David Frum tries to fill the pair of clown shoes that have been sitting around the CNN offices since Lou Dobbs left:
Many Americans carry in their minds a family memory of upward mobility, from great-grandpa stepping off the boat at Ellis Island to a present generation of professionals and technology workers. This story no longer holds true for the largest single U.S. immigrant group, Mexican-Americans.
Stephen Trejo and Jeffrey Groger studied the intergenerational progress of Mexican-American immigrants in their scholarly work, “Falling Behind or Moving Up?”
They discovered that third-generation Mexican-Americans were no more likely to finish high school than second-generation Mexican-Americans. Fourth-generation Mexican-Americans did no better than third.
If these results continue to hold, the low skills of yesterday’s illegal immigrant will negatively shape the U.S. work force into the 22nd century.
Ignoring for a second the obvious flaws in this argument – that the poor educational results aren’t necessarily a result of ability, but of circumstance and environment, both which can be improved upon – you can click through to the report to see that Mexican-Americans do about as well as African-Americans. In other words, David Frum is arguing that African-Americans and Mexican-Americans negatively shape the U.S. work force. The overall argument he’s making regarding immigration is no different than if he was arguing that we need to save the U.S. economy by keeping black people from having children.
Of course, this sentiment among conservatives shouldn’t be surprising to hear. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina specifically pointed to his state’s large African-American population as a “problem” facing his state. Conservatives often like to claim that the racism of the 1960s is dead. And in a way, they’re right. But a different racism has taken its place. What was once a more individualized contempt for any and all people of a different color has just transformed into a more subtle belief that people of a different ethnicity are collectively a burden on greater society.
You want to fix this problem? Insure every single American that wants to work can get a decent paying living wage job, with health care included. I know this would mean the pigs on Wall Street wouldn’t be able to hand out hundreds of billions of dollars in “bonuses” every year, but what the heck….
Too many pigs, not enough slop.
And for those that don’t want to work? Not a dime.
I don’t care about immigrants. They’re not taking my job, my brothers job, or ANYONE I know. Dude, if YOUR job can be taken by someone who can’t communicate (can’t speak in English) and has no specific skill set, then your job sucks and you need a new job. We’re talking about dish washers, ditch diggers, box movers, manual labor. My programming job isn’t threatened by undocumented workers. Neither is my partners project management job. Both require actually being able to “talk” to clients and having college level skills.
And build the biggest border fence you want, 500 feet high and stainless steal. Won’t matter. Most undocumented folks come in via United Airlines or Delta. Just fly in to visit relatives, see Disney Land or NY, and don’t leave. You can’t stop that, ever. As long as we EVER let someone fly into the country to visit as a tourist or see friends, or on a ‘temp’ work visa, or on a student visa, there’s a chance they just won’t leave.
The way to stop this, it just stop the private businesses (which I hear are ALL Republican, since Democrats only work in government, lol) like the eastern Washington farms from HIRING them to begin with. Problem solved. Next.
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
@3 It’s an economic strategy supported by Republican politicians to boost business profits by lowering payroll costs.
@3 Correct. But the Arizona bill is ONLY about one race. They’re not concerned about illegals from Germany, Japan, Brazil, Canada, or Australia. Just Mexico. When these folks SAY illegal immigrant, or undocumented, they ONLY mean non-white illegal immigrants. That’s the ONLY picture I’ve ever seen up on Fox News when they talk about this. I’ve never seen this discussed on TV with the background graphic being a pic of a blond haired blue eyed illegal Icelandic woman.
Do like Canada. Make it a crime to hire people not allowed to work in our country, and prosecute. Then full audit going back 7 years.
Problem solved….
If the price of our “food” goes up a little because producers have to pay “legal” workers a living wage, so be it.
Next thing is to dismantle the WTO and tax ALL imports. I am tired of seeing every job possible go overseas, including food production. You ever see a Chinese dump? It is called a river.
