations.
2) A significant chunk of the construction workforce is comprised of immigrants, and deporting these workers will drive up housing prices. The current unemployment rate is low.
3) I can tell that you did not read my article because I specifically addressed the early 20th belief that Germans, Italians, Japanese, and Poles would never assimilate because their culture was too different and un-American. You'll see some quotes in my article about each of those groups.
I can tell you didn't understand my comment because it already elaborated on each of your responses.
The point of (1) is that they could have 12 kids per woman and they *still would not be Americans*. They would still be Mexicans and Guatemalans. Coming to America does not make them American any more than going to Thailand makes an American Thai. You completely disregarded this in your empty response.
Re: (2) Deported foreigners who work construction -- who got those jobs simply because they could be paid less -- not only still take up housing for themselves and their families, they are occupying jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. If you take jobs away from American men, make jobs harder to get in general for American men, and flood the existing housing market with foreigners, all of those things *immediately* make it more difficult for Americans to support families.
That doesn't even mention the drain of public resources/tax money that foreigners constitute.
3) I already explained precisely why both Europeans and the Japanese are and always were much closer and more able to assimilate than Mexicans and Guatemalans and the like. I explained that very clearly, but you either just chose to ignore it or simply didn't understand.
Thanks for circling back. I will try to address your comments more fully.
1. I disagree with you, for the reasons that I outlined in my piece. There is a long history of people from other countries coming to this country and assimilating into U.S. culture. It usually takes a few generations but it absolutely happens. It's also worth remembering that parts of Texas, California, and New Mexico were *in Mexico* less than 200 years ago. I had a professor in grad school, Steve Lopez, who grew up in AZ and whose family were 13th generation Arizonans - they had been in the U.S. since before it was the U.S. So culturally, those regions are and have always been heavily Latino as well as Anglo-American. It's important to be precise about what culture we're describing when we're talking about "American culture," and it can be regionally specific.
2. The U.S. unemployment rate has been <5% for more than a decade. There is not an influx of American men clamoring for jobs in construction that they cannot get. Quite the contrary. And recent immigrants are not buying $600k houses and making housing unaffordable; private equity and housing speculation are drivers of high home prices. Every real estate industry analyst has said that mass deportation will increase housing costs by hurting the construction workforce.
3. Although you believe that Europeans and Japanese might assimilate more easily and are "less different" than Mexicans and Guatemalans from mainstream US culture, that is certainly NOT what political leaders were saying _at the time_. In my article, I included quotes from Henry Cabot Lodge saying "The Japanese can never be assimilated," that the Italians can "are not our race, religion, or language," or that "The Jews want to turn America into Russia." These were widespread beliefs at the time, and they were wrong; these groups DID assimilate, and went on to make great contributions to society. There is no evidence that Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants cannot do the same. They are actually more culturally similar to native-born U.S. in many ways due to a shared border and long history.
That “long history” of people assimilating are of people coming from western and Eastern Europe. A culture that we shared a common ancestry with. Haitians and Guatemalans are not going to “adopt” western ideals.
I get the point that the Germans weren't that different from Anglo Americans, but the idea that people from eg Poland were really similar 100 years ago seems to be pushing it. Poland is more similar now because it has been modernised and Westernised
Exactly. There was tremendous suspicion of the Slavs, the Italians, etc., whose cultures, religions, and values were considered extremely different from Anglo Americans. I included some political cartoons from the early 1900s in my post and it was a struggle to find ones that weren't overtly offensive because of how "foreigners" were characterized.
People from Poland are white, Christian, and have an average iq in the high 90s.
Not so much Guatemala and Haiti.
Genetics matter.
If you’ve ever looked at a breakdown of housing cost construction labor is a fairly small portion in the grand scheme of things. Land, taxes, sales, etc are more, and I’m not even talking in the big expensive cities.
Literally nowhere has immigration driven down housing costs. The opposite however is very easy to measure.
What most of this boils down to is the question of what an American is.
According to our founding fathers in the preamble to the Constitution, they *very clearly specify* "ourselves and our Posterity" -- nobody else is mentioned. They did not rebel against the crown for justice, liberty, or tranquility for Mexicans or Italians or Spaniards. Those who fought the crown fought for these things for themselves and their posterity.
