May 25, 2012

Why Lorenzo Pagina and Sergio Brino had to found Google in Mexico

From the New York Times on how Romney should attract the Hispanic vote:
What Romney Should Do About Immigration 
By C. STEWART VERDERY, JR. 
... But after those strategic attacks, which included Romney’s awkward “self-deportation” plan for illegal aliens, Romney must execute a creative pivot to the middle to attract moderate voters, especially Hispanic moderates.  ... 
High-skilled immigration: Romney has already endorsed proposals that would allow more highly skilled scientists to enter the United States under temporary visas and to allow foreign students educated here to receive green cards to allow them to stay here and work. However, these proposals have been blocked in Congress by proponents of a broad amnesty that is a non-starter with most Congressional Republicans. Romney should demand passage of the high-skilled agenda before the graduation of the class of 2013 next spring produces another crop of international leaders, educated here in America, needlessly forced to return home to compete against us. If you graduate with an engineering degree from Stanford, we should staple a green card to your diploma.

Like when Lorenzo Pagina and Sergio Brino graduated from Stanford and were about to found Google, but then they got deported back to Mexico. Happens all the time. That why Monterrey is now the technology start-up capital of the Western Hemisphere: because of all the Mexican tech geniuses who got deported from Silicon Valley.

Seriously, how exactly is endorsing more "high-skilled immigration" going to please Mexican-American voters? This proposal would mostly strike Mexican-American voters as pandering to Asians.

Think about it. What's in it for Mexican-descended citizens of the United States? They are already in the U.S. legally. There aren't many high-skilled scientists and engineers in Mexico, and most of those few are happy to stay in Mexico, where life is good for the elite. And, finally, very few Mexican-American citizens have close relatives in Mexico who are highly-skilled, because most Mexican-Americans come from the unskilled classes of Mexico. 

How many East Coast commentators even know any Mexican-American voters?

49 comments:

eah said...

Mr Sailer,

Pumping immigration is more or less diversity-mongering. (OK, so 'highly skilled' immigrants are better than, err, the other kind -- duh. But that's beside the point.) And diversity is kind of like a scab: if you pick at it, it'll start to bleed. So please stop picking at it.

Nanonymous said...

Romney has already endorsed proposals that would allow more highly skilled scientists to enter the United States under temporary visas and to allow foreign students educated here to receive green cards to allow them to stay here and work.

Yeah, we really must do everything we can to further depress wages and social status of scientific jobs. Past American dominance in every scientific field of any importance simply cannot be tolerated.

Q said...

If you graduate with an engineering degree from Stanford, we should staple a green card to your diploma.


Why? Because America has such a shortage of engineers?

I see that Verdery makes a very good living working not as an engineer, but as a lobbyist for some of America's largest corporations. He himself did not bother to get an engineering degree - he's a lawyer.

When are we going to start allowing foreigners to get American law degrees? Once that happens, open-borders mania will dry up very quickly.

wide stance said...

How many East Coast commentators even know any Mexican-American voters?

More to the point, how many EC commentators even know of any Mex-Am engineering graduates, from any college? If not, a good editor like Jack Warden wouldn't have allowed that sentence.

Anonymous said...

When are we going to start allowing foreigners to get American law degrees?

It is already happening. The Bar and law schools are very liberal in terms of admission of foreigners. The big law firms in the big cities employ a shockingly high number of foreigners as lawyers. Meanwhile, most American law school graduates are facing difficult prospects upon graduation.

Peter said...

Or when Marco Montana de Azucar got deported and had to found Facebook in Oaxaca.

Q said...

most American law school graduates are facing difficult prospects upon graduation.


The operative phrase there being "American law school graduates". if you want to be a lawyer in America you MUST go to a law school in America.

Contrast that to the case for engineers - an engineer from a college in New Delhi is considered just as good as an engineer from a college in America in the eyes of American industry.

Law is one of the last guild systems in existence in the modern world. Understand that and you'll understand why lawyers are such avid promoters of open borders - it drives down the cost of everyone else's labor but not theirs.

Anonymous said...

I've met my share of engineers and architects who can't find work, and complain about being beat out in the H1B/diversity game.

Anonymous said...

I am thinking that Romney's going to win and he's not really going to be very different. Nothing changes until there is a funding crisis for the Federal government and that doesn't appear to be any time soon.

Anonymous said...

Rotfl.

Anonymous said...

I think it was called Googlez.

Anonymous said...

Understand that and you'll understand why lawyers are such avid promoters of open borders - it drives down the cost of everyone else's labor but not theirs.