Now let’s talk about 10 years of not adding one single net job, but billionaires were created at a record pace. 2000 to 2010.
Bushonomics….
And the tea baggers should go back to sucking testicles….
Does anyone besides me think the model in the CougarLife.com advertisement looks young and attractive? I must be getting old.
Roger Rabbit Joke
Q: When does a man know he’s reached old age?
A: When cute blondes hold doors open for him and call him “sir.”
There are too many issues here.
The tea baggers of today are no different than the know nothings of Lincoln’s era who feared the bad effects of unamerican German and Irish immigrants.
But, the liberal also have their issues. The Irish, the Germans, the Jews, .. all of these made their way in America AGAINST the majority.
While the larger society can help Blacks and Hispanics, ultimately the success of these communities needs to come from within.
I also see Black and Hispanic issues as very different. The term “People of Color” is itself racist. Most Hispanics I know are well within the scope f skin color we identify as European. Hispanics seems to me much more like the previous Europeans groups who have come here and, not having the physical tag of “I am different” have mutated into the White mainstream. The challenge for African Americans is much harder.
why does Alki Postings hate construction workers?
Smells like a heaping dosage of liberal elitism to me….
hey alki, go take your elitism and shove up your already blown out ass….
Another ignored part of this issue is the U.S. subsidies for corn farmers.
It has been estimated that U.S. subsidized corn sold in Mexico has displaced roughly 2 million Mexican farm workers many of who have traveled north across the border seeking work.
Stop the subsidy and let Mexican farmers get back to work.
We’d bitch to high heaven if Mexico was dumping corn here but it is okay to dump our corn in Mexico.
@1 “And for those that don’t want to work? Not a dime.”
This is the mother of all specious arguments. Work is a temporary and time-limited part of the life-cycle of average people, not a lifetime commitment. Most working careers last about 30 to 40 years, which is only half of a typical person’s lifespan. Not everyone has to work, is able to work, or should work. For example, a mother’s primary responsibility to society is caring for her children, not economic production. There are people who, for various reasons, can’t work. And a capitalist economy can’t function unless there’s a pool of unemployed persons from which new of expanding enterprises can obtain workers, similar to a military organization’s reserves. The notion that people should either be employed or starving is bullshit.
From the quote in the article: “…If these results continue to hold, the low skills of yesterday’s illegal immigrant will negatively shape the U.S. work force into the 22nd century…..”
What he should have pointed out is that K-12 education in this country – for everyone – isn’t significantly better than it was fifty years ago, and in some significant respects lags behind that level.
Meanwhile, some insist that we have the best education level in the world. But those that make such assertions really haven’t travelled very much, and are basing their conclusions on a world which existed at the conclusion of WWII – as if the world hadn’t changed at all since then. They still believe that India and Korea are impoverished nations beset by famine, that China can’t produce anything better than lowest-technology equipment, etc.
But the truth is that for the AVERAGE student in Japan, Korea, and India, their math and science skills in high school are about three to four years higher than those of their U.S. counterparts. And here’s the real killer – for many of those students from other countries, their reading and writing skills are superior to students in the U.S. – IN ENGLISH.
Wingnuts like to simply blame the teacher’s union. But you could do away with the teacher’s unions and you would still have the same problem. It’s a question of diminished expectations on the part of students, parents, teachers, administration. Add to that the lack of motivation, in that student’s don’t see a link between their performance in school and their future economic well-being, which appears to be primarily affected by factors completely out of their control (economic trends, outsourcing, etc.).
The prescription for this problem isn’t going to make anyone happy. All of us – students, teachers, parents – have to out-work the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and Indians in the task of educating our children.
I’m not suggesting a complete adoption of those countrie’s educational systems, which have their own drawbacks. But we can do a lot better.
Were the black men (big surprise) who killed the white DC principal forced to turn to crime because the job market is flooded with illegals, preventing them from finding work?
