On June 28, CNN published an article written by Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria is the author of the best-selling book "Post-American World". The CNN article is titled:
"America risks losing its immigration advantage"
If you're American, it doesn't matter what your background is...if you're a knowledgeable person, and you want your country to do well, you should be horrified by the title of Zakaria's article!
How foolish is it for Zakaria to suggest that America has an immigration "advantage"? Have you ever heard a claim that is further from the truth?
Since when is it advantageous to select relatively greater numbers of immigrants from regions where criminal activity is higher (Africa, South America), and to select relatively fewer numbers of immigrants from regions where criminal activity is lower (Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe)?
Since when is it advantageous to select relatively greater numbers of immigrants from regions that score lower on IQ tests (Africa, South America), and to select relatively fewer numbers of immigrants from regions that score average or above average on IQ tests (Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe)?
Now listen, you can't blame the legal immigrants who arrive wanting a better life. But you can certainly blame the government for implementing such a foolish immigration policy! Many people irrationally blame immigrants, when in fact they should be blaming the government!
Since the legislative morons changed US immigration laws in the 1960s, why has no government corrected the obvious error and implemented a new, rational, immigration policy?
It's so obvious that immigrants today are overrepresented among criminals, so obvious that they score lower on IQ (on average, of course), that I don't even need to find articles to support my claims!
Illogical people, and most radical liberals, would reply by claiming that America's immigration policy should be compassionate.
They are right! The policy should be compassionate...compassionate to native born Americans, Americans whose economy and society will continue its decline if decades long "compassionate" immigration continues!
It's quite admirable to be compassionate to others, but not to the point that the consequences of the compassion will result in severe degradation of your own country and life!
Sometimes my writing style reflects my logical nature...but you'd be hard pressed to find someone more compassionate than I am. I am the type of person who goes out of my way to offer assistance to people, to smile at people, in everyday life. To smile at, or tell a joke to, the Walmart cashier, simply to lift her spirits and make her day. And that compassion is evident in how passionate I feel for the American people.
It's true that the point I make is not politically correct. So what? It's true! It's bad enough to simply ignore important topics that one dislikes. It's much worse to engage the topic and then lie about it!
Does Zakaria purposely lie about immigration? I don't know, but he's undoubtedly incorrect, and I'm not sure that he should be making such comments if he's not prepared to back them up!
Look at some of his doozys:
1) "One of the biggest differences that sets the United States apart from every other rich country in the world is that America is demographically vibrant."
Vibrant? A collection of people who score lower in IQ is considered vibrant? A collection of people who commit more crime is considered vibrant?
2) "The United States is the huge exception to the rule of rich countries shrinking. The U.S. is going to be growing in population for the foreseeable future. By 2050, the U.S. will have 400 million people.
American demographics remain very healthy. Whileall the other countries go through this ageing cycle when they grow rich, America is the exception."
Since when is it healthy for the United States to be growing quicker than other countries, if that growth is achieved by adding a relatively less intelligent and more criminal population?
Wouldn't one rather have Japan's shrinking population, if it means that you could avoid dumbing down your society and making it more crime ridden?
Notice that Zakaria offers not a single reason in support of his claim that immigration is benefiting America. Not a single reason. All he says is that the demographics become "vibrant" and "healthy", with no single piece of supporting evidence!
He does, however, imply that there's one benefit of immigration: The influx of people who will pay taxes to support the pensions of the aging population.
But that's not true! Sure, immigrants will be paying taxes in support of seniors, but they'll be paying it with money they received within America! If you give money to immigrants, and they then give you that money back, they aren't really paying for it! America is a net importer...that means that it loses wealth every single year, because it buys more than it sells. Therefore, the more immigrants it takes in, the greater the trade deficit is likely to be, the less wealthy America becomes! It has to support more people from a shrinking pool of assets!
Zakaria has no clue whatsoever what he's talking about!
3) "That has huge implications. Business people will tell you that one of the reasons they still look at the U.S. as a very attractive market for the future is it will have lots of young worker, producers, consumers, investors and spenders."
I very much doubt that a majority of business people would claim that the US has an attractive labor market! Why would a company want to invest in a country with a higher proportion of less intelligent, less capable workers? What does it matter if they are young or not? If you're looking for bright workers, would you hire less intelligent people simply because they are young?
4) "No matter what people say, at the end of the day there is no solution to the undocumented workers issue that is going to involve mass deportation. The U.S. is not going to do that. We are not a police state. We are talking about an illegal immigrant population that is larger than the state of Illinois."
Zakaria is incorrect. Since when does deportation of illegals require mass deportation?
Why couldn't deportation be spread over a manageable, gradual, time frame? After all, isn't that how illegals entered the country? Gradually, over the past several decades?
In fact, if deportation is gradual enough, many illegals won't even need to be deported, because they will first pass away from natural causes (However, in order to prevent unfair consequences of the delayed deportation, children of undeported illegals should not automatically become American citizens).
