It’s little understood how immigration drives the spread and potency of racial and ethnic quotas. It’s widely assumed, even opponents of affirmative action, that race quotas are just about blacks, even though Hispanics now make up more of the legally “protected groups” than do African-Americans.

Further, it’s widely assumed that quotas are imposed solely as a proactive decision by liberals, as in college admissions, and could thus be banned by Supreme Court decision or by referendum. In reality, they are mostly imposed as a reactive decision by fairly conservative organizations to avoid lawsuits.

Your Lying Eyes points to a Newsday article:

Feds sue city, claim biased FDNY exams
U.S. Department of Justice says previous tests discriminated against black and Hispanic applicants
BY ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO

In a 14-page complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, attorneys for the Department of Justice alleged that discriminatory hiring practices were rooted in two written tests given to applicants in 1999 and 2002 that, while not purposely or obviously racist, were littered with SAT-like questions that do not test an applicant’s ability to fight fires. The suit seeks an injunction and possible damages.

The two “pass/fail” tests resulted in passing rates for black and Hispanic applicants that were lower than those of white applicants in a statistically significant way, the complaint charges.

In the 1999 test, about 90 percent of white applicants had a passing score, but only 61.2 percent of black and 77 percent of Hispanic test-takers passed, according to the complaint.

The rates for the 2002 exam were 97.2 percent for white applicants, 85.6 percent for black applicants and 92.8 percent for Hispanic applicants, court records stated.

According to federal officials, the use of the tests has contributed to the low numbers of black and Hispanic uniformed firefighters when compared with the NYPD.

According to a 1999 city study, there are 11,000 New York City firefighters, of which about 3 percent are black and 4.5 percent Hispanic, compared with 13.4 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively, in the NYPD, the officials said. …

City Hall fired back with a statement that took issue with the claim by federal officials.

“In fact, the test plan, which resulted in the development of the 1999 and 2002 exams, was developed by active New York City firefighters, including black and Hispanic firefighters, working with experts at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, and was job-related,” Assistant Corporation Counsel Georgia Pestana said.

Your Lying Eyes responds:

Provided it requires some cognitive skills, it’s basically impossible to design a written exam that won’t show these kinds of disparities in test results. By making the test easier and easier, and eliminating questions that test logical or reasoning skills, as was obviously attempted here, you can close the gap somewhat, but the statistically significant differential, which the DOJ points to here, will remain. The DOJ argues that the test is not relevant to the job, which is about all they could argue at this point, since the test has been designed to be so easy that almost every white applicant passes.

Compare these test results to this analysis of the July 2004 Texas Bar Exam (which I chose because it showed up first in a Google search). Among first time test takers, 85% of whites, 69% of Hispanics and 53% of blacks passed. These results are very nearly statistically identical (measured in terms of z-score differentials) to the 1999 NYC firefighters exam. They also are similar to what we find with the SATs, NAEP assessments* - just about any written test requiring cerebral energy. As la Griffe du Lion has pointed out, it’s one of the few things you can count on in the social sciences, but count on it you can.

The point I want to make however is the extraordinary chutzpah of the Department of Justice in suing … the NYFD. Why? Let me sum it up in one number:

343

How soon we forget.

Robert Reich writes on Common Dreams:

Maybe. But I’ve been thinking a lot about the immigration bill now pending before Congress – especially the conditions undocumented workers will have to meet if they want to become American citizens. One of them is to pay all the taxes they owe.

The new immigration bill may not make it through Congress, but that provision about paying taxes that are owed in order to be a citizen serves as a reminder that paying taxes is one of the major obligations of citizenship. After all, if we didn’t pay the taxes we owe, we wouldn’t have public schools, police and fire protection, national defense, homeland security, roads and bridges, Medicare and Social Security, and other things we need.

