There's a different form of positive selection bias for that: to survive in a country where you're there illegally, cut off from many high-paying jobs because of that, and may be deported at any time, it takes a particular form of resourcefulness and ambition. You'd expect these people to have fewer book smarts than highly-educated Indian and Chinese immigrants, but perhaps more street smarts. And to the extent that resourcefulness, intelligence, and determination are genetic (most studies suggest a strong positive correlation), these traits would be passed on to their U.S. citizen children.
> There's a different form of positive selection bias for that: to survive in a country where you're there illegally, cut off from many high-paying jobs because of that, and may be deported at any time, it takes a particular form of resourcefulness and ambition.
We can replace "illegal immigration" in the above statement with any other illegal activities and it will still hold true.
I mean, we see people in fairly terrible countries not relocate. Why haven't 80% of all Mexican or Central American citizens relocated to the US? Or conversely, why haven't tons of the homeless in the US made their way to Mexico?
If these countries are really significantly worse, and that is the only factor pushing normal people to relocate, then we should be seeing massive population movements all the time. Instead, only the extremely motivated with a sizable risk appetite take the chance. And, one could argue that those two factors combined qualifies that group of people as non-standard.
>Why haven't 80% of all Mexican or Central American citizens relocated to the US?
Because we [rightfully, as this thread suggests] restrict border crossings.
>Or conversely, why haven't tons of the homeless in the US made their way to Mexico?
Because homeless people understand that the minimum protections and niche lifestyle they have here are orders of magnitude better than a violent third world country.
>then we should be seeing massive population movements all the time. Instead, only the extremely motivated with a sizable risk appetite take the chance. And, one could argue that those two factors combined qualifies that group of people as non-standard.
Considering the difficulty of illegally crossing the border for a poor South American, we are seeing just that. There's another selection bias here - those who are competent are less likely to risk illegal entry because they understand life as an illegal immigrant is difficult.
>Because we [rightfully, as this thread suggests] restrict border crossings.
That never stopped anyone.
>Because homeless people understand that the minimum protections and niche lifestyle they have here are orders of magnitude better than a violent third world country.
Not everyone in a country actually hates it enough to leave. There are lots of high class people like CEOs, managers, software developers even if they are the minority they clearly live a reasonably good life. You are also underestimating how much people are fond of their home country and the associated culture. All your family and friends are there. Your mother tongue is probably only spoken there. The food that you used to eat as a child is there. Maybe you had a plot of land and you built your own house there, sure it isn't as comfortable as one in the USA but it was yours and in the USA you have nothing except a cramped apartment you share with room mates.
The idea that a country would lose its entire population if the USA lifted border controls is absolutely insane.
> Because we [rightfully, as this thread suggests] restrict border crossings.
We see plenty of illegal immigration. So much so that some people want to build a wall, as if that is a meaningful control. If all it takes is a country to be worse than the US like the parent states, then we should expect much higher rates of legal immigration applications and significantly higher rates of illegal immigration. The argument was that it only takes one metric to convince a regular person to move, and I reject that notion.
> Because homeless people understand that the minimum protections and niche lifestyle they have here are orders of magnitude better than a violent third world country.
Again, this is in response to the idea that all it takes to convince a person to relocate is for a situation to be worse than another situation. Theoretically, due to cheaper cost of living and less focus on technology/high skill jobs, Mexico or Central America would provide a homeless person more opportunity to at least survive compared to the US. But, since that is not the only factor in relocating, people don't do that en masse.
> Considering the difficulty of illegally crossing the border for a poor South American, we are seeing just that. There's another selection bias here - those who are competent are less likely to risk illegal entry because they understand life as an illegal immigrant is difficult.
And this brings us back to the beginning, where I don't think all it takes is a place to be sufficiently bad enough compared to the US to get them to move. It takes a host of factors, and some of those factors are personal drive and aspirations, and a fairly high tolerance for risk. Both of those align with an entrepreneur, which is basically the American Dream.
Thus, we then see upward mobility from these same demographics.
> The argument was that it only takes one metric to convince a regular person to move
No, this is not at all the argument I made. I was pointing out that built-in appetite for risk (or being a go-getter or whatever) is not the only explanation for why someone would come to the U.S. illegally. That the conditions in their home country shift the risk-reward equation so that more people are willing to immigrate than would otherwise.
If everything were simply about appetite for risk (or being a go-getter), then you would expect immigration from Canada to take place at similar rates as immigration from Mexico (since incomes in the U.S. are significantly higher than in Canada). But you don't see that, because the delta between Canada and the U.S. is way smaller than it is between Mexico and the U.S., and so the risk/reward equation doesn't work out for nearly as many Canadians.
Actually a significant percentage have. The US is 16.7% Hispanic. That is over 50 million people. The population of Mexico is a little over 120 million.
I would bet that if there were no barriers to immigration then you would see a significantly higher Hispanic population in the US.
Many Hispanics didn't immigrate to the US. Their ancestors were already there when the US conquered California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado from Mexico.
Another group of people came along and decided that was enough of that. The land belongs to them now and put up a border after what Ulysses S. Grant called "the most unjust war" ever waged. Please correct me here if I'm wrong.
And from the article, over 60% is of Mexican ancestry. So over 30 million versus the population of Mexico at a little over 120 million. Roughly 20% of Mexicans moved to the US.
Using the modern populations of these countries is disingenuous, you need to consider recent historical immigration rates (legal and illegal). This is like saying there are 42 million Black Americans and most Black people have West African roots, so Roughly 20% of Nigeria has moved to the US. As posted below, historically Mexicans have been in the US forever, and the US annexed large parts of Mexico relatively early in its history.
> historically Mexicans have been in the US forever
As recently as 1940, Hispanics made up only 1.5% of the US. Population. As of 2010, they made up 16.3% of the U.S. population (about 50 million people). As a point of reference, Canada has a population of about 37 million people and the UK has a population of 63 million people. So we have imported roughly an entire Canada/UK's worth of people from Latin America. As far as I am aware, immigration of this scale is basically unprecedented in human history.
There are other selection effects, as well. If you have a large population of young, single males with poor employment prospects, there's not much to keep them attached to their home country. If all they have to do is walk across a border (which they can probably muster the resources to attempt, as opposed to a transcontinental voyage), then there's a huge pull to immigrate to the US. In a circumstance like this, there would be a selection effect for the least capable young men (since more capable young men with better prospects would stay behind).
In my opinion, this is probably what explains the vast divergence between the professions that immigrants from Latin American end up in vs. the professions that immigrants from Asia end up in.
> If these countries are really significantly worse, and that is the only factor pushing normal people to relocate, then we should be seeing massive population movements all the time.
This is not true, because the socioeconomic status of people in a given country is not a flat line. Many Mexicans live what Americans would describe as comfortable, middle class lives. But, because Mexico is less prosperous than the U.S. per capita, there is a whole arm of the Mexican income distribution that is shifted into what Americans would recognize as extreme poverty. The Mexicans occupying this part of the income distribution are the ones leaving.
Thats kind of my point though isn't it? If it was something any normal person would be willing to do, then we wouldn't see that many Syrians stay inside of Syria. I would expect there is a top controlling percentage that would want to stay because their interests are protected, but outside of that, why aren't they just leaving?
Because it's hard to do it, legally or illegally. Only people that are driven and open to accepting the high risk of relocating are willing to do so. Therefore, it at least says something about the people immigrating to the US; They are driven individuals who are willing to take chances for success. Thus better numbers in terms of upward mobility.