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0510/732046.html
@13
Rhp,
I nearly broke out some heavy duty snark and followed Frum’s logic to another conclusion – that since whites have lower graduation rates than 2nd and 3rd generation Asians, when the Chinese become our overlords, they will regard us as the inferior ethnicity bringing down their economy.
As always, thanks for sharing your thoughts. :)
SJ @ 9: The “people of color” designation is sometimes appropriate for just that reason – there is persistent discrimination against people who are easily identifiable as being different. There may not be much difference in economic difficulty for a black American who’s ancestory in the U.S. goes back more than 200 years, versus a more recent hispanic immigrant who’s face is dark and features are less european. Both have quite a bit of difficulty blending into the “melting pot”.
As one Mexican-American writer pointed out, the whole idea of “Mexican” being a race is, however, as silly as identifying “American” as a race. Apart from the smaller ethnic groups which migrated to Mexico over the last hundred years or so, Mexicans have traditionally consisted of a mixture of european Spanish, native americans, and black slaves. Generally, the whiter the shade, the more the person belonged to the aristocratic class. Those on the lowest levels of economic & social class were those with the darkest skin, consisting mostly of a combination of former slaves and Native Americans. While the mostly white Mexicans might have a pretty easy time blending into U.S. society (think of Ricardo Montalban), the darker ones would have a decidedly more difficult task.
Of course, the issue isn’t just Mexican immigration. All of Central and Latin America may use Mexico as a gateway to entry into the U.S.
@14
Yes, you’re a racist. We get it.
Always worth reminding yourself in these conversations that Frum himself is a Canadian immigrant. “I got in, but we sure need to keep everyone else from doing the same thing I did.!”
Hey Lee–
Maybe you & all your pothead buddies can forget all this racist stuff and become firefighters. Man would I feel safe!
Check this out–
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hn6xtranTs
TOO DAMN FUNNY!
My buddies son-in-law is a Brit. Married my buddies daughter 8 months ago and immediately applied for a Green Card so he could get a job.
He has several job offers.
Now be mindful that he is NOT trying to become a citizen, just get a Green Card.
He has multiple job offers.
The red tape has him tied up in knots.
Unbelievable when you try to do the right thing.
Oba-Mao is totally incompetent and so is his administration.
Frum’s also been seen sporting a red rubber nose and asl=king people to,”… squeeze the wheeze — people often do.”
@20
I know of so many stories like that, it’s sad. One of my good friends at Microsoft had to move to Denmark because his fiance couldn’t get a visa to come here (he was a Canadian citizen, his fiance was Pakistani).
Of course, that happened during the Bush Administration. Blaming Obama for that clusterfuck is idiotic. It’s been a disaster for many, many years.
@20
My sister-in-law is an immigrant, she never had a problem with immigration rules before becoming a citizen.
“The red tape has him tied up in knots.
Unbelievable when you try to do the right thing.
Oba-Mao is totally incompetent and so is his administration.”
From the anecdotal to condemnation, all while having his head firmly planted up his ass. One can readily understand how it came to be that our dumbfuck KLOWN considers the dumber-than-a-stump righton and the witless Puddy to be his intellectual superiors.
@15
You mean they’re not and they don’t right now?
Racism has always been there. It is rampant among liberals as well as conservatives. Liberals believe that they aren’t racist while practicing racism. Conservatives just blurt out their stupidity and craft idiotic models to give shape to their worst fears (brown people outnumbering white people)
Lauramae–
And minorities are not racist??
How about Jesse Jackson and Hymie Town?
Asian folks are notorious about their hatred of Blacks.
Millions of examples.
People are all flawed.
Are you going to try and pick nits about who is most racist Lauramae?
You are a racist Lauramae.
You seem to hate White Conservatives by your vitrolic comments.
Don’t try to be holier than though that because you are Native American you can only be a victim of racism and not a racist yourself.
“You are a racist Lauramae”
The projection never ends, does it? Our dumbfuck KLOWN has a Psych 101 thing going for him.