So when the super-rich use offshore tax havens to avoid paying what they owe in taxes, they’re reneging on their duties as citizens. It seems only fair to me that the consequence of that kind of tax avoidance ought to be loss of citizenship. If it’s more important to someone to avoid paying what they owe in taxes than to continue being an American, then let them keep their money. They can become a citizen of the Cayman Islands or Bermuda or wherever else they store their wealth, and come here on a visitor’s visa – if they can get one.

What this tells me, is that the Democrats that make economic policy understand they will have to get serious the next time they are back in power. The big issue here is that just so much of the economic theory around immigration is just plain bad. The big issue is that these economists don’t look at citizenship as an asset and look at the opportunity costs lost with changes to the value of citizenship. In reality, illegal immigration is a much bigger theft from the American public
than the tax evasion of offshore tax havens.

I would get serious about both issues. The leading users of offshore tax havens are quite wealthy. Most of their “offshore” assets are in fact invested in the US, Japan or the EU. If the US were to start to adopt asset taxation-as other developed countries like France have already done. Ralph Nader and Edward Wolff of NYU have already endorsed such a tax proposal–with the suggestion their be a hefty deduction of $1-5 Million per family. Those that choose to use offshore tax havens would then lose that exemption.

Illegal immigration feeds off concentration of wealth–and makes concentration of wealth worse. We need firm measures to stop these both in their tracks.

My apologies — I appear to have gotten confused about what Monday’s “Cloture” vote on the Kennedy-Bush immigration bill in the Senate did. I assumed it was to prevent a filibuster by 41 Senators, like most cloture votes, but instead it was to allow this monumentally important and complex act to not go through committee hearings like most legislation does. It would require a second cloture vote by at least 60 Senators to shut down a filibuster. Harry Reid than added a second week to the debate, admitting that his original plan to hustle this bill with its vast and murky consequences through in one week was too grotesque even for the Senate.

My thanks to a couple of my commenters and to Larry Auster for clearing this up.

No thanks at all to the Main Stream Media for ignoring this crucial facet of the proceedings so that all my Google News searches on “cloture” early Saturday didn’t uncover the facts. Using a cloture vote to avoid committee hearings on this bill was a shameful act by the political elite, but the MSM deeply approves of changing immigration laws in Red Bull-filled rooms far from the prying eyes of the public. That would be “divisive.”

Immigration Derangement Syndrome sure affects a lot of economists. For example, Bryan Caplan greets Harvard economist George Borjas’s new blog with this classic:

Borjas: What’s His Problem?

Well, Bryan, I guess his problem from your point of view that is that, when it comes to immigration, Dr. Borjas has worked very hard to know what the hell’s he’s talking about. But who needs painstaking empiricism when Ayn Rand has shown us the true way?

What’s striking is the constant reminder of what a large proportion of economists are fervent ideologues who, armed with a selective handful of bumper sticker slogans (e.g., Comparative Advantage! but not externalities), want to preach morality to the unenlightened far more than they want to try to understand reality.

Economists tend to be complete suckers for the most implausible studies supporting their preconceptions about immigration. Simple reality checks are never performed on agreeable-sounding assertions. For example, one of the most celebrated is Giovanni Peri’s recent effort, which Caplan’s friend Tyler Cowen approvingly summed up: “… if lots of Mexican carpenters move to California, we don’t see the non-Mexican carpenters leaving in droves, due to lower wages.”

Great point! Except of course that we have seen droves of native-born blue-collar workers leave California. And we sure don’t see many American blue collar workers from the other 49 states moving to California. That’s an opportunity cost to Americans — one of those Econ 101 phrases that gets forgotten when economists start burbling about immigration. As I wrote in VDARE.com last year, using Las Vegas as a more up-to-date example of a booming example, but you could use California in the period studied by Peri:

What [many economists don't] grasp is that illegal immigration is denying Americans the traditional wage premium for undergoing the pain of moving to a boomtown.

Imagine you are an American blue-collar worker in Cleveland, making $10 per hour. You know the local economy is stagnant, so you’re thinking about relocating to fast-growing Las Vegas. But your mom would miss you; and you’re not a teenager anymore so you don’t make new friends as fast as you once did; and you really like the wooded Ohio countryside you grew up around and the fall colors and the deer hunting; and there’s this girl that maybe you could get serious about, but her whole family is in Cleveland and she’d never leave.

