Random thoughts on immigrants

My first thought (of which my wife disabused me) was that the skill set of the average immigrant is below that of natives, but above that of the countries from where they are coming means that we are stealing their best and brightest even though they lower our average skill. Actually, as Kathleen reminded me, the average immigrant has a skill set higher than our average native.

For one thing, they (eventually) speak two languages. Many American kids barely speak one. And the brain drain is still a problem for their home countries.

My second thought was that we assume that in previous brain drains, we got the best and brightest, the people with gumption, while the dumb Micks (hey, I resemble that remark), Germans, Brits, and Italians stayed there. This time, though, - if one believes the anti-immigrants - the smart ones stayed at home and we only got the dumb Mexicans.

Errr, I'm not buying that.

Somewhere, there's another Julian Simon post in my future. Besides being very optimistic on natural resources, Julian was also very pro-immigration and immigrant, on both accounts because of the vast amount of empirical data he collected. Sure wish he could weigh in on the current controversy.