Selective colleges have expanded their enrollments of black students by “increasing the number of immigrant and multiracial black students,” says Camille Z. Charles, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who is one of the authors of a recent study on the topic.

The paper, “Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States,” appears in the February issue of the American Journal of Education. In addition to Ms. Charles, its authors are Douglas S. Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton, and Margarita Mooney and Kimberly C. Torres, both of whom are postdoctoral fellows at Princeton’s Office of Population Research.

The paper draws on a study of 1,051 black students who enrolled at 28 selective institutions in 1999. Those students were part of a larger project, the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, that was financed by the Mellon Foundation and led by scholars at Princeton.

Of those 1,051 students, 27 percent were born outside the United States or had at least one parent who was born outside the United States — most commonly in Jamaica, Nigeria, Haiti, Trinidad, or Ghana. By contrast, only 13 percent of the general population of 18- and 19-year-old black Americans in 1999 were first- or second-generation immigrants, according to data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

At the most selective of the 28 schools, the ratios for non-native black students were even higher. The study included four Ivy League universities — Columbia, Penn, Princeton, and Yale — and at those universities, 41 percent of black students were first- or second-generation immigrants.

(At Selective Colleges, More Than a Quarter of Black Students Are Immigrants, Study Finds, by David Glenn. The Chronicle Of Higher Education 2/1/07)

The authors even outline some of the advantages black immigrants have over black natives: 44% of black immigrants have a parents with an advanced degree, versus 25% of black natives. Plus, black immigrants are less likely to have been raised in the ghetto and more likely to have attended private elementary and high schools, and they also have significantly higher SAT scores ( an average of 1250 versus 1193, respectively).

“If you’re a purist” — that is, if you view affirmative action as restitution for the harm done by American slavery and segregation — “then you’ll think that this is not in the spirit of affirmative action,” Ms. Charles continued. “But if you’re a diversity purist, and your idea is to expose everybody to as many different kinds of people as possible, then you’ll think this is great.”

But if you’re a tax-paying American, especially a black one, you should be wondering why we’re subsidizing the advancement of immigrants at the detriment of the American blacks who are suffering here.

Russell Wardlow writes about Mexican Corporations in America, and who they’re selling to:

Driving through Chino the other day, I noticed for the first time that a Gigante store, which is a large Mexican supermarket chain. Now, I have no problems with foreign companies doing business in America, but this is not your father’s corporate expansion. Gigante hasn’t come here because it sees a demand for its products by Americans. It’s here because it’s following its customers out of Mexico, selling to illegals who will probably be inclined to shop at a store they’re familiar with and which they know will cater to their language and culture.

Episodes like this are incredibly obnoxious, to be sure, but I reserve real anger for those ostensible conservatives in the media and leadership roles in politics who keep selling this rosy lie of assimilation. Are they completely blind? Or just entirely unscrupulous liars?Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0: How Can Conservatives Continue to Sell the Same Nonsense on Immigration?

The answer to “Are they completely blind? Or just entirely unscrupulous liars?” is yes.

In the wake of recent raids on employers of illegal aliens in Bedford, MA, the Christian Science Monitor is running a poll on their readers views on immigration. What is interesting is the letters they are running are pro-immigration, but when I checked, 59% of their readers said the best option to solve the address the immigration problem was immediate deportation of all illegal aliens. No mention was made in the poll of dramatically increasing sanctions on employers. Fewer than 12% of their readers supported amnesty.

For some time now it has been apparent that the managers of the Wall Street Journal’s relentless amnesty/immigration campaign have been aware of a mounting problem: a lack of fresh, unrefuted arguments. To some extent they can deal with this by simply never allowing opposing views to appear (although embarrassing things have happened on the comment threads convention obliges them to sometimes offer). They make heavy use of the technique much favored towards the end of his life by the late immigration apologist Julian Simon, as Peter Brimelow noted in his obituary – simply ignoring inconvenient arguments. But in the age of the internet, when everyone has an instant archive, that can look embarrassing too. On Saturday they tried a new tactic: getting a new guy to repeat the same old cliché ridden inanities – apparently thinking changing the packaging might help.

At least that seems the most plausible explanation for the otherwise laughably sophomoric essay Iowa’s Job Thieves By Michael Judge – March 17 2007. Discussing the aftermath of the recent meatpacking raids, it starts with a large dollop of sentimentalism:

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa — It’s the third Sunday of Lent and Deisy Garcia, her 10-month-old son Jesus heavy in her arms, is praying for one thing and one thing only — her husband’s release from the Polk County Jail.

(Lent – son called Jesus – praying – GET IT?)

and immediately puts its foot squarely on a land mine

I am an American citizen, a taxpayer and a homeowner,” she says through an interpreter

What is Deisy Garcia doing being a citizen if she needs an interpreter for such a simple conversation? What does this tell us about Michael Judge’s comprehension of the citizenship process, or indeed of the question of assimilation that he left this unremarked?

Judge then wastes a good deal of space on the insignificant issue of whether the false US IDs used by the arrested men were bought from Americans, and quotes approvingly from the local business men who have rushed lemming-like to profit from the influx – without considering whether their self interest taints their opinions. Not stopping to ask what native Iowans might think about their school district abruptly becoming 40% Hispanic, the article moves on to completely mis-state the Iowa employment situation

There’s a joke in Iowa that the state’s biggest exports are corn and people. With an aging population and young people going elsewhere for opportunities, meatpacking, construction, manufacturing and other low-skill labor-intensive jobs are being filled by immigrant workers, documented or not.

Young people will certainly go elsewhere if traditionally attractive professions like meat packing are swamped by non-English-speaking cheap labor. Judge gives no thought to the effect on native-born workers of the influx, but does find an applauding quisling, Ken Anderson of the Marshalltown Chamber of Commerce:

This economy is demanding this kind of workforce and our immigration system just does not match what is required by our economy.

In fact of course, the economy is being presented with “this kind of workforce” and is simply reacting. If labor were expensive, capital and ingenuity would be substituted, as traditionally it always was in America. Object to Ken Anderson.

About the only positive aspect of this sorry performance is the headline. No doubt this is a sneer by some East-Coast rooted sub-editor who thinks the idea wanting to live and work in Iowa laughable. But the fact is these illegals are stealing – remunerative employment, health care, education, even the chance to live in an English speaking country. Judge appears oblivious to this. Just possibly, the galley slaves at the Journal, who have occasionally shown signs of deviationism on this question, slipped one in.

Tell Michael Judge (an instructor at the University of Iowa School of Journalism) he needs to work harder on critical thinking (be polite).