Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, two of the smartest conservative thinkers today, have spilt much ink worrying over immigrant assimilation. Salam is more pessimistic, choosing titles like “The Melting Pot is Broken” and “Republicans Need a New Approach to Immigration” (with the descriptive url: “Immigration-New-Culture-War”) while relying on a handful of academic papers for support. Douthat presents a more nuanced, Burkean think-piece reacting to assimilation’s supposed decline, relying more on Salam for evidence.
Their worries fly against recent evidence that immigrant assimilation is proceeding quickly in the United States. There’s never been a greater quantity of expert and timely quantitative research that shows immigrants are still assimilating.
The first piece of research is the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) September 2015 book titled The Integration of Immigrants into American Society. At 520 pages, it’s a thorough, brilliant summation of the relevant academic literature on immigrant assimilation that ties the different strands of research into a coherent story. Bottom line: Assimilation is never perfect and always takes time, but it’s going very well.
One portion of NAS’ book finds that much assimilation occurs through a process called ethnic attrition, which is caused by immigrant inter-marriage with natives either of the same or different ethnic groups. Assimilation is also quickened with second or third generation Americans marry those from other, longer-settled ethnic or racial groups. The children of these intermarriages are much less likely to identify ethnically with their more recent immigrant ancestors and, due to spousal self-selection, to be more economically and educationally integrated as well. Ethnic attrition is one reason why the much-hyped decline of the white majority is greatly exaggerated.
Cato at Liberty
Cato at Liberty
Email Signup
Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!
Topics
The Syrian Civil War Just Became Even More Complex
Just when you thought the Syrian civil war couldn’t get any messier, developments last week proved that it could. For the first time in the armed conflict that has raged for nearly five years, militia fighters from the Assyrian Christian community in northern Iraq clashed with Kurdish troops. What made that incident especially puzzling is that both the Assyrians and the Kurds are vehement adversaries of ISIS—which is also a major player in that region of Syria. Logically, they should be allies who cooperate regarding military moves against the terrorist organization.
But in Syria, very little is simple or straightforward. Unfortunately, that is a point completely lost on the Western (especially American) news media. From the beginning, Western journalists have portrayed the Syrian conflict as a simplistic melodrama, with dictator Bashar al-Assad playing the role of designated villain and the insurgents playing the role of plucky proponents of liberty. Even a cursory examination of the situation should have discredited that narrative, but it continues largely intact to this day.
There are several layers to the Syrian conflict. One involved an effort by the United States and its allies to weaken Assad as a way to undermine Iran by depriving Tehran of its most significant regional ally. Another layer is a bitter Sunni-Shite contest for regional dominance. Syria is just one theater in that contest. We see other manifestations in Bahrain, where Iran backs a seething majority Shiite population against a repressive Sunni royal family that is kept in power largely by Saudi Arabia’s military support. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf powers backed Sunni tribes in western Iraq against the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Some of those groups later coalesced to become ISIS. In Yemen, direct military intervention by Saudi Arabia and Riyadh’s smaller Sunni Gulf allies is determined to prevent a victory by the Iranian-backed Houthis.
The war in Syria is yet another theater in that regional power struggle. It is no accident that the Syrian insurgency is overwhelmingly Sunni in composition and receives strong backing from major Sunni powers, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Assad leads an opposing “coalition of religious minorities,” which includes his Alawite base (a Shiite offshoot) various Christian sects, and the Druze. But there is an added element of complexity. The Kurds form yet a third faction, seeking to create a self-governing (quasi-independent) region in northern and northeastern Syria inhabited by their ethnic brethren. In other words, Syrian Kurds are trying to emulate what Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed for many years in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Baghdad’s authority is little more than a legal fiction. That explains the clash between Assyrian Christians and Kurds. Both hate ISIS, but the former supports an intact Syria (presumably with Assad or someone else acceptable to the coalition in charge), the latter does not.
Such incidents underscore just how complex the Syrian struggle is and how vulnerable to manipulation well-meaning U.S. mediation efforts might become. Our news media need to do a far better job of conveying what is actually taking place in that part of the world, not what wannabe American nation builders wish were the case.
Related Tags
Venezuela’s Lying Statistics
Surprise! Venezuela, the world’s most miserable country (according to my misery index) has just released an annualized inflation estimate for the quarter that ended September 2015. This is late on two counts. First, it has been nine months since the last estimate was released. Second, September 2015 is not January 2016. So, the newly released inflation estimate of 141.5% is out of date.
I estimate that the current implied annual inflation rate in Venezuela is 392%. That’s almost three times higher than the latest official estimate.
Venezuela’s notoriously incompetent central bank is producing lying statistics – just like the Soviets used to fabricate. In the Soviet days, we approximated reality by developing lie coefficients. We would apply these coefficients to the official data in an attempt to reach reality. The formula is: (official data) X (lie coefficient) = reality estimate. At present, the lie coefficient for the Central Bank of Venezuela’s official inflation estimate is 3.0.
![Media Name: misery_index_2015_americas.png](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/misery_index_2015_americas.png?itok=hf0mh61V)
An Article V Convention To Amend the Constitution?
