US Has Highest Share of Foreign-Born Since Early 20th Century

[mencken]

Great Indifferent news!

Nah, immigration is an unalloyed positive, so this is great news, not indifferent news.

Why is this great news for American citizens?

Why is immigration an unalloyed positive for people who are American citizens?

When I view something as an unalloyed positive, I have specific reasons for doing so, and I really want to hear yours.

Immigrants (in peacetime) are generally the most able, dynamic, innovative, risk-taking and creative people from the society from which they come. This is true by the mere fact of their being willing to uproot themselves from an established existence with family and friendship support networks to take a risk on a new and unfamiliar society. For those of us who live here already, having those people come to us can only be a positive, especially since we who stay in the same society where we were born are only, on average, average in ability, dynamism, innovation, risk-taking and creativity. Societies with more immigrants are therefore unequivocally better than those with few.

Edit: I will grant you that it is not particularly great news for India, China, Mexico, etc. I obviously speak only from an American perspective.

Do you have statistics or just platitudes?

[mencken]

Great Indifferent news!

Nah, immigration is an unalloyed positive, so this is great news, not indifferent news.

Why is this great news for American citizens?

Why is immigration an unalloyed positive for people who are American citizens?

When I view something as an unalloyed positive, I have specific reasons for doing so, and I really want to hear yours.

Immigrants (in peacetime) are generally the most able, dynamic, innovative, risk-taking and creative people from the society from which they come. This is true by the mere fact of their being willing to uproot themselves from an established existence with family and friendship support networks to take a risk on a new and unfamiliar society. For those of us who live here already, having those people come to us can only be a positive, especially since we who stay in the same society where we were born are only, on average, average in ability, dynamism, innovation, risk-taking and creativity. Societies with more immigrants are therefore unequivocally better than those with few.

Edit: I will grant you that it is not particularly great news for India, China, Mexico, etc. I obviously speak only from an American perspective.

Do you have statistics or just platitudes?

The high levels of educational attainment and family income among Indian Americans is an example of this. US immigration law generally selects for highly educated, affluent, and white-collar immigrants from Asia; this is particularly true for Indian immigrants.

I don't think most foreign-born Americans are from India; the article itself said only 41% of the most recent arrivals came from Asia, and that number has been rising.

And that is great that American immigration laws have a meritocratic basis for immigrants from Asia. You know what would be a great idea? Enforcing those some immigration laws that select for "highly educated, affluent, white-collar immigrants" for Latin America and MENA.