So, you decide, you’ll leave home behind if you can make 50 percent more in Las Vegas, adjusted for cost of living. That seems fair.

But, then you look through the Las Vegas want ads and discover you’d be lucky to make 10 or 20 percent more because the town is full of illegal aliens. They’re moving from another country, so it’s not much skin off their nose to move to Las Vegas rather than some place slower-growing.

Well, forget that, you say. I’ll stay in Cleveland.

Unfortunately, too many economists forget that too. They can’t-or won’t-put themselves in other people’s shoes and see how the world really works.

That doesn’t seem to hurt them professionally. But it can hurt America.

In the comments on Borjas’s blog, businessman Peter Schaeffer writes:

I have looked at the immigration work of Peri for some time now. Recently, Peri has published a new paper, Immigrants’ Complementarieties and Native Wages:Evidence from California (PDF). This paper attempts to show that immigration has raised the real wages of workers in California, even high school dropouts. A few notes:

1. The empirical data (Figure 3, Change in Real Wage of U.S. natives, by Education group 1990-2004) actually shows large declines for high school dropouts. -17.6% in California versus -15.1% nationwide. Peri does not attempt to explain the large decline in wages of low skill workers (as best I can tell) or why wages fell faster in California.

2. As best I can tell, Peri uses a aggregate production function that would make it very difficult for immigration to ever adversely impact the incomes of natives in general, although that might not be true for specific groups. For reasons stated below, this does not appear to be realistic for California and perhaps not the nation.

3. Peri assumes that immigrants are almost entirely complementary to natives, even at the low end (but less so). He is quite aware that this is a contentious point and attempts to defend his methodology and conclusions. I can neither support nor refute his assertions.

4. Peri appears to be aware that his work is deeply contra factual, although this is never explicitly stated. Natives have been net leaving California in vast numbers (millions) for quite some time now. If immigrants were complementary, this should either not be happening or immigrants should be net leaving as well. Obviously this is not true. Peri attempts to refute this critique via a regression of some type. He offers no other explanation as to why natives would be fleeing California.

5. Peri rather explicitly does not even consider the possibility that immigration has impacted prices (mainly but not exclusively housing) in California. Peri deflates California wages using a national CPI, not a state one. This is highly contrafactual in my opinion. California’s population would be much lower (30% of California’s population is foreign born) without immigration and housing correspondingly more affordable. I cannot quantify the impact of immigration on housing costs in California, however it is certainly large. Note that the Census (but not the BLS) shows California housing to be roughly twice as expensive as the national average.

6. If one takes into account housing costs, Calfornia is considerably more expensive than the US as a whole and real wages corresponding lower. Indeed, California emerges as one of the poorer states (43rd) in the nation, if the local cost of living is taken into account. Given the linkage between immigration and prices, it would appear that immigration has markedly reduced real wages in California. Of course, this would account for the native outflux contra Peri.

Thank you,

Peter Schaeffer

From Reuters:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed legislation granting special immigration visas to hundreds of Iraqi and Afghan translators whose lives are endangered because they helped U.S. forces.

Now, it is “only” 500 visas. Of course, with chain migration policies, it will be a lot more in the long run. The web site www.costofwar.com put the cost of the Iraq war at $428 billion the last time I looked. The costs of the additional immigration associated with that adventure are likely to mount up over time.

The Web has all sorts of useful commentary by people who have examined the actual language in the Senate’s sellout bill, S. 1348 (Kyl/Bush/Kennedy/Soprano/Corleone/et al.). The bill contains amazing (though not wondrous) things, galore. It seems useful to assemble the commentary on some of the more amazing items here for everyone’s convenience, since these would be useful in calling talk radio, visiting senators’ district offices, writing letters to the editor, terrifying your neighbors, etc.