If one is not of the American Posterity, one is not an American. None of this is for anyone but the American Posterity, and no others are Americans any more than an Irish or Kenyan person who finangles citizenship papers in Mayanmar is Burmese. To think so is a category error: citizenship and nationality/ethnicity are two completely different things. This is essential to understand, because without it, nobody is fundamentally anything and "American" would mean absolutely nothing in terms of nationality; it would be in an altogether different category than "Spaniard" or "Frenchman" or "Thai".
Not only are they not Americans, but they're here en masse taking up resources. It doesn't matter if they're buying 600k houses or not; housing itself is finite and their mere being here and living under roofs is taking up a significant chunk of that finite resource, thereby stretching it thinner for actual Americans. No other country in the world -- not one! -- is expected to just let any and all in. No other country is called "the land of opportunity" where any and all are supposed to be allowed to come and get their piece of the pie. What? What the fuck? Are we just one giant whore for the world? Of course not -- and that's a demeaning demand to make of *any* nation.
For the record, the Italians didn't really assimilate all that well. Slavs did a little bit better. None of the Asians did. If you think Italians have come to embody the American virtues of justice and personal responsibility, you've clearly never been to New Jersey. As collectives, pretty much none of the immigrant groups have *ever* taken American values seriously, even if some (Slavs, Italians, Vietnamese, etc.) are much more peaceable and easier to live with than Mexicans and Guatemalans.
Wait, so are you seriously saying that Irish-Americans whose ancestors got here in 1850 are not Americans? I’m descended from Germans who got here in the late 19th century…I’m not American? The only Americans are direct descendants of the framers of the Constitution? By that token, the indigenous Native Americans would be the most American, because they were here in the greatest quantities when the Constitution was written. An America that defines itself based on racial purity (which isn’t even a real concept) would have a completely different national character and not be an America that any of us would recognize.
Not my words, the founding fathers' words -- and presumably they apply to the descendants of all the former colonials who fought against the English, not just the framers, after all that is for whose broader benefit the Constitution was written.
If you are not by ancestry a son or daughter of the American Revolution, you're not an American. In your case, you're a German living in America. Which might be why you're especially sympathetic to immigration, but if I'm being honest I don't think *you* should be sent back to Germany. Unless you wanted to, then by all means.
The practical question to pose is: where do we draw the line in terms of who can stay? Well, the founding fathers were divided on immigration, and even those in favor were pro quotas and being selective. Cat got out of the bag in the 20th century, so what now?
1st/2nd gen non-european immigrants for sure gotta go. Not even remotely close to embracing the American ideals, and quite frankly they're a national security issue. Consider that the Chinese state intelligence service incorporates ALL Chinese nationals home and abroad and that Chinese students are interviewed upon their return to China. As someone who has attended both a state school and an Ivy, I can tell you that China knows everything going on in American universities. Letting those foreigners work here after graduation? You just gave Chinese intelligence access to who knows what.
As far as non-heritage Americans of European descent, we'd be wise to adopt a tiered approach similar to the Spartans, honestly. Why? Because nobody cares about America like the Americans whose ancestors fought for it and who, centuries later, have nowhere else to return to. Now you may not be able to return to Germany at this point -- but really, that should entail you wanting to preserve America *as* America; because if you've got nowhere to return to this is it.
On a related note and because you mentioned it, this *was* the Native Indians' land. Was. That's how conquest works. They were conquered and their land was taken from them. Ours, no longer theirs. The desert southwest? America conquered it and took it from Mexico. That is why Mexicans coming across the border explicitly reference the notion of "reconquista" in the context of the desert southwest. They're not here to "become Americans" as if that were a possibility; they're here for conquest.
Man, I really really want you to proclaim this whole "if you're not descended from 17th century white settlers youre not an American" stuff as loudly as you can. Please keep saying it. Post it everywhere. Let everyone - including normal, decent American whatever their ancestry - know what kind of drooling, bizarre freaks you nativists really are.
I think one who fully assimilates the culture and values that differentiate America as a nation is an American. Being devoid of such makes one not an American. Because if one won't stand up for justice, truth, and freedom when it's available, it's a kind of cultural genocide. Which people often try to ignore so they can have their fake global village utopia, in the middle of a hellhole of devastation. Culture is the real distinction, race is only periphery. People often focus way too much on periphery. They polish the outside of the cup, while the inside is putrid.
I pointed out that the founding fathers explicitly specified: their posterity.
The further people are from that lineage, the less they seem to acclimate to American values (with some exceptions; e.g., I think Slavs have acclimated better than Italians; frankly, I think Koreans might have acclimated better than Italians if I'm being honest -- and I'm 1/4 Italian...).