No it doesn't. Lawyers are just as subject to the law of supply and demand as anyone else. As foreigners flood the U.S. legal market via J.D. or, quite commonly, mere 1-year Master's programs, American lawyers are made worse off.

anony-mouse said...

Well there's one skill Mexicans have that (most) people here don't.

When watching an American newscast that's not in their mother tongue, most don't need to wonder what is being said. Why they don't even need Page and Brin's Google translate.

Two languages in one brain?

Incroyable!

Frank said...

Giving green cards based on high skill isn't ideal either- you create a foreigner elite class that runs the show. Part of the problem now- many foreign professors are more than happy to go along with leftist schemes- more so than American profs, believe it or not...

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Who could forget south-of-the-border folk star Joan Baez, whose father was top dog at UC Mexico City physics dept.

engineering degree from Stanford, we should staple a green card to your diploma

Romney already wants this. But the rest of the op-ed is more concern trolling

Anonymous said...

Steve, I admire your work so much and you've single-handedly converted me to HBDism, but you misread the piece.

It's not that the Mexican lobby in Congress is supporting skilled immigration, it's that the likes of Raul Grijalva are *blocking* expanded such programs until Republicans give in on the Dream Act nonsense.

Anonymous said...

"I've met my share of engineers and architects who can't find work, and complain about being beat out in the H1B/diversity game."

Standard GOP/liberal response:

1. These cases are marginal. (Well duh, it's always the margins where the conflict is.)
2. Anyway, they must be 'losers'. See point 1.

Thus question begging passes for liberal orthodoxy.

Gilbert Pinfold.

Brazilian said...

"Giving green cards based on high skill isn't ideal either- you create a foreigner elite class that runs the show."

The boat already sailed.

Anonymous said...

You are being somewhat unfair to the guy. What you quoted was only one suggestion out of five. He never implies that every suggestion is meant to appeal to Hispanics. I am pretty sure #1 is targeted at Asians. #3 is the one designed specifically to Hispanics.

Anonymous said...

Being asian-american, I wouldn't exactly favor more highly-skilled immigration since that's direct competition for me.

Anonymous said...

On the East Coast we may not know many Mexican voters, but we DO know Dominican, Honduran, El Salvadoran and Haitian voters.

We're all set, thanks...

Anonymous said...

DYork 5/25/12 7:42 PM,

J, the Israeli water engineer who blogs at H2oreuse, engages too often in hyperbole at the expense of accuracy. Certainly, we can see from another link posted in this comment thread that Chinese nativism is surging. No doubt some of those illegal foreign residents the Beijing police will be going after will include American Jews. Thus, one can't necessarily expect China to be favorable to Jewish immigration as J thinks. Moreover, J's Chinese contacts almost certainly were courting him for his technical skills.

Svigor said...

When are we going to start allowing foreigners to get American law degrees? Once that happens, open-borders mania will dry up very quickly.

God, yes. We should just make being a lawyer meritocratic. Pass the bar, get your license. Pass the bar in India, get your license.

Anonymous said...

Giving green cards based on high skill isn't ideal either- you create a foreigner elite class that runs the show.

An intellectually honest HBDer would rejoice at the thought of a high IQ elite.

Svigor said...

An intellectually honest HBDer would rejoice at the thought of a high IQ elite.

Nonsense. Human BioDiversity != IQ fetishism.

Besides, "cognitively elite" populatins don't follow "cognitive elitism" either, so why should anyone? Japan doesn't import high-IQ Chinese, China doesn't import high-IQ Indians, Israel doesn't import high-IQ Chinese or Japanese or Indians, etc.

Smart people want an elite of their own ethnicity. That way, the elite is more likely to be friend than enemy. IQ fetishists may want to improve the IQ of their enemies - I don't know - but people with a modicum of sense do not.

Anonymous said...

"An intellectually honest HBDer would rejoice at the thought of a high IQ elite."

Not if it causes their extinction in the not-so-long run, no?

Unlike most of the places where a lot of these "foreign elites" are coming from, the US has a long track record of world-class success to prove that it did just fine without them.

Anonymous said...

"An intellectually honest HBDer would rejoice at the thought of a high IQ elite."

Hum, time to try the old change-of-variables re-phrase test:

"An intellectually honest [black] would rejoice at the thought of a [white] elite"

Guess not. We should keep it simple and just look after our own interests. It's really not something for which argument is appropriate. Words ultimately are not reality. All too often, just an opportunity for confusion and error, often deliberate.

Anonymous said...

Human BioDiversity != IQ fetishism

I don't know about that. The HBD crowd sure seems obsessed with IQ.

If it isn't primarily about IQ what is it about?

Anonymous said...

