Kumbaya

The NY Times delivers a hard-hitting piece on immigration to the US, and probes for an answer to the tough question - is the influx of non-European immigrants great for this country, or just really, really good?

Look, I am pro-immigration, but maybe another time the Times will pretend to do some real reporting.

Some punchlines:

Report Describes Immigrants as Younger and More Diverse

By JOHN FILES 

WASHINGTON, June 9 - New Census Bureau figures released on Thursday show that the immigrant population in the United States is becoming younger, a shift likely to foster more tolerance for diversity and perhaps accelerate assimilation, demographers and immigration experts say.

The figures show that immigration trends are forming a unique generational divide: those immigrants over 40 are largely white, while those under 40 are increasingly Hispanic, Asian and from other minority groups.

"The older, white-dominated society is thinning out into the past," William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said. "It is being replaced by the broad diversity of a younger generation."

Mr. Frey added: "We will become a more tolerant society as these young people move toward adulthood and a blurring occurs of the sharp racial distinctions of the previous decades."

...

Mr. Passel and Mr. Frey, of Brookings, both said the changing dynamic of the immigrant population in the United States would help it prosper in a global economy.

While Japan and some European countries have taken restrictive stances toward immigration and endangered their own productivity as a result, they said, the United States will benefit from a work force that is evolving into a more diverse group.

All true, I have no doubt.  Well, almost no doubt - I would wonder about the tolerance of the younger generation if they were militant Islamics, as in Europe.  I also have not seen polling data on attitudes towards gay marriage and women's rights broken down by age and race.  I have a suspicion that young Europeans are even more tolerant than young Hispanics or Asians on these issues.  But since this is a feel-good article, I can feel good about the possibility that younger folks generally poll as "more tolerant" than older folks; if anyone cares to vex me with actual polling data, I would be delighted, since that task was evidently beyond the scope of this reporter's assignment.

Oh, well.  This article does not mention illegal immigration, or the strain on municipal services created by our current patterns of immigration, so let's not look into that either.  Discussion of the impact of immigration on working class wages and unions may not be helpful either.  In fact, there is plenty to not cover, and the Times meets the challenge.  Great story.

Comments

[elambend]

Since NPR takes many of their cues from the NYT, they did a similar story on immigration yesterday.
In the course of the story the commentator commented on the large number of Spanish immigrants and children of Spanish immigrants. He stated that this must mean that there will be a higher need for bi-lingual education for these Spanish at home kids and his 'expert' agreed.

Of coarse, kids under five are best inclined to learn English in immersion, not to mention a good number of those kids were probably born here and already picked up rudimentary English from TV. My moved-here-at-age-twelve Russian girlfriend couldn't believe it.

The NPR commentator took it as a given that these children would need bi-lingual ed, though apparently non-Spanish speakers would have to continue learning the old fashion way, by immersion.

[Forbes]

There is a boatload of circular reasoning going on in these exerpts.

Somehow more diversity equals more tolerance because it will result in a blurring of the racial distinctions of the past. Yet, diversity is a concept invented by the racial/ethnic police that insist on the right to champion and celebrate such group differences--to the point of resisting assimilation--which hardly qualifies as a blurring of racial distinctions. Quotas and reverse discrimination originate in a society that is highly sensitive racial and ethnic distinctions--not one that has been blurred into color-blindness.

Say what you will about immigration but this is just another example of politically correct indoctrination passed off as accepted wisdom. Junk social science is more like it.

[ThomasJackson]

Can someone please explain to me the virtue of diversity? I mean, was the former Yugoslavia somehow a better or more stable nation because of its so called diversity? Is the area we call Palestine somehow better because of diversity? I think America can do very well without groups that are adverse to tolerance, have just entered the 14th century, or believe their loyalties lie with some tribal imman.