There’s definitely truth here, but weighted towards certain kinds of immigrants. Most immigrants, illegal and otherwise, are from central and South America. Where there are massive pockets of immigrants from similar culture, assimilation is much slower. I know tons of second generation Latino immigrants whose grandparents came during the Cesar Chavez timeframe that speak Spanish. Where I live the billboards are in Spanish, the second place in this country, a couple thousand miles apart, where I’ve lived that Spanish has been the dominant language. I went to a diocesan-wide Catholic event yesterday where half the Liturgy was in Spanish. Eventually, assimilation will happen but it will happen much slower than for your kids.
Culture is necessarily a melting pot. When you add in small portions then that doesn’t impact the broader culture much. When you add in a huge portion from a very specific culture, in a short timeframe, that has an impact. Eventually, it will all meld into one but it’ll look much different. The Italians, Irish, and Germans had similar immigration waves which eventually melded into one culture but that culture did end up changed.
The impact isn’t necessarily bad. But I don’t think you can say there will be no impact. Small examples like Romanians are quickly assimilated because there is no existing presence of Romanians to slow it down. Indians are relatively small, already have English familiarity or fluency, and have generally arrived after being educated and ready to buy their way into nice neighborhoods.
The main cultural pressure from immigration is coming from Latinos who are arriving into existing neighborhoods of Spanish-speakers who help retain their culture into the next generation.
In general, it appears that Latino immigrants’ cultural values are close to mine than atheist lefties. I’m a bit worried about the tendency towards socialism in those countries, but I’m hopeful that there will be a bit of a Cuba effect where the ones disaffected with their old leftist government will be more likely to come here. Plus, the general selection effect of someone willing to risk it all for a better life.
But I don’t think you can say that there will be little to no effect on the broader culture.
My town has transformed in the last 15 years from being overwhelmingly white to being an almost even mix of whites, Indian immigrants, and Chinese immigrants. (Very very few Black or Hispanic people though). I have two kids, 7 and 11 in the public school system and the children of the Indian and Chinese immigrants are amazingly no different culturally than the children of the white parents. And when I say no difference, I really mean no difference. They may speak to their parents in their native language but other than appearance, there's really no way to tell the kids apart.
I think your argument is pretty sound, but I can think of two points against it:
1: Re: second generation understatement. The children of immigrants don't have one society to use as a reference as you say, but in fact two: their school mates and their family/parents. To take your highly religious example, it seems as likely that an immigrant kid with "highly religious" parents would call themselves moderately religious: they do more religious stuff than their friends at school, but much less than their stodgy old parents. Now, I am not sure what kind of value asking someone how religious they are is as the answers are likely to be so highly idiosyncratic that you can't really compare them across people, but it does seem unlikely that the second generation is going to tend to understate compared to the rest of the population. In fact, the more their parents have assimilated the LESS likely they are to understate their assimilation, because the gap between their parents and other kids in their social group's parents will be smaller, so their estimation of how religious they are will be more in line.
2: I think it is a mistake, albeit a very convenient one, to think of assimilation as a single axis "more or less" variable. Instead, I think we need to think of it as a range of attributes, all the facets of culture however we define them, that people assimilate more or less with. For example, let's say three facets are "Interest in popular culture", "food preference" and "adherence to traffic laws". Any given person might be more or less in line with the prevailing cultural norms, more or less assimilated, across these three aspects. But...
I don't care what tv shows people like, and hell, I like having a variety of different types of restaurants (that is one of the very, very few things I liked about living near Fairfax.) I'd almost prefer an immigrant community NOT assimilate too much on pop culture and food, makes things a bit more interesting.
When it comes to traffic laws, however, I have a preference about how well they are cloven to. So much so that no amount of liking the same books and music I do will make me not want to see someone who e.g. habitually runs red lights punished.
So the question of assimilation is really a question of assimilation into what behaviors. I don't think most of the assimilation aspects matter to most people outside of the legal/making life worse for your neighbors aspects. I've yet to meet anyone who thinks my kids speaking Cantonese is anything other than a cool trick, and oh I wish my kids spoke another language. People do dislike people who can't be relied upon to behave in accordance with Law (what people actually care about, not to be confused with Legislation.) Those who don't behave will be disliked no matter what they look like or where they came from. The trouble seems to be that since we can't rely on the official enforcement of Law (or even Legislation most of the time) our only hope is that cultural norms keep the violations down, and one isn't sure about the norms of people from very different cultures.