Some constitutional conservatives, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rob Natelson for the American Legislative Exchange Council, have been promoting the idea of getting two-thirds of the states to call for an Article V convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Florida senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently made headlines by endorsing the notion. But I fear that it’s not a sound one under present conditions, as I argue in a new piece this week (originally published at The Daily Beast, now reprinted at Cato). It begins:
In his quest to catch the Road Runner, the Coyote in the old Warner Brothers cartoons would always order supplies from the ACME Corporation, but they never performed as advertised. Either they didn’t work at all, or they blew up in his face.
Which brings us to the idea of a so-called Article V convention assembled for the purpose of proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution, an idea currently enjoying some vogue at both ends of the political spectrum.
Jacob Sullum at Reason offers a quick tour of some of the better and worse planks in Gov. Abbott’s “Texas Plan” (as distinct from the question of whether a convention is the best way of pursuing them). In using the phrase “Texas Plan,” Gov. Abbott recognizes that in a convention scenario where any and all ideas for amendments are on the table, other states would be countering with their own plans; one can readily imagine a “California Plan” prescribing limits on campaign speech and affirmative constitutional rights to health and education, a “New Jersey Plan” to narrow the Second Amendment and broaden the General Welfare clause, and so forth. Much more on the convention idea in this Congressional Research Service report from 2014 (post adapted and expanded from Overlawyered).
Cato has published often in the past on the difficulties with and inefficiencies of the constitutional amendment process including Tim Lynch’s 2011 call for amending the amendment process itself and Michael Rappaport’s Policy Analysis No. 691 in 2012 with proposals of similar intent. This past December’s Cato Unbound discussion led by Prof. Sanford Levinson included a response essay by Richard Albert describing the founding document as “constructively unamendable” at present, although as a consequence of current political conditions and “not [as] a permanent feature of the Constitution.” And to be fair I should note also Ilya Shapiro had a 2011 post in this space with a perspective (or at least a choice of emphasis) different from mine.
Yes, Ted Cruz Can Be President
I’m not known for my clairvoyance — it would be impossible to make a living predicting what the Supreme Court will do — but as the latest round of birtherism continues into successive news cycles, I do have an odd sense of “deja vu all over again.” Two and a half years ago, I looked into Ted Cruz’s presidential eligibility and rather easily came to the conclusion that, to paraphrase a recent campaign slogan, “yes, he can.” Here’s the legal analysis in a nutshell:
In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.
So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.
That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.
We all know that this wouldn’t even be a story if weren’t being pushed by the current Republican frontrunner (though Cruz is beating Trump in the latest Iowa polls). Nevertheless, here we are.
For more analysis and a comprehensive set of links regarding this debate, see Jonathan Adler’s excellent coverage at the Volokh Conspiracy.
The Buzz on Alex and Global Warming
Of course we’re referring to Hurricane Alex here, which blew up in far eastern Atlantic waters thought to be way too cold to spin up such a storm. Textbook meteorology says hurricanes, which feed off the heat of the ocean, won’t form over waters cooler than about 80°F. On the morning of January 14, Alex exploded over waters that were a chilly 68°.
Alex is (at least) the third hurricane observed in January, with others in 1938 and 1955. The latter one, Hurricane Alice2, was actually alive on New Year’s Day.
The generation of Alex was very complex. First, a garden-variety low pressure system formed over the Bahamas late last week and slowly drifted eastward. It was derived from the complicated, but well-understood processes associated with the jet stream and a cold front, and that certainly had nothing to do with global warming.
The further south cold fronts go into the tropical Atlantic, the more likely that they will just dissipate, and that’s what happened last week, too. Normally the associated low-pressure would also wash away. But after it initially formed near the Bahamas and drifted eastward, it was in a region where sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) are running about 3°F above the long-term average consistent with a warmer world. This may have been just enough to fuel the persistent remnant cluster of thunderstorms that meandered in the direction of Spain.
Over time, the National Hurricane Center named this collection “Alex” as a “subtropical” cyclone, which is what we call a tropical low pressure system that doesn’t have the characteristic warm core of a hurricane.
Related Tags
The Bank of England Fails Its Stress Test, Again
On December 1, 2015, the Bank of England released the results of its second round of annual stress tests, which aim to measure the capital adequacy of the UK banking system. This exercise is intended to function as a financial health check for the major UK banks, and purports to test their ability to withstand a severe adverse shock and still come out in good financial shape.
The stress tests were billed as severe. Here are some of the headlines:
“Bank of England stress tests to include feared global crash”
“Bank of England puts global recession at heart of doomsday scenario”
“Banks brace for new doomsday tests”
This all sounds pretty scary. Yet the stress tests appeared to produce a comforting result: despite one or two small problems, the UK banking system as a whole came out of the process rather well. As the next batch of headlines put it:
“UK banks pass stress tests as Britain’s ‘post-crisis period’ ends”
“Bank shares rise after Bank of England stress tests”
“Bank of England’s Carney says UK banks’ job almost done on capital”
At the press conference announcing the stress test results, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney struck an even more reassuring note:
The key point to take is that this [UK banking] system has built capital steadily since the crisis. It’s within sight of [its] resting point, of what the judgement of the FPC is, how much capital the system needs. And that resting point — we’re on a transition path to 2019, and we would really like to underscore the point that a lot has been done, this is a resilient system, you see it through the stress tests.[1] [italics added]
But is this really the case? Let’s consider the Bank’s headline stress test results for the seven financial institutions involved: Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, the Nationwide Building Society, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander UK and Standard Chartered.