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There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of educa

• toasterlovin 7y ago
  There’s a huge asterisk to this selection effect, though: illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America.
  • barrkel 7y ago
    Unless you're an actual refugee fleeing imminent murder, rape and torture, migrating still takes a lot of get up and go.
    • davidw 7y ago
      "A foreign accent is a sign of bravery"
    • allovernow 7y ago
      Lack of opportunity, high crime, and institutional corruption are pretty strong motivators even if you're not in a warzone or on the run from cartels.
  • nostrademons 7y ago
    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.
    • toasterlovin 7y ago
      > it takes a particular form of resourcefulness and ambition. Or your home country just needs to be significantly worse.
      • JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
        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.
        • babesh 7y ago
          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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans#Hispanic_and_Latino_Population_by_state_or_territory_(2000–2010) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hispanic_and...
          • babesh 7y ago
            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.
            • losvedir 7y ago
              Or, as is the case with my family, the US moved to the Mexicans.
  • m0zg 7y ago
    It doesn't change the outcome though: even illegals are more likely to be upwardly mobile _from their lower baseline_. They can't take anything for granted the way a native would. I observe this in my (upper middle class) son: he thinks he's set for life, and doesn't put in _any_ effort whatsoever. I told him he's on his own when he's 19, he's a mere 3 years away from that mark, and it hasn't yet sunk in. He thinks he will always have upper middle class existence he's currently enjoying, no matter what, even though with his current grades there's no way he will get into a decent college. I personally was under no such illusion ever in my life, so I worked super hard to get to where I am today.
    • tartoran 7y ago
      Are you an immigrant yourself or a child of immigrant parents? Yes, because immigrants on average have it harder they also work harder. Usually their children reap more benefits but the children's children flake out. Not sure how much of a trend this is but I've noticed this...
      • m0zg 7y ago
        I'm a Russian-American immigrant, yes, a legal one. We had our kid when we were already mostly out of the woods financially though.
        • tartoran 7y ago
          Eastern European fellow here. I came to the states about 20 years ago and the kid came about 2 years ago. Ive had it rough for a while as my dad passed and had to step in to help the family. Stress was something I wish I didn’t have to go through like that. The hardship made the ship sail better though, I understand why the first gen immig are more succesfull: they have to push themselves to the max
• namirez 7y ago
  > There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country Categorically false! Most of immigration to the US is family based; actually about two-third of them. source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/17/key-facts-about-u-s-immigration-policies-and-proposed-changes/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/17/key-facts-a...
  • nostrademons 7y ago
    You take an initial immigrant who gets in because of the merit categories and then have them bring over all their family members, whose gene pool ends up in the U.S? Whose family values? This article is about upward mobility in the children of immigrants. What traits do children get from their parents? Most people would say it's nature (their genes) and nurture (their upbringing). All of these are widely shared with the family members of the initial immigrant, so most immigration being family-based does not invalidate this conclusion.
    • godelski 7y ago
      As far as I'm aware, there's no strong link between motivation and generics.
      • namirez 7y ago
        Or as Vincent said in Gattaca: "There is no gene for the human spirit."
        • aaronblohowiak 7y ago
          it is a whole constellation of genetic, epi-genetic, environmental factors, and experiences in concert. to say that there is no genetic predisposition for behavior is... not confirmed by the science.
      • virtuous_signal 7y ago
• tathougies 7y ago
  > and they have to bring enough to the table to convince U.S. immigration to let them in. Eh... my parents came with zero dollars to this country as part of family migration (zero due to currency export restrictions from their original country).
  • vikramkr 7y ago
    did they come as refugees or did they bring skills that suggested they would likely get employed/be able to contribute to the economy/would use welfare benefits etc?
    • tathougies 7y ago
      Family migration means a family member who is a citizen guarantees their ability to support themselves. They did.
• Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  Wouldn't that lead to the opposite effect? If you take an above average subset, you will have less upward mobility in their children because of mean reversion. If your parents are top decile already then there is a lot more room below you than above you.