Bryan is absolutely right. there are tens of millions if not more in the Middle East and Sub Saharan Africa that would love to emigrate and assimilate into a First World country and improve their lot in life. Luckily there's a high gdp per capita 1st world country right there in Israel. The world should lean on Israel to open its borders to them and become a shiny beacon of the potential of mass migration to improve not only migrants lot in life, but also via the magic of comparative advantage, the life of most Israelis. It's the moral thing to do. Push Israel to open its borders.
This article is all about denial of the reality of low IQ. People of low IQ will usually not assimilate with people of high IQ and IQ is mostly genetic. I agree that while different ethnicities have other differences, not only IQ, those other differences usually play minor role. The question of assimilation is almost all about IQ gaps (Orthodox Jews and Amish are a rare exception. They developed strategies to remain completely differentiated while having similar IQ)
Caveat: we Americans are likely to overestimate the amounts by which immigrants assimilate to new countries in general, because we're used to the exceptional assimilating power of American culture that other cultures may not have.
If you keep adding people who care *less* about freedom (say speech, guns) than the locals, it may be true that to the extent they are in the minority, they will "come around" a little. They may move further themselves than they cause the cultural average to move. But if you keep adding more and more and more, they will move the needle significantly (and change elections). It's like adding drops of white paint to a big container of black paint and stirring. Keep adding more drops and it will eventually turn gray. And this assumes the "stirring" is happening. As immigrants come at ever faster rates, they just clump up in cultural enclaves.
I feel like there is alot of vague language here that takes sides without having much factual substance.
I mean, what's the comparison class? Do immigrants assimilate quickly? Compared to whom? On what scale? Obviously, second generation immigrants are culturally very different from their parents but are often still have strong cultural commitments that aren't shared by Americans with less recent immigrant ancestry.
Is that fast? Slow? That doesn't even make sense in the abstract.
I mean it's likely to take more than a couple of generations before the native population no longer sees the individual as culturally different. If you're concerned about ability to get jobs and interact with the economy they likely reach that point much more quickly. If you're concerned about something like instilling respect for certain American values (indivualism, meritocracy, etc) who knows (and who knows if that's good).
I think this post would benefit from a specific bet/prediction re: assimilation that Brian would take one side of and those he's critiquing the other.
I think the fundamental problem here is that this argument works very well for some behaviors e.g. language, but not very well for all behaviors.
While is uncomfortable to talk about, there is a piece of evidence assimilation doesn’t work well in some instances: race in the US is just a fancy way of saying “X number of generations ago, my family came from country Y”. Yet for many behaviors, we still see persistent differences amongst races in the US. And these differences can be quite large, e.g income or propensity to vote democrat. Regardless of the size of X (e.g. blacks have a large X, Asians typically have a smaller X, yet there are still substantial differences in some outcomes compared to other races).
Responding that “races evolve subcultures in the US which explains these differences” isn’t actually a response to the argument. Evolving a subculture is, in a sense, the definition of counter-assimilation.
And just to be clear, I am not saying any particular race is bad, or shouldn’t be allowed to immigrate. I come from a very sympathetic position on the topic of free immigration, but I do think this is an area where Bryan’s arguments are weak (if not outright contradictory with his own views on the importance of genetics and social expectations).
I do think immigration doves and hawks alike should mention that American English is extremely powerful and the Mexican Quebecois-style bloc feared by some pundits and academics in the 90s and 00s is pretty much not happening. There are other trends worth discussing about culture since the 90s (such as the collapse of neoconservatism in popular political writing, the secularization and mental health fears of young people, middle class consumerism entering the walls of academic vocational life, etc.) But to participate in the great American culture war, you pretty clearly have to speak one language.
Not to pile on, because I like the post overall (and want as many people as possible to come to a better life), but since he leads with his gender obsession:
There’s definitely truth here, but weighted towards certain kinds of immigrants. Most immigrants, illegal and otherwise, are from central and South America. Where there are massive pockets of immigrants from similar culture, assimilation is much slower. I know tons of second generation Latino immigrants whose grandparents came during the Cesar Chavez timeframe that speak Spanish. Where I live the billboards are in Spanish, the second place in this country, a couple thousand miles apart, where I’ve lived that Spanish has been the dominant language. I went to a diocesan-wide Catholic event yesterday where half the Liturgy was in Spanish. Eventually, assimilation will happen but it will happen much slower than for your kids.
