Famous US Immigrants

Trump wouldn't recognise merit if it hit him in the face.

@TinklePork.

Hear hear!

Gloria Estefan's family came to the US as refugees when she was a toddler.Henry Kissinger's family came as refugees when he was 15.Desi Arnaz's family came as refugees when he was a teenager.Adolph Coors was an undocumented stowaway.Harry Houdini came to the US when he was 4 years old.Irving Berlin's family fled Russia when he was 5, and his earliest memory was watching their house burn to the ground during a pogrom.Isaac Asimov's family emigrated when he was 3.Andrew Carnegie came from a poor family that emigrated when he was 13.Bob Hope came over when he was 4.Eddie Van Halen was 7 when they came over.How many of them would have made it in based on "merit"?

@ MarlowPI Now extend your analysis breakdown to the criminal population of the United States and see whether on net balance the US is better off. Also, without these immigrants, wouldn't the native population be able to produce just as many successful people in their place? Also, why do you think it's ok for less successful countries to lose their best and brightest? Do you believe in brain drain or are you just a cognitive imperialist?

Will do! How about another bullet list:

Immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated for crimes than native-born US citizens. [Source]

The flow of immigrants has no net effect on crime, and immigrant youths are significantly less likely to commit crimes than native-born youths. [Source]

Mexican immigration specifically also has no appreciable effect on violent or property crime rates. [Source]A focus on enforcing stricter immigration laws has no noticeable effect on crime rates. [Source]

Regarding your other questions: First, it's not a zero-sum game. Just because an immigrant achieves success doesn't mean they prevented someone else from doing so.

Second, this isn't corporate head-hunting. We're not going out to other countries, finding their "best and brightest" and forcing them to come to the US. Are you really suggesting that we should refuse entry to immigrants and refugees looking for a better life or more opportunities? That's incredibly condescending. Yes, I'm sure Russia would have been culturally enriched if Irving Berlin had stayed and been killed by the pogrom. Andrew Carnegie definitely would've become Scotland's king of industry if he'd stayed and starved to death there. Albert Einstein surely would've been able to continue his ground-breaking studies as a Jew in 1930s Germany. Sure, some of these great talents might have been successful if they'd stayed, but just as surely others died in obscurity because they did.

Marlowe, your posts here are great. And yes, of all the many *very* bad arguments against immigration, the claim that the xenophobes make that they're just concerned about brain drain, trying to paint their bigotry as them being magnanimous, has got to be one of the worst. No American would accept being told "no, you were born in Alabama, you are not allowed to move to New York. Suck it up and make your own state better." Countries should not be prison camps. Migration is a basic human right.

Thanks, MarlowePI, for your thoughtful and well-documented statements. Unfortunately, people who are emotionally invested in entrenched false beliefs often become more entrenched when their misinformation is pointed out, even with dispassionate, nonconfrontational, nonjudgmental methods. It often takes massive counterprogramming to overcome prejudice. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

Thanks! (This is the Jetpunker Formerly Known as MarlowePI.) And yes, facts are unlikely to un-entrench these sort of beliefs, but this sort of debate is less about convincing the opponent and more about the onlookers who might not be so entrenched.

I thought Kissinger worked for Nixon?