Maybe you’d like to see the bill first? Its 326 scintillating pages are here. To find your way through the wad, this site looks to be useful. (The bill outline on the left is what I’m thinking of. I don’t fully grasp how the comments they’re offering are organized.) Best bet would be to have these two sites open in separate windows.

On to six discrete horrors!

1. Law professor Kris Kobach, chief counsel for Hazleton, PA in its struggle with the Treason Lobby, wrote a startling article a few days ago on the interaction of the proposed “Z” visas and — among other soon-to-be-protected classes — illegal-alien gang members. See “Rewarding Lawbreakers,” New York Post, 5/21/07. Kobach’s conclusion: “This bill isn’t a ‘compromise’ in any meaningful sense. It is a surrender.”

2. Hoover Institution research fellow Stanley Kurtz is a sporadic contributor to “The Corner” blog at National Review Online. On 5/22, Kurtz wrote a brief analysis on the “supposed shift from family unification to a merit-based point system” in S.1348 that is well worth reading. It’s one example among many in the bill of supposed toughening of our immigration system that will certainly be waylaid by events without ever being implemented. (The Corner is a good site to monitor these days for commentary on the S.1348 struggle by Mark Krikorian, John Derbyshire, Andrew McCarthy, and others.)

3. Ken Boehm, Chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), has discovered an item in the bowels of S.1348 which he is highly qualified to explain. His title tells it all: “New Immigration Bill Makes Taxpayers Pay Illegal Alien Legal Bills,” Southwest Nebraska News, 5/22/07. (Note also the vociferous feedback from readers, following the article.) Ken wrote me today, “We’ve been swamped with media since that release went out.” That’s good to hear, since this wrinkle won’t play well in Peoria.

4. This one isn’t literally part of S.1348, but it’s highly timely and pertinent. In his Townhall.com column of 5/23/07, Terence Jeffrey takes an illuminating look at enforcing (or not) the immigration laws on employers: “Demand-Side Immigration Reform.” If we could still be astonished, this one might do it for us. (The list of readers’ comments at the end of the column — already nine of them by 3 a.m. Eastern Time on 5/23 — will only get longer.)

5. So it’s not an amnesty because they’ll have to pay “stiff fines,” yada yada yada? Hal Netkin is an expert by marriage and by inlaw-ship on how the federal bureaucracy interacts with the illegal aliens it legalizes. He gives you the benefit of his experience here. (OK, OK, this isn’t a part of the bill, either. This is the wisdom of experience applied to the bill.)

6. They’ll also “have to pay back taxes”? The Boston Globe torpedoed that old chestnut on Saturday, 5/19/07: “Bush removes provision requiring back taxes from illegal immigrants.” This elicited a bunch of notable comments at a Free Republic web page. Here are some highlights:

Does each illegal immigrant also get 10 acres and a mule?

I love the phrase “difficult to determine tax liability” with respect to illegals. …..like it’s EASY FOR THE REST OF US to determine OUR tax liability? Isn’t it 67,000 pages of IRS tax code now?

“Difficulty” has never been an allowable excuse for law abiding U.S. citizens with respect to determining our tax liability and filing our returns.

Oh, if only our nation’s capitol would break off and fall into the sea! Our government has become a hateful, stinking pile of corruption.

If they want to be American Citizens, they should not be allowed to get tax breaks right away. In fact, each one of them should be required to sit at a kitchen table with a pencil, calculator, and a book of instructions and forms to complete their back taxes. (In English only)

If they get it right, they can stay. If they get anything on the tax return wrong, they should be immediately ejected and never allowed back in the United States. And I hope they all have to file the AMT form and pay the tax.

Finally, there was an entry at the same Free Republic page that reminds us again of how unintended a bill’s unintended consequences might be:

There’s an element to this process that has been referenced somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but in reality, may be quite attractive. I speak, of course, about citizens filing their own amnesty applications.