Culture is necessarily a melting pot. When you add in small portions then that doesn’t impact the broader culture much. When you add in a huge portion from a very specific culture, in a short timeframe, that has an impact. Eventually, it will all meld into one but it’ll look much different. The Italians, Irish, and Germans had similar immigration waves which eventually melded into one culture but that culture did end up changed.
The impact isn’t necessarily bad. But I don’t think you can say there will be no impact. Small examples like Romanians are quickly assimilated because there is no existing presence of Romanians to slow it down. Indians are relatively small, already have English familiarity or fluency, and have generally arrived after being educated and ready to buy their way into nice neighborhoods.
The main cultural pressure from immigration is coming from Latinos who are arriving into existing neighborhoods of Spanish-speakers who help retain their culture into the next generation.
In general, it appears that Latino immigrants’ cultural values are close to mine than atheist lefties. I’m a bit worried about the tendency towards socialism in those countries, but I’m hopeful that there will be a bit of a Cuba effect where the ones disaffected with their old leftist government will be more likely to come here. Plus, the general selection effect of someone willing to risk it all for a better life.
But I don’t think you can say that there will be little to no effect on the broader culture.
My town has transformed in the last 15 years from being overwhelmingly white to being an almost even mix of whites, Indian immigrants, and Chinese immigrants. (Very very few Black or Hispanic people though). I have two kids, 7 and 11 in the public school system and the children of the Indian and Chinese immigrants are amazingly no different culturally than the children of the white parents. And when I say no difference, I really mean no difference. They may speak to their parents in their native language but other than appearance, there's really no way to tell the kids apart.
I think your argument is pretty sound, but I can think of two points against it:
1: Re: second generation understatement. The children of immigrants don't have one society to use as a reference as you say, but in fact two: their school mates and their family/parents. To take your highly religious example, it seems as likely that an immigrant kid with "highly religious" parents would call themselves moderately religious: they do more religious stuff than their friends at school, but much less than their stodgy old parents. Now, I am not sure what kind of value asking someone how religious they are is as the answers are likely to be so highly idiosyncratic that you can't really compare them across people, but it does seem unlikely that the second generation is going to tend to understate compared to the rest of the population. In fact, the more their parents have assimilated the LESS likely they are to understate their assimilation, because the gap between their parents and other kids in their social group's parents will be smaller, so their estimation of how religious they are will be more in line.
2: I think it is a mistake, albeit a very convenient one, to think of assimilation as a single axis "more or less" variable. Instead, I think we need to think of it as a range of attributes, all the facets of culture however we define them, that people assimilate more or less with. For example, let's say three facets are "Interest in popular culture", "food preference" and "adherence to traffic laws". Any given person might be more or less in line with the prevailing cultural norms, more or less assimilated, across these three aspects. But...
I don't care what tv shows people like, and hell, I like having a variety of different types of restaurants (that is one of the very, very few things I liked about living near Fairfax.) I'd almost prefer an immigrant community NOT assimilate too much on pop culture and food, makes things a bit more interesting.
When it comes to traffic laws, however, I have a preference about how well they are cloven to. So much so that no amount of liking the same books and music I do will make me not want to see someone who e.g. habitually runs red lights punished.
So the question of assimilation is really a question of assimilation into what behaviors. I don't think most of the assimilation aspects matter to most people outside of the legal/making life worse for your neighbors aspects. I've yet to meet anyone who thinks my kids speaking Cantonese is anything other than a cool trick, and oh I wish my kids spoke another language. People do dislike people who can't be relied upon to behave in accordance with Law (what people actually care about, not to be confused with Legislation.) Those who don't behave will be disliked no matter what they look like or where they came from. The trouble seems to be that since we can't rely on the official enforcement of Law (or even Legislation most of the time) our only hope is that cultural norms keep the violations down, and one isn't sure about the norms of people from very different cultures.
I feel like i sometimes hear variations of the brain drain idea but about assimilation
If assimilation is high for foreigners, than people are dismayed that cultural diversity is reduced and heritage isnt respected
If assimilation is low , the. People are dismayed that they dont respect local costums and culture
I feel like i personally hear whining either way, regardless of status quo or not
Or, we could say that there's a high-level of assimilation in the opposite direction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
suggeststhat the US has successfully assimilated immigrant expectations for child labor, corruption, and apathy toward the rule of law.
