How to articulate an immigration policy Part 2: Thomas Friedman is HBD aware

So we've seen somewhat different perspectives on immigration. But ultimately this is the key fact:

Demography is destiny . The higher intelligence a country's population has, the stronger it will be. The better suited it will be to complete in a flat world. The more time will pass before the country's workers become irrelevant through automation. The more likely the country will not be a replay of what happened to Native Indians when the Europeans came .

Anyway, you got my point. But even more basically, I think the United States is the greatest force for good in the world. We spread freedom, communication, democracy, equality, human rights. And the best way for us to keep doing that is to stay as strong as possible by having the most productive people.

This means people with high IQ. This will mean an immigration policy that screens for IQ. This will mean disparate impact between races. This isn't allowed.

So, how do we gain such a policy without it being defeated by egalitarians? Marketing.

And we consult the go to guy of sexy policy marketing, Thomas Friedman.

In a recent column on America's capital, he talks about the role of intelligent immigrants in improving the US.


Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.

No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?

O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.


Not shocked. China and India are the two biggest countries in the world. So when both each are limited to only 50K immigrants per year you're naturally going to get some sort of cream. Also, the elites in both countries (especially so in India) have cultures pro-Education.


When I asked her the secret, she said it was the resources provided by her school, extremely “supportive parents” and a grant from Intel that let her spend part of each day inspiring and preparing students to enter this contest. Then she told me this: Local San Jose realtors are running ads in newspapers in China and India telling potential immigrants to “buy a home” in her Lynbrook school district because it produced “two Intel science winners.”


Haha. Supportive parents? That's code of high IQ and good parents. But yes, I agree. We've got to get the best talent possible.

But let's transition away. In wake of the Arizona law, we have to look at Mexican immigration. Well, let's see what Friedman has to say about that.



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No, I'm serious. On the biggest issue of the day, Thomas Friedman has absolutely nothing to say even though he's the guru of "how can America compete in the globalized economy" industry.

Oh, wait. I think I've found something from his column on green energy.


After months of heroic negotiations, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman had forged a bipartisan climate/energy/jobs bill that, while far from perfect, would have, for the first time, put a long-term fixed price on carbon — precisely the kind of price signal U.S. industry and consumers need to start really shifting the economy to clean-power innovations. The bill was supposed to be unveiled on Monday, but it was suddenly postponed because of Graham’s justified fury that the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, had decided to push immigration reform first — even though no such bill is ready — in a bid to attract Hispanic voters to revive his re-election campaign in Nevada.


That's it? Oh, wait there's one more from another recent column.


This critical piece of energy legislation was supposed to be unveiled by the three senators on Monday, but it was suddenly postponed late Saturday because of Senator Graham’s fury that the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the White House were planning to take up a highly controversial immigration measure before the energy bill.

If this is what the Obama administration is doing — to score a few cheap political points with Hispanics — it is a travesty.


This is something. Friedman rants about the paralysis in our political system, and is usually on. Too many extremists, not enough centrists. Too much political correctness. But I think he's trying to use complaining about our political system as a means by which to go against amnesty in immigration reform.

But he can't outright say it, or he'll lose alot of his neocon (invade the world/invite the world) supporters.

So, in today's column on the Mexico Narco war, he goes for the sensational.


The Mexican government just issued a travel advisory warning Mexicans about going to Arizona — where they could get arrested by the police for no reason — and the U.S. government just issued a travel advisory warning Americans about going to northern Mexico — where they could get shot by drug dealers for no reason.


Funny. Not so much for the people living there.


We take the Mexican-American relationship for granted. But with the drug wars in Mexico turning into Wild West shootouts on city streets and with our own immigration politics turning more heated, what’s happening in Mexico has become much more critical to American foreign policy and merits more of our attention. Mexico is not Afghanistan, but it also has not become all that it hoped to be by now. Something feels stalled here.


And that's all he has to say about immigration. How can you talk about Mexico and ignore the elephant in the room - illegal, low skilled immigration?

You can't, so he shut off comments for this column.

But anyway, the something feels stalled here has a very simple explanation. In terms of Mexico's potential it has already been reached. For the amount of educated, intelligent people in the country relative to the illiterate, Mexico has been maxed out. Unlike China and India, which still have a ways to meeting their potential, Mexico has been intertwined with the US for decades and so already has had the chance to meet it's potential but hasn't. We can't say that.