As I posted above, I don't think anyone not a heritage American should have to go. But I do think there are two important questions: 1) How much do you champion and embody the American ideas? 2) Has your family been here for so many generations that you don't have anywhere to return to, i.e., America is it for you?
If (2) is answered affirmatively, (1) becomes much more important for the individual in question, and I think that's key.
on (2), the labour market effects are very difficult to study and probably differ by type of worker, but many workers' real wages go up as a result of immigration (and I would probably agree that other types of workers' real wages go down, but the point is that it isn't some straightforward uniform downward drag)
You think the Germans Italiands and Poles who came over here pre 1920 "shared Greco Roman philosophical tradition"? Lol. No. These were mostly illiterate unskilled peasants who didn't know Plato from Pluto
The housing cost mechanism is very minor. By one study, immigration increased house prices by 21% in the UK in the 1991-2016 period. By one estimate, a 10% increase in house prices reduces fertility by 1.3%. So that's a 2.6% hit to fertility...
Not nothing, but hardly the big driver. Obsessing over that mechanism doesn't make sense.
More important mechanisms will include a) immigrants' fertility rate (as Saxbe mentions), and b) the fertility effects of diversity (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4881921). The first is positive, the second is negative. I will have a post evaluating this coming out next week!
Woah—nonononono—this isn’t about the UK. UK’s birthrate has been stagnant since the 80s. You’re point is
In Canada housing multiplied about 3x since the 70s. From 112k to 650k Million (adjusted for inflation). If you look at when the shift happens, it suspiciously matches birthrates. US is less bad but still the case.
So, 1.3% x 30 is 39%. I know you can’t multiply probability like that, but my point stands. Canadian and American housing is a big issues for birthrates.
I'm using the UK as an example of where we have estimates for the share of house price increase _from immigration_. Your model assumes that _all_ of the house price increase is from immigration - which is madness when every country also has mortgage credit expansion fueling house prices.
Oh, my bad, I think I misunderstood your point. I thought you were saying housing has little effect on birthrates, and I just tried to explain why that doesn’t seem to be the case. I wasn’t trying to imply anything about immigration.
I do think many overstate the role of house prices, but yes it certainly seems to be a nonnegligible factor
Agreed. I think it’s more about how people are going into education without good reason and delaying having children, ideological reasons of not wanting children, not wanting children being they aren’t exposed to them, etc.
Parrently pregnant teenagers are often separated because when one gets pregnant it tends to spread. Exposure to children makes people more likely to want children.
yes I was more saying that the effect of immigration on fertility through the mechanism of house prices is small
You have a lot of good points about American cultural history that are often underappreciated...yes, the 'founding stock' are exactly the sort of elite liberals conservatives hate!
However, a lot of the attempts to assimilate the Great Wave immigrants primarily came after the wave of nativism, so it may actually be part of a sort of normal way America grows: accept a bunch of immigrants, go nativist and drop immigration rates and assimilate the bunch of arrivals, open up again in 60-100 years. Sort of a physiologic negative feedback loop.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time
You’ll notice we’re roughly at the 15% level Johnson-Reed happened at.
In which case there’s no need to be nasty about it, but cutting immigration and focusing on assimilation at the present time would make sense. We don’t really have the huge need for low-skill labor we did in the early 20th century, and AI may put even more people out of work. “We do grow through immigration as a nation, but we’re full now.”
Thank you for the thoughtful comment! It’s interesting to think about the need for labor given that there is a push to bring back manufacturing through tariffs and also a need for more housing construction.
That’s a good point.
I personally still don’t favor increased immigration at this particular point in time just given all the backlash; the last thing this particular nation needs is more ethnic tension. But, there are always tradeoffs, and that may keep us from building all the housing we want. (We already have a large blue-collar recent immigrant population, so we may not need more right now.)
It's hard to think of a more WASPy name than "Darby Saxbe". She is exactly the kind of elite liberal that conservatives hate. She's a university professor and the grandson of a Senator and Attorney General.
Based on the header cartoon I thought the one thing that nobody talks about that can get birthrates higher is getting people more drunk again
This is the elephant in the room.
If natalists want to spend $5,000 per year (or even $200,000 over a lifetime) to encourage each new birth, but they are opposed to increasing migration, it's reasonable to assume that they view migration as extremely costly.
The problem of low migrant productivity could be solved by *reducing* entitlements for immigrants -- making them pay their own way, which would select for productivity and reduce fiscal burden. Natalists, however, make this less likely, because they advocate for *more* welfare in the form of a baby-making reward.