Japan doesn't import high-IQ Chinese, China doesn't import high-IQ Indians, Israel doesn't import high-IQ Chinese or Japanese or Indians, etc.

Japan, China and Israel were not founded on the basis of IQ.

For the HBD crowd IQ is destiny. Based on their worldview why doesn't it make sense to empower the home team by adding the highest IQ people from around the world?

Anonymous said...

I don't know about that. The HBD crowd sure seems obsessed with IQ.

If it isn't primarily about IQ what is it about?


It's about, mainly, group differences existing and often having a biological, usually genetic, explanation.

IQ is pretty easily measured, and important, and looks robustly heritable, and the between group differences look heritable and genetic, so it comes up often.

But most of the people interested in HBD generally admit the possibility of other between group differences, even though we can't measure them.

People interested in HBD have varying responses to between group differences in genes. Using them to bolster a kind of ethnic-nationalist political philosophy is one of those (and pretty common), and not particularly wrong or anything (either neither placing no value or lots of value on ethnic nations is particularly wrong (in the sense of being irrational), provided they more or less exist as entities).

rob said...

Anonymous said...
An intellectually honest HBDer would rejoice at the thought of a high IQ elite.


Silliness. Must an 'intellectually honest HBDer' rejoice for smarter rapists, theives, con artists, and sillier killers? If not, why?

I would rejoice at the coming of brighter trolls.

rob said...

sillier killers

Hahaha. Wonder if the anon (please, be smart and clever enough to come up with a name. You have no idea how many other people are pretending to be you) will know what I meant to type.

Anonymous said...

Smart people want an elite of their own ethnicity

How many people of your own ethnicity do you see among these young american geniuses?

http://apps.societyforscience.org/sts/71sts/finalists.asp

http://amc.maa.org/usamo/2012/2012_USAJMO_Top14&HonMent.pdf

JSM said...

"For the HBD crowd IQ is destiny."

And the HBD crowd, if they're intellectually honest and not just shilling for their own Asian coracialists, would admit that Americans (as the term used to be understood) had plenty of IQ horsepower without "help" from any outsiders.

"Based on their worldview why doesn't it make sense to empower the home team by adding the highest IQ people from around the world?"

Because then it's not the home team. "Home team" implies people from your own home, not halfway around the world.



"How many people of your own ethnicity do you see among these young american geniuses?"

They're not Americans, at least as the phrase used to be understood, before the anti-Americans deliberately set out to twist the meaning of the word. They're not Americans, they're Asians.

Anonymous said...

"Smart people want an elite of their own ethnicity"

How many people of your own ethnicity do you see among these young american geniuses?


Hum, your evidence is the Intel Science Talent search. Intel's business is integrated circuit engineering (ICE), I hear these days they call it "India-Chinese Engineering" for a reason. Why would I expect these people to care about Americans? I'd expect them to have attitudes like yours.

(If it's not clear, it sounds like you don't care much for Americans; "Of course we're better than you, you bad person, see this list, doesn't this win the argument? So you better like it!")

Intel SciFair is typically graded by a collection of VP and engineering types from silicon valley companies. Often the very people profiting from human pipelining. It's considerably subjective. (And yes, I've been a judge; and no, the contestants typically aren't clearly "geniuses", I've come to hate that word.) Sadly, it's reached the point where you don't know whether results are based on merit or ethnic nepotism (and a lot of parental coaching) Can you see why this might be a problem?

Like a lot of multinationals today, Intel probably considers itself a true multinational (and they'll tell you that for sure in their diversity literature), not an American company, except when it's convenient. The ethnic pipelining hasn't helped.

What your attitude says is I can't trust your ethnicity, whatever it is, and I don't think it's good if a lot of Americans are people with attitudes like you, regardless of anything else. You seem fundamentally hostile to Americans.

Anonymous said...

Americans (as the term used to be understood) had plenty of IQ horsepower without "help" from any outsiders

Not true. America was helped by plenty of people once considered "outsiders". The primary example being Jews.

"Home team" implies people from your own home, not halfway around the world.

Do you consider blacks and hispanics part of your home team then? Let's be intellectually honest here.

America itself was settled by people from far away, and distance has becoming meaningless since then. It is really about race, isn't it?

They're not Americans, at least as the phrase used to be understood, before the anti-Americans deliberately set out to twist the meaning of the word. They're not Americans, they're Asians."

Who are the real Americans then? The Saxon underclass of England who first colonized it?

Anonymous said...

"Intel Science Talent search winner" = "my parents did my science fair project for me", or at least "my parents found a professional scientist to 'mentor' me (do my science fair project for me)"

I'm absolutely shocked these winners are Asian/Indian all out of proportion to real world Asian/Indian achievement.

