Immigrants and Education

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While I'm writing my last post, a story gets posted to the news wire that College-educated immigrants outnumber the unskilled. My first reaction was "what are these people smoking?" Look at the map they provide, which I have reproduced here:

Notice that most of the immigrants in the south and southwest are unskilled. Immigration is important to this country, because we hope to attract the best and brightest from every country. Notice that skilled workers arrive at places where it's difficult to arrive without permission. It's hard to cross the Atlantic without detection, and they certainly won't be digging tunnels to get in. The problem has been and remains that out West, we end up with loads and loads of unskilled workers who do not integrate and do not respect the law because of that long and largely unprotected border with Mexico.


As usual, there is more to this story than the headline indicates. One of my favorite lines from the article is this:

The Fredericksburg resident said she has no regrets about the five additional years of study that allowed her to live and work as a doctor here.

These people paid the price. They didn't try to skirt the law. That is the immigrant attitude that we seek, honor, and welcome in America- the attitude that is willing to pay the price to reap the rewards. I also have to ask, how many of the illegal aliens, hiding in the shadows, are included in this report? I doubt very much they came out of hiding to be reported in a statistical study or that they are counted, much like the number of Americans who have stopped looking for work aren't counted in the unemployment figures.


In college, I took a statistics class. As part of our final, we had to present the results of a statistical survey conducted by our group during the semester. My instructor was impressed with our results, not because it taught him something that he didn't know, but rather because it gave him an opportunity to hammer into us something he felt important to stress. My results were that there was insufficient data to prove any correlation. Normally, students, and paid pollsters, are afraid perhaps to disappoint their patrons. Results like that don't usually get you repeat business. They are however, more than likely the rule. You can get the statistics to say whatever you like if you lie, cheat, obfuscate, or skew the polling data.


Even if the data collected is correct, there are things about which they chose not to speak. At least they gave us the figure, which shows, in the color red no less, that the problem is the border and not immigration itself.


“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.” --Thomas Paine