Lots of people who believe in "race science" are still pretty pro-immigration, like Richard Hanania. What's the fear of the national IQ dropping by one or two points from Hispanic immigration, when there are Republicans who want to ban embryo selection for IQ, which is far more destructive?
I'm pretty pro-immigration, but I think we should be very selective when it comes to African and Muslim migrants. Nigerian uber drivers and Haitian workers vetted by the employers are great, and quite honestly few things made me prouder to be American than African Uber drivers who tell me how glad they are to live in the US, but I don't want Haitian asylum seekers. Mass immigration from Africa and the Muslim world causes all sorts of social issues. You often get high rates of rape and crime and a big underclass and such. Black immigrants do well in the US because we are selective. Mass unselected migration from Africa would go badly, and you can see Black Americans have not assimilated after many years. Even with intermarriage legal for two generations, there is not much assimilation.
I think immigration from Latin America is generally a net good, though it should be legal rather than illegal, and I don't want the kind of illegal immigration we saw under Biden.
Why don't you want Haitian asylum seekers? You know the history of Haiti, right? It was one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 1700s. After the slaves revolted and kicked out their overseers, France forced it to pay the equivalent of $21B in reparations, which crippled their economy for over a century. It was occupied by the U.S. for 20 years, who took complete control of all their institutions, a period followed by a brutal dictatorship marked by corruption. In the mean time, the island's natural resources had been stripped and depleted by hundreds of years of plantation slave labor. The story of Haiti is not a story of selection or IQ, it's a story of exploitation by the West whose generational wealth is still linked to centuries of ripping off that country. To whatever extent the people of Haiti now need asylum, we bear some of the blame.
The whole concept of a "national IQ" relies on pseudoscience that was robustly debunked in the 1990s and has received no mainstream scientific attention since then. IQ is a flawed measure that captures environmental/educational context as well as "g"; it's never been universally administered globally so any study samples purporting to reflect different cultures are cherry-picked; IQ is only partially heritable (50-80% at most)- if it was fully heritable, you wouldn't see average IQs increasing in countries as literacy rises. Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Latin Americans are a lot like people in the U.S.: a mixed bag of many different groups who have made genetic contributions, including white, indigeneous, Asian, and Black.
Thanks for engaging!
I do know the history of Haiti, yes. I view it as another reason *not* to want large-scale unselected Haitian immigration. The United States already has kind of tense race relations and a substantial black minority with an uncomfortable relationship with the majority of the country. It will not help our social fabric at all to have more poor black people with a (legitimate) very strong historical grievance against colonialism. It would not be good for Americans.
As terrible as the history of Haiti is, I'm really not so convinced that it's the main cause of contemporary low achievement of Haitians, though I wouldn't deny that it plays *any* role. Haiti is certainly a lot poorer than other Black Caribbean countries like Jamaica, though part of that is that Jamaica is more multiracial and has more European ancestry. Countries like Ethiopia which were never colonized are not really richer than their non-colonized neighbors. Kenya is more developed. Granted, the British colonists were much nicer to Kenya than the French were to Haiti, and yes that matters.
Still I'm not so sure and I do think you are exaggerating the role that these things play. The things you mentioned all happened before the 1950s, when Haiti was richer than South Korea. South Korea faced awful mistreatment by Japan for decades, and then a crazy percentage of the Korean population died in the Korean War. The Chinese people faced Moaism and the Great Leap Forward. Historically no one has been more persecuted than the Jews. Jews have been persecuted by everyone for centuries with the pogroms and such and the Holocaust happened, a literal genocide, and yet Jewish Americans are the richest and most educated group in the US, or maybe a close second to Indians. Holocaust survivors won Nobel Prizes. Similarly despite being hated and attacked by all of its neighbors throughout its history, today Israel is a powerhouse in science.
I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GexZF5VIMU and https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2021-warne-2.pdf to be pretty convincing.
I think actually that a lot of the problem with Haiti is brain drain to the US. Haitian-Americans do quite well, with incomes closer to White Americans than to Black Americans, because we are rather selective in who we take. We should be, but this means a lot of elites leave Haiti. I think that this brain drain, while a net good for the world and something that I support, is very destructive to Haiti. It's good for America. I do not want to stop it but one cannot deny it has costs for Haiti. I think that if you want to argue that America has an obligation to Haitians, this is a better argument than things that happened hundreds of years ago.