Anonymous said...

"You can't really expect them to care about people like you. And people like you do not really represent America.

Your America was defeated in the Civil War and tby the Civil Rights Movement."



So I take it you don't care for a lot of those evil Americans. Perhaps your program becomes clear. You take things like the Civil Rights Movement to mean Americans are a defeated people over which everyone in the world gets to have their say. Now that sounds like a real program for peace and harmony. How do you intend to enforce your attitudes?

Anonymous said...

Hum, your evidence is the Intel Science Talent search.

And the Math Olympiad, which you conveniently ignore since the excuses you use do not apply there.

The Asian domination in the USA Math Olympiad is actually more overwhelming. Only 2 of the 14 winners are non-asians. What is your excuse for that?

Anonymous said...

"Not true. America was helped by plenty of people once considered "outsiders". The primary example being Jews."

But did Americans need them? It's one thing to say they helped, it's another to imply that if not for the benevolence of all those fine upstanding outsiders those poor Americans would still be trying to invent things like English...

Anonymous said...

"Who are the real Americans then?"

It's one of those "if you have to ask, you don't know and you aren't one" things. It's not arguments or pieces of paper.

Anonymous said...

You take things like the Civil Rights Movement to mean Americans are a defeated people

That is as absurd as saying the Civil War means Americans are a defeated people.

Anonymous said...

The Asian domination in the USA Math Olympiad is actually more overwhelming. Only 2 of the 14 winners are non-asians. What is your excuse for that?

What is there to explain? Asians are grinds. Some degree of mathematical ability is necessary but not sufficient to do well in the USAMO. Show us the matching top-level Asian domination in the real world. You can't.

Anonymous said...

It's one of those "if you have to ask, you don't know and you aren't one" things.

Not really. An American by legal definition is someone who is a citizen of the American Republic. You obviously have a different definition which you are reluctant to share, probably because it is illegal.

To you those Asian-American kids dominating in math and science are "outsiders". On what legal basis do you deem them not Americans?

Anonymous said...

Some degree of mathematical ability is necessary but not sufficient to do well in the USAMO.

Mathematical ability is not sufficient to do well in a math contest? What does this even mean and how does this excuse the poor performance of non-asians?


Show us the matching top-level Asian domination in the real world. You can't.

Go look at the names on recent patents awarded to Americans, the names of scholars and researchers in the latest math and science journals, the names of engineers in high tech corporations etc then come back and report what you found.

Anonymous said...

"Not really. An American by legal definition is someone who is a citizen of the American Republic. You obviously have a different definition which you are reluctant to share, probably because it is illegal."

Yes. I'm thinking of Americans who think of themselves as Americans first and not as something else first who just happen to have American citizenship and then engages in constant ethnic chauvinism. Don't kid yourself that there is not a lot of citizenship of convenience going round. It's also convenient that many counties these days support dual citizenship. I imagine that legally everyone is required to drive under the posted speed limit. I hear there are laws against illegal immigration as well, but that apparently doesn't seem to be too big a deal.

Anonymous said...

But did Americans need them?

Did America need the Atomic Bomb, the Hydrogen Bomb, the Nuclear Submarine? The 3 men considered their "fathers" are respectively Oppenheimer, Teller and Ryckover. All jews.

Consider also the very high fraction of American Nobel Prizes that have been won by jews.

Jews have been major contributors to America's power and prosperity.

Anonymous said...

Without Jews, the world would not have had nuclear weapons, at least not for another fifty to a hundred years. Neither the US nor anyone else, since all the other nuclear programs were largely based on ours. Simply the proof that it was possible and a general, thumbnail sketch of how they worked-which, as Howard Morland showed, was available in encyclopedias in the early Eisenhower years-was an enormous impetus to nuclear development elsewhere.

As for Rickover, he was a martinet and, like J. Edgar Hoover, a self centered manipulator who should have been cashiered thirty years before his final departure. He ruined the careers of a lot of good men and created a so called "safety culture" that in reality wasn't that safe-Thresher and Scorpion were lost and a number of fatalities occurred in onshore Navy nuclear faclities.

Anonymous said...

"Without Jews, the world would not have had nuclear weapons..."

Doubtful, poke around the history and delete everyone who wasn't Jewish, see what happens. Constant ethnic cheer-leading doesn't help understand history.

"Did America need the Atomic Bomb, the Hydrogen Bomb, the Nuclear Submarine?"

Independent of any link between this question and the content of this thread, looking back at the overall record, it's likely that America probably would have done okay without them. It's not like we were using nukes a lot.