A Facebook friend with a Ph.D. in Physics posted the following as her status:
All six US science Nobel prize winners this year are immigrants.
Last year, all six US noble [sic] prize winners were also immigrants.
I’m sharing this in case you still think “immigrants are ruining America.”
As part of my campaign to be defriended by everyone, I responded with
Did they all arrive in the same caravan from Honduras or was it six separate caravans?
I then pointed out that nobelprize.org shows 2018 U.S. winners having been born in exotic locales such as Pittsburgh, Norwalk, and New York City. But I helpfully supplied a video from an immigrant Nobel laureate in Physics (he won in the 1970s). Her response:
You can’t possibly feel threatened by 5K women and youth.
Me:
let’s maybe not encourage the caravan women to apply for the Nobel in Literature (see “The ugly scandal that cancelled the Nobel prize”)
One find: Wikipedia says that George Pearson Smith (immigrated to the U.S. from Norwalk, Connecticut) is a “a strong supporter of the Boycott [Israel], Divestment and Sanctions movement”. Now that he is stuffed with Nobel cash, let’s see if he will give up his house to the Native American tribe from which the land was stolen!
The mentions of “caravan” suggest it’s time update the sixth verse of this fine poem,
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-golden-journey-to-samarkand/
I can’t hope to match Flecker but here’s my attempt,
When those long caravans that seek the border
With feminist t-shirts and migrant diehards
Put forth no more through Tijuana disorder
Take no more solace from hope of EBT cards
Presumably we benefit from these Nobel winning immigrants, and they all have high IQs, so maybe IQ should be a factor in choosing which immigrants we allow? Statistics + geography to the rescue! Here’s a chart of national IQ vs latitude that we can use as a guide:
http://teknologipartiet.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/abs_lat_iq-825×510.png
That’s a fascinating graph, Charles. If any of Phil’s millionaire neighbors ever look down at Southerners as being big dummies, they’ve got evidence right there. It’s all about latitude. Those horrible members of the Swedish Academy must have gotten very high scores if they ever sat for an IQ test. So I guess that America should change our immigration law to ban people from Nunavut, Lapland and Murmansk.
On the other hand, your famous Bell Curve indicates that only a tony portion of the human species has a very high IQ. A large majority, perhaps the vast majority of all humans is more or less average. That probably includes you and your friends and family. So our immigration law could just disregard IQ altogether. Some nasty high IQ people will continue to come in, but there such a small portion of the world population that they can’t do too much harm.
Also, do you have a graph that shows a correlation between IQ and longitude? You may have to go back to Madison Grant to find it.
Seems to be a lot of countries missing in that graph.
It in any event, please remember that “correlation does not prove causation”
I also found it odd that most of the world would fall under 100 IQ points as per definition it should be in the middle. then I noticed China and Japan on the top as huge outliers which are pushing down all the other countries due to their population size.
In fact, Vietnam, Cambodia, Vietnam seem to be all outliers which makes it look like latitude alone is not enuugh but a latitude/longitude combination (a 40 degree slanted line probably) with the IQ increasing in direction NE where North Korea and Vladivostok being the epitome of intelligence.
Latin America is not on this list, so maybe some countries fall into the highest IQ and while their neighbors would be the dumbest on the planet. It all depends on where the cutoff point is, but that leaves enough space to insert out own preferences into the calculation!
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/hispanics-of-honduran-origin-in-the-united-states-2013/
Hondurans have lower levels of education than the U.S. Hispanic population and the U.S. population overall. Some 9% of Hondurans ages 25 and older—compared with 14% of all U.S. Hispanics and 30% among the entire U.S. population—have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree. Among Hondurans ages 25 and older, the U.S. born are more likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree or more than foreign-born Hondurans—21% vs. 7%.
The median annual personal earnings for Hondurans ages 16 and older was $19,000 in the year prior to the survey—lower than the median earnings for all U.S. Hispanics ($21,900) and the median earnings for the U.S. population ($30,000).
Some 52% of Hondurans report speaking English less than very well, compared with 32% of all Hispanics. In addition, 88% of Hondurans ages 5 and older speak Spanish at home.
Since 1990, the Honduran-origin population has increased sixfold, growing from 127,000 to 791,000 over the period. At the same time, the foreign-born population of Honduran origin living in the U.S. grew by over 407%, up from 98,000 in 1990 to 498,000 in 2013.
If you are a Nobel Prize caliber scientist who wants to move to the US, you don’t need a caravan. Just learn about the EB-1 visa program available since 1990s. It has no annual quota, and the processing time has been at most 90 days for years.
I knew it had to be my fellow Norwegian born politically incorrect dude as immigrant Physics Nobel Prize winner.
But of course, the caravan has plentiful future Nobel Prize winners. If you won’t let them in, both our nation and Science (cap-S) in general will suffer a tremendous loss. Just wait for thirty years and see for yourself.
Hey, statistics PhDs! one bonus point to those who can spot a logical fallacy. I will kick it off: a majority of our nation’s Nobel Prize winners come from an immigrant background, however a majority… 🙂