There's no question whatsoever that IQ while highly heritable is not 100% heritable and the environment affects it. I don't think that Haitians would continue to have a below 70 IQ or whatever Lynn claims. I think after a few generations they would be similar in income, education, and so on to Black Americans today, with measured IQs in the mid-80s. Still given what we know I think it's . When I was talking about "national IQ", I was mostly thinking about America's national IQ, and not those of other countries. I brought it up in the context of NOT being concerned about changes to it, since they are trivial compared to embryo selection.
I of course agree that many national IQs including African national IQs are depressed by the environment and I don't put much stock in the Lynn estimates or whatever. Lynn was an actual racist with sketchy methodology I agree.
There are zero republicans calling to ban embryo selection. Trump is pro-IVF and Elon runs his own fertility clinic.
Meanwhile you’ve got plenty of mainstream leftists outlets pearl clutching about designer babies and inequality.
Sure, though there are religious Christians who want it banned and they tend to be Republicans. And Candace Owens will probably have a meltdown about it. But anyway I don’t think either party will ban it. Dems are too invested in reproductive choice. I also think Dems are more likely to want to subsidize it so that everyone can afford it, because of these concerns about inequality.
It's hard to see Republicans wanting to fund embryo selection in Africa given that they defunded PEPFAR. Embryo selection in Africa would be amazing.
The worlds brown trash are low IQ and makes civilization worse. Sub Saharan Africa has over a billion people and its a shithole.
The only genetically decent non-white people are East Asians and they seem to have their own pathologies (including extinction level fertility rates).
First of all it's offensive and wrong to refer to human beings as trash. I wouldn't call people with Down syndrome "trash", even though they have a lower IQ than any race of people. They are still human beings. Come on. Furthermore it's tactically terrible. If you want to convince open-minded liberals (like Darby) that hereditarianism is true, you should not refer to people as "brown trash".
You do know that there are very accomplished black people with IQs over 130 right? Do you think that Roland Fryer is not "genetically decent", whatever that means? Or Thomas Sowell? Or Glenn Loury? Since you are also talking about "brown" people, do you think Ramanujan was not genetically decent? Tamil Brahmins probably have average IQs close to the Ashkenazi level.
There are many populations with lower *average* levels of intelligence, and yes it's harder to have a successful country with lower average levels of g and especially with a low "smart fraction" of people with high g. Importing the entire population of Haiti into the US would be a bad idea and we should not do it. You really want to have talented people in your country, and they are not uniformly distributed across populations. The UAE is successful but oil money plays a big role.
When you say really distasteful things like this, you are helping the case of people who say that hereditarianism is the same as racism.
Destroying civilization because you are afraid of hurting peoples feelings is evil.
Being polite has caused zero progress. You don’t get people to embrace hereditarianism by constantly apologizing. Charles Murray failed.
There is no world where people from the shit races just accept that they are dumb and will make up 1% of the elite and 50% of the underclass. There is no argument you can make where they accept that. They will tear the whole system down before they accept it.
You could maybe get the superior races to STOP CARING what they think or feel or what their rights are. But thats racism as understood by 99.9% of people. So you can either be a racist or you can become a third world shithole.
P.s. the accomplishments of every single person you named doesn’t come remotely close to making up for the damage caused by their co-ethnics. A trade where both were gotten rid of would be a good trade.
You say that “real racism has never been tried” but if history and the current state of Twitter/X is any indication “real racism” would be directed at groups like Jews and Indians rather than at black people. Human nature is to punch up.
For what it’s worth even Churchill who was a hardcore race realist and eugenicist (even supporting forced sterilization) talked about treating people as individuals.
There is no world in which what? Singaporean Malays aren’t trying to constantly destroy Singapore because the elite is mostly Chinese. Come on. Arab Israelis feel more Israeli than ever post October 7 and Hamas and Hezbollah target them too, even though Israeli elites are very Jewish. Malay Singaporeans and Arab Israelis strongly prefer to live in Israel and Singapore than elsewhere in their regions. Proof of what’s possible. America needs to be more like Israel and Singapore, not like Nazi Germany.
If you want to convince Darby and other left of center of hereditarianism at least *pretend* not to be an actual racist for crying out loud.
Indians aren’t a good race. The Brahmins aren’t as smart as Jews, the talent pool is very shallow. That’s why mass importing them to Canada, the uk, and AZ has been a total disaster.
lKY was a Chinese supremicist who did t let the other races have any real power.