Here’s the point: illegals by definition have no truly proper form of identity. (Forget matriculas, drivers licenses, etc — these were all issued on non-binding IDs as well.) That means any starting point will require some sort of tracking ID to be assigned by ICE. What’s to stop me from filing an application under whatever name I wish to get an ID? Then, as I go through the process, how is ICE going to determine that I’m actually an existing citizen? (That is, if they don’t have my fingerprints on file anywhere, i.e. I’ve never been arrested, etc?)

I’m not being facetious; how is ICE going to prevent citizens from getting whole new parallel identities?

The Pew Center released a poll yesterday about Muslims residing in this country and has put a positive spin on the results, as indicated by the upbeat title: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream. But numerous findings are disturbing and should hopefully nudge more Americans into consciousness about the threat brought by unrealistic policies of admittance, particularly since Muslim immigration is increasing.

Elites love to imagine that America does immigration better than other places and infer therefore that we have nothing to fear from Muslims in our midst. That idea is a dangerous arrogance, which this poll clarifies.

It is true that in comparison to the Sons of Allah in Europe and Britain, Muslims residing in America are more assimilated in terms of making a decent living and attaining upward mobility. However, there is still a nasty bit who believe we infidels deserve rough treatment as required by the Prophet.

An alarming 26% — or roughly 100,000 — of younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings against non-Muslim “civilian targets” are cool. That’s really not any more comforting than the 35% of young Muslim Brits who told Pew the same thing after some of them bombed the London subway, killing 52 civilians and wounding another 700 or so.

You may recall how pundits here assured us our Muslim youth would never subscribe to such lunacy.
[What Muslims Really Think, Investors Business Daily 5/22/2007]

A few points:

• Of Muslims residing in America, 65 percent are foreign born (page 1 of the downloadable PDF report).
• Only 28 percent consider themselves Americans first; 47 percent have their primary identity in being Muslim (pg 31).
• Among those who identify as Muslims first, 13 percent believe suicide bombing is justified to protect Islam from infidels (page 32).
• Also among the Muslim-first set, only 28 percent believe that a “group of Arabs” carried out the 9/11 attacks, while 40 percent did not accept the 9/11 perpetrators were Arabs and 32 percent declined to answer or said they didn’t know (pg 32).
• In terms of political philosophy, 70 percent of Muslims residing in America prefer big government, and only 11 percent are or lean Republican (pg 41).

The survey is a long-overdue sampling of Muslim attitudes that we have previously seen surveyed in other countries, but apparently no one in this country wanted their lovely fantasy disrupted until now.

Brad Krantz, Talk Show host on the Greensboro N.C. area’s WZTK, is apparently up to his old tricks again. Last December, we outed Krantz’s squalid repression of Peter Brimelow and VDARE.com. (This produced screams of rage from Krantz, but no invitation back on air to discuss the matter, which would have been impossibly honorable and brave.)

Now it seems Krantz is refusing to allow calls about the surreptitious push for North American Union. Blog.LibertyVideos.org says

…this morning, Brad and Britt read a letter from Roxane Premont of the ad-hoc grassroots group North Carolinians to Stop the North American Union.

Roxane had complained that the screener for their show was not letting calls come through that were trying to link the pending amnesty sell-out by our U.S. Senate to the larger effort to effectively erase our borders with Canada and Mexico via the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) launched by the Bush administration in March of 2005. While it was an honorable gesture to read Roxane’s letter on the air, Brad and Britt went on to say that trying to equate the SPP to a EU like North American Union sounds too much like a “conspiracy theory.” The “C” word being employed, no further explanation was apparently necessary.

Hmmm. “Conspiracy” a taboo concept. An interest in hiding an effort to obliterate the nation. Is there a pattern here?

There clearly is a Krantz pattern of selective repression. As I remarked at the time, and again more recently, meeting political opponents with argument rather than repression is essentially an Anglo-Saxon habit. Many of other origins do not assimilate to it well. That was essentially the point of the American Thinker article the other day.

Brad Krantz is an embarrassment to Greensboro.

Interesting question: Could any Greensboro VDARE.com readers tell us how Krantz is handling the new Amnesty/Immigration Surge Bill?