  • nostrademons 7y ago
    Only if their country of origin is meritocratic and market-driven. As many flaws as the U.S. has, it generally ranks pretty well on these aspects. Put another way, many societies have artificial ceilings on the social status and income you can attain regardless of your intelligence, education, drive, ambition, and resourcefulness. Caste systems, guanxi, racial prejudice, endemic corruption, drug cartels that will kill you if you don't help them out, organized crime, warlords that will kill you, lack of infrastructure, etc. When you leave that country and go to one that allows free contracts between people, your social standing - and your children's, to the extent that these traits are heritable - should rise to its natural level, where it would be in the absence of arbitrary restrictions. There's another level of selection bias where people who feel like all these arbitrary restrictions work in their favor don't tend to leave their home countries. So those people who you speak of who would mean revert - the folks that are above average and have a good deal in their home country - would be underrepresented within the immigrant sample, to the extent that they can realize when they have a good deal. (This is the same principle by which contracts and free trade raise general welfare: people who already have what they need choose not to trade and drop out of the sample, which then consists only of people who feel they are better off trading for something someone else has.)
    • Mvandenbergh 7y ago
      But wouldn't those artificial ceilings also prevent immigration applicants from having the "paperwork" to show their capability which is precisely what the American immigration bureaucracy will look at? It's not like they're letting immigrants in based on an IQ test, they're letting people in because they have elite degrees, are admitted to American universities, or have American job offers. All of those are indicators of status already achieved rather than potential status which has been supressed by local conditions in their country of origin. In other words, immigrants coming in through the highly qualified routes are already high status in their countries of origin. Indians coming to the US on H1Bs for instance are overwhelmingly from high caste social groups and educated at the best Indian universities.
• btilly 7y ago
  There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country, and biased against people who are likely to be a drain on public assistance. Clearly not the cause. The USA has accepted many waves of refugees. For example the Cambodian boat refugees. They arrived with no skills, no education, no money, and didn't even speak the language. There was every reason to believe that they would be a drain on public assistance. And yet the children of these groups also show much greater upwards mobility than children of people who were already here.
  • fwip 7y ago
    Refugees account for about 10% of immigration to the US.
    • btilly 7y ago
      True. But the fact that upward mobility is strongly evident among refugee groups says that a theory for upward mobility among children of immigrants should explain why it still happens despite all of the disadvantages of being refugees.
      • usrusr 7y ago
        If you start at the bottom there is a lot of up to rise into and no down to further sink. Same at the opposite end: all the nepotism and Ivy Leagues in the world won't be able to keep some billionaire spawn from sinking and there are no higher ranks to rise into. Their average mobility can only be negative. I guess I'd still prefer being a failing trust fund baby over the upward mobility of rags to better rags, despite a considerable delta in sense of achievement (rags to better rags might actually be happier with themselves).
  • Nasrudith 7y ago
    Reminds me of one theory behind the success of immigrant "model minority" groups dating back to 19th century Jewish emigrants from pogrums being their community support network and a cultural values towards education. Of course none of this is in a vacuum and depends upon the host society and reaction. Disclaimer: Self determination and environmental determination both have their limits and maladaptive behaviors may have roots in trauma. It isn't meant to be any statement of intrinsic vice or virtue. I could see easily how refugees forced to cooperate to survive and fleeing horrifying death would support one another when in an unfamiliar new country and knowing there is no hope in heading back. I wonder how relevant the "hedonic treadmill" is to the phenomenon as well. Motivation and incentives having a positive impact on success is no surprise and unfortunately it isn't as easy or simple as just telling people to get motivated, making things better for them if they succeed, nor making things worse if they don't. Nor even more slippery sloped approaches like propaganda for social goods "Black Mirroring" a metric feedback loop that would be dystopian even if it worked.
• raverbashing 7y ago
  Yes, the bar has been going higher ever since (we might even say prohibitively so), however we know that not all immigrants go to the US through official means. It's a different kind of high-pass filter (not meaning necessarily that's easier).
• pkaye 7y ago
  A lot of countries have that filter. Canada has an explicit point based ranking system based on age, level of education, language fluency and profession.