Singapore Chinese and Israeli Jews are RACISTS who keep their inferior minorities in line through strength and fear. They know that if they get out of line they will be crushed by the iron fist. They do this because they are confident in their own superiority and right to rule. They also have been careful not to allow the trash to outnumber them demographically.
LKY was much more polite than you are. So is Netanyahu who bragged about affirmative action for Arabs, and he is distinctly on the *right* of Israeli politics.
Lky called Mexican immigrants to the USA “fruit pickers” that would be bad for America ok Charlie rose. He said that Americas problem with crime was because of black people. He said that if he could start Singapore from scratch he would make it 100% Chinese and only puts up with diversity because of his starting position.
He subjects guest workers to monthly fertility checks and deportation anyone that gets pregnant (no birthright citizenship there). The Israelis sterilized a bunch of Africans.
Netanyahu has run an apartheid state that periodically carpet bombs the Palestinians (I don’t criticize, I wish they would genocide the entire race).
Lky firmly stood against affirmative action, he allowed a tiny number of token positions with no authority to go to brown trash, but firmly stood against AA in 99% of cases.
They are pretty benevolent “racists” who implement affirmative action. There’s affirmative action for Malay Singaporeans and Arab Israelis. I’m certainly not the world’s biggest fan of affirmative action but it’s ok to have a moderate amount for the sake of social cohesion in some contexts.
Nordic countries have lavish maternity benefits and some of the lowest birth rates.
Yes, I talked about that in this article: https://darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/the-staggering-hypocrisy-of-the-maga
and in this article:
https://darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/progressives-shouldnt-cede-pronatalism
Why do you think Israel has such high fertility rates?
Do you generally agree with the fertility memes hypothesis? This very interesting article argues that religious Jews have a lot of kids, and secular Jews learn from religious ones, which is why even secular Jews are at replacement.
https://nonzionism.com/p/why-is-israel-fertile
Absolute L take. You should be ashamed of writing this
I'm happy to engage in discussion if you want to tell me what you dislike about my piece. Not sure what purpose your comment serves, otherwise.
I liked it!
It's a good piece and I agree the net effects of immigration are good.
No, I will not be engaging. Just wanted to let you know your viewpoint is wrong.
There are peer-reviewed papers about hereditarianism like https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2021-warne-2.pdf but all you do is engage in personal insults rather than try to change peoples' minds. Come on. Petty.
Legal immigration from Latin America and yes also from black countries like Haiti and Nigeria has been a net good for the US. But yes, unselected mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa would be a bad idea. It would be nice to argue this with data rather than personal insults.
“mY pEeR rEvIeWeD sTuDy SaYs AcKsHuLLy”. Shut up nerd.
Did you click the link?
https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2021-warne-2.pdf
“DiD you cLiCk ThE LiNk?” No, I do not care what your bullshit “study” shows.
It's titled "Between-Group Mean Differences in Intelligence in the United States Are >0% Genetically Caused: Five Converging Lines of Evidence". I thought you would like it.
I think it might be beyond Right Of Normie's IQ
If you are advocating for unrestricted immigration for white Europeans, as a German I'm all for it. Would be nice to have an out for good people (or myself), as things are deteriorating here. Capable young people are trapped in an ever-more oppressive gerontocracy here. Which is of course our fault as it's our home, but even at our worst, the average German immigrant will be far better than the average Mexican or Guatemalan.
Well yes, birthrates increase as wages go down, so if you import additional poor people you both reduce the average income and drive down wages amongst the working class, which increases birth rates.
Thank you for this thought-provoking comment! I think you make a lot of great points, but you are also taking my argument a little bit farther than I intended. I'm not arguing that we should endeavor to import a whole bunch of new immigrants in order to do all the hard work of maintaining our birth rate for us as a shortcut to making childrearing better for everyone. My previous Substack was all about the importance of funding paid leave, childcare, healthcare, and other safety net benefits that support families. In this piece, I was trying to argue that it is hypocritical for folks in the MAGA-adjacent pronatalist movement to claim to want a baby boom while ALSO taking really cruel and punitive steps towards the immigrant families that are already here.
"We should be able to face our problems ourselves instead of asking other people to do it for us because we fundamentally think of their lifestyles as lesser than ours."
This is an excellent argument and I definitely agree. I guess I'm both/and about this-- I think we should make life better for people who want to have kids, but we should also appreciate the contributions of immigrants to sustaining our birth rate and putting us in a stronger position than many countries whose birth rates are dropping even faster than ours.