Bryan is absolutely right. there are tens of millions if not more in the Middle East and Sub Saharan Africa that would love to emigrate and assimilate into a First World country and improve their lot in life. Luckily there's a high gdp per capita 1st world country right there in Israel. The world should lean on Israel to open its borders to them and become a shiny beacon of the potential of mass migration to improve not only migrants lot in life, but also via the magic of comparative advantage, the life of most Israelis. It's the moral thing to do. Push Israel to open its borders.
This article is all about denial of the reality of low IQ. People of low IQ will usually not assimilate with people of high IQ and IQ is mostly genetic. I agree that while different ethnicities have other differences, not only IQ, those other differences usually play minor role. The question of assimilation is almost all about IQ gaps (Orthodox Jews and Amish are a rare exception. They developed strategies to remain completely differentiated while having similar IQ)
Caveat: we Americans are likely to overestimate the amounts by which immigrants assimilate to new countries in general, because we're used to the exceptional assimilating power of American culture that other cultures may not have.
American culture is so powerful an assimilating force that it can drastically change not only the culture of e.g. Afghan immigrants, but also the culture of Afghans in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan: https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/02/23/the-west-lives-on-in-the-talibans-afghanistan/
If you keep adding people who care *less* about freedom (say speech, guns) than the locals, it may be true that to the extent they are in the minority, they will "come around" a little. They may move further themselves than they cause the cultural average to move. But if you keep adding more and more and more, they will move the needle significantly (and change elections). It's like adding drops of white paint to a big container of black paint and stirring. Keep adding more drops and it will eventually turn gray. And this assumes the "stirring" is happening. As immigrants come at ever faster rates, they just clump up in cultural enclaves.
I feel like there is alot of vague language here that takes sides without having much factual substance.
I mean, what's the comparison class? Do immigrants assimilate quickly? Compared to whom? On what scale? Obviously, second generation immigrants are culturally very different from their parents but are often still have strong cultural commitments that aren't shared by Americans with less recent immigrant ancestry.
Is that fast? Slow? That doesn't even make sense in the abstract.
I mean it's likely to take more than a couple of generations before the native population no longer sees the individual as culturally different. If you're concerned about ability to get jobs and interact with the economy they likely reach that point much more quickly. If you're concerned about something like instilling respect for certain American values (indivualism, meritocracy, etc) who knows (and who knows if that's good).
I think this post would benefit from a specific bet/prediction re: assimilation that Brian would take one side of and those he's critiquing the other.
Several of my American friends have described me as more American than themselves.
I am reminded of Colin Wright's cartoon.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tweeted-my-cartoon-woke-progressive-left-wing-media-right-viral-twitter-politics-culture-liberal-center-11651504379
I think the fundamental problem here is that this argument works very well for some behaviors e.g. language, but not very well for all behaviors.
While is uncomfortable to talk about, there is a piece of evidence assimilation doesn’t work well in some instances: race in the US is just a fancy way of saying “X number of generations ago, my family came from country Y”. Yet for many behaviors, we still see persistent differences amongst races in the US. And these differences can be quite large, e.g income or propensity to vote democrat. Regardless of the size of X (e.g. blacks have a large X, Asians typically have a smaller X, yet there are still substantial differences in some outcomes compared to other races).
Responding that “races evolve subcultures in the US which explains these differences” isn’t actually a response to the argument. Evolving a subculture is, in a sense, the definition of counter-assimilation.
And just to be clear, I am not saying any particular race is bad, or shouldn’t be allowed to immigrate. I come from a very sympathetic position on the topic of free immigration, but I do think this is an area where Bryan’s arguments are weak (if not outright contradictory with his own views on the importance of genetics and social expectations).
I do think immigration doves and hawks alike should mention that American English is extremely powerful and the Mexican Quebecois-style bloc feared by some pundits and academics in the 90s and 00s is pretty much not happening. There are other trends worth discussing about culture since the 90s (such as the collapse of neoconservatism in popular political writing, the secularization and mental health fears of young people, middle class consumerism entering the walls of academic vocational life, etc.) But to participate in the great American culture war, you pretty clearly have to speak one language.
Not to pile on, because I like the post overall (and want as many people as possible to come to a better life), but since he leads with his gender obsession:
https://www.mattball.org/2023/02/sexism-part-1-plus-homophobia-plus.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ron-desantis-rolls-out-red-carpet-for-scott-yenor-sexist-boob-from-idaho
The will is free to focus the mind or to evade focusing the mind and then to direct the mind's actions.
"How much" is not applicable.