Yeah, you’re a racist, shithead. Falsely claiming that everyone else is a racist doesn’t diminish your hatred for blacks by one iota. Say, speaking of your hatred for blacks, got anymore of your ignorant, racist jokes about what you consider to be lazy blacks you’d care to share?
Dumbfuck racist KLOWN.
@27
Take a breath! You’re making a lot of claims about her that just aren’t there in that, very short, post.
She’s saying the same thing as you are and pointing out racism on both sides of the fence.
@27
You are a racist Lauramae.
You seem to hate White Conservatives by your vitrolic comments.
You’re either seeing comments that no else can see, or the voices in your head are fucking with you again.
Being educated is great. It CAN pay off, more often than not even. In any case it beats being an ignorant troll.
Having a vigorous work ethic is great, virtuous even. Ditto for the payoff.
However, as long as a Chinese worker, one of many, many millions, educated or not, is working for peanuts..
Back in the early 2000’s, a Chinese chemical engineer was making 12,000/year..
How do you compete with that?
Being creative and innovative is the obvious answer but if Americans were really interested in that instead of extracting rents from the work of the past well..
We wouldn’t have a single operating coal power plant in this country would we?
– Byron York
Allll those fair, balanced, unbiased news reports last week from the non-faux networks, all those unbiased reporters saying almost in unison that Arizona’s law is a Nazi intrusion on American rights to be free of internal passports, papers, and controls.
Byron York reminds you how it is in the real world of the real America. Intrusions all the time. Except in one area, voting. There, for some reason, we’re told by the left that it’s unAmerican to show ID before voting. Wonder why that is.
Certainly isn’t because one side gets lots of undocumented votes when documents aren’t required at the polls. After all, Rabbit assured us that non-citizens DO NOT VOTE in America. So there, and shut up about it.
re 32: You have to be on the voter rolls to vote. Jose Jimenez can’t just show up at the polls, call himself Bill Dana, and cast a vote.
Chuzzlewit.
@33…not when Dean Logan is in da house….
Until about the day before yesterday, King County had mail-in voter registrations that required only your solemn assurance that you are/were entitled to vote here.
No docs required. Not even a stamp. Could have registered from each and every shelter and mission in the metrosexual area.
And “show up at the polls” …? Where you been? Where you at? Any damn dog can vote absentee in McDermottLand.
Too easy to vote in King County.
Dipwit.
Registering your dog to vote and actually voting are two different things. You have to produce identification to be a registered voter.
I can sign up my dog to pay the utility bills. So what?
The only person that I’ve heard of who was caught attempting to vote fraudulently ia Anne Coulter.
@36
“The only person that I’ve heard of who was caught attempting to vote fraudulently ia Anne Coulter.”
And don’t for get our local Republican vote fraudster, Jane Balogh, who not only registered her dog to vote, but submitted a ballot from the dog….
The funny thing about Republicans…they are alarmists about voter fraud, but when it comes right down to it, it’s because they are the ones who seem to contemplate and actually undertake voter fraud!
@32,
I hate to break it to you, cupcake, but Byron York is an ignorant douchebag.
Any owner of private property may, within reason, determine the terms of public use of their property provided that in doing so they do not engage in unlawful discrimination (or break any other laws). And, of course, voluntary commercial transactions are simply not the same thing as involuntary compulsion by government authority. So airlines, doctors, office buildings(?), etc. can demand “papers” if that’s what they think is best.
But that is entirely different from empowering representatives of the government to approach a non-motoring citizen minding their own business in a fully public setting and demand documentary evidence of identification. If it were to stand (which is so shockingly unlikely as to render this kind of debate almost pointless) it would be unprecedented.
But more importantly it is fundamentally un-American. It is precisely the sort of thing the framers had in mind with the Fourth Amendment, growing directly out of personal experience.
re 37: At some point, the individual had to produce valid identification to get a utility bill, paycheck or bank statement. So, it’s an accurate way of determining who can and can’t vote.