5) "So it is in everybodys interest that this problem gets solved sooner rather than later."
Perhaps everybody, except the illegals!
6) "We think we are so enlightened and that we do immigration so much better than the rest of the world. And its true, but only as a backward-looking statement."
"Backward looking" is right! As in pre-1960s immigration reform! Heck, even pre 1980s Reagan amnesty would be an improvement!
7) "Look at what the Canadians are doing today. The Canadians have created a set of smart immigration laws that are much more welcoming to new immigrants and that focus on skill-based immigration."
Zakaria doesn't mention all of the effects of immigration to Canada. The majority of immigrants flood into three large cities: Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.
The result is that those cities have:
a) Massive traffic problems. They reduce everyone's quality of life, reduce the amount of leisure time available, reduce people's willingness to work overtime and enrich the country, increase stress levels, and transfer wealth from the middle class to upper class (in the form of more expensive gasoline).
b) Ghetto communities with little sense of nationalism, community or common language.
c) Various populations that are unwilling or unable to speak English or French fluently, resulting in daily, widespread communication problems between companies and consumers.
d) Canadian institutions that are not willing to recognize the credentials of skilled immigrants. Some of those immigrants instantly become a drain on the economy, if they are unable to find work and resort to welfare.
Other skilled immigrants must resort to taking jobs for which they are overqualified, like driving a cab. The end result is understandably angry immigrants and a Canadian society that wastes their potential.
However, Zakaria isn't completely incorrect about Canadian immigration.
Canadian immigrant selection is much better than the American system, for these reasons:
a) Compared to the USA, a much larger proportion of immigrants entering Canada are from countries with higher average IQs and lower crime rates: India and China.
b) There is a very low rate of illegal immigration into Canada.
c) It seems that immigrants moving to Canada are wealthier than immigrants moving to America. However, I'm not as confident about this point as I am my others.
The wealth of immigrants is crucial to an excellent immigration policy. Why? Because they invest their money in the country, and the country actually becomes wealthier, because in effect the money has transferred from a foreign country to Canada!
The large rise in Canadian housing prices over the past decade, especially in Toronto and Vancouver (which are, not coincidently, the top two destinations for immigrants), is likely to have been heavily influenced by purchases from immigrants driving the price up. And why were they able to drive the price up? Because they are wealthier than average! Their wealth is one of the factors favored by Canada's immigration point system!
And although Canadian housing prices are currently likely to be overpriced, they are certainly not as overpriced as American homes were pre-recession.
The American rise was achieved by resorting to artificial price increases, caused by allowing too many unqualified people to bid on homes.
In contrast, Canadian mortgages are rarely provided to unqualified borrowers.
Some might consider the housing situation to be a negative, since Canadian housing prices have likely been driven up by immigrants. These people might feel that housing has now become less affordable for many native born Canadians.
They are correct, but overlook the following benefit: The immigrants drove up the price of housing that was largely owned by native born Canadians! And they didn't just enrich the native born Canadians who sold them the home, they enriched other native born Canadians in the neighborhood, as their home values would tend to rise also!
Therefore, the influx of immigrant wealth has increase the home equity value of countless native born Canadians!
8) "Look at Australia. Fifteen years ago, Australia was convulsed by a huge anti-immigrant tide. There was a serious political movement that was talking about deportation.Now about a quarter of Australias population is foreign-born. This is one of the highest percentages in the world and as a result Australia is booming."
If Australia's population is largely foreign born and its economy is booming, I suspect that they are probably selecting immigrants in a manner similar to Canada's selection: By selecting large proportions of immigrants who are wealthy and from higher IQ regions. I don't have the stats, but given Australia's very close proximity to the Pacific Rim, it's very likely to be true!
However, a booming economy doesn't necessarily mean that the country won't be damaged, in the long term, by an influx of immigrants from very different societies!
9) "So, yes, as a whole America is still far ahead of the rest of the world. We still do immigration better than a lot of the rest of the world. But a lot of the rest of the world is copying us and is learning from us."
A lot of the world is learning from America? You betcha! And the ones that copied America are learning the hard way!
10) "Meanwhile, we are bizarrely copying the immigration policies of continental European countries like France and Germany - which have completely failed to integrate and assimilate their populations."
Are you as confused as I am?
Which of France and Germany's failed policies has America copied? Judging by his reference to assimilation, and since you only need to assimilate people that are different, he appears to be referring to the policy of France and Germany to select diverse immigrants.
If that's the case, he means that the diverse immigration into France and Germany is not easy to assimilate.
But if Zakaria believes that diverse immigration is not easy to assimilate, why has he spent the entire article claiming that the one positive of America's immigration policy is that's it makes America "demographically vibrant"?
That's a perfect point for me to end with!
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