Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born • Hacker News Board

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#251

Post by christiansakai » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

amf12 wrote: post #244

christiansakai wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an immigrant (a lucky one, to obtain GC lottery). My US born peers considered me successful (relative to them). They often talks to me about their situation and I just gave them advice of what worked for me. Based on my conversation with them. I think it made me more aware that I'm definitely not a regular person even compared to my fellow home country citizens. I am more restless, more ambitious, more condition…

> I am an immigrant (a lucky one, to obtain GC lottery). > Yes I can say there is definitely a selection bias I think this is an anecdote. You might certainly be ambitious, intelligent and overall successful. But I quite don't understand the selection bias specifically in the GC lottery category. You don't really need any any education, wealth, ambition to apply for and get through the GC lottery. The only thing you…

Among GC lottery. My life circumstances is generally pretty unusual from avg people. Broken home with multi generational multiple marriages and divorces, fights, debt, lawsuits and shady practices among family members. Survived riot and persecution that killed 1500 people (Jakarta riot May 1998, warning: gore visual). And other lucky and unlucky streaks. My friends who know my overall story told me that I am an anomaly, but they are still willing to seek my advice. Idk what else I can give them other than my anecdote.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#252

Post by leetcrew » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

twoheadedboy wrote: post #203

leetcrew wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a huge reason for our problematic education system is lack of competition for teaching jobs. If there's a job at a startup that's willing to pay someone for math at $100k (avg in mixed locations) - $300k (avg in silicon valley) how are we ever going to have excellent math teachers. The people competing for a 50k teaching job are not even qualified to have that 100-300k job. I don't think the two have much t…

I used to think this was true, until I got older and realized just how bad I am at writing, and how not everything is just math and science.

sure, but someone with a BA in english would do a fine job teaching writing intensive courses. outside of stem, people aren't facing the huge pay differential from industry anyway.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#253

Post by wutbrodo » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #110

rhacker wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. While you're covering multiple topics, I wanted to touch on the education specifically. I think a huge reason for our problematic education system is lack of competition for teaching jobs. If there's a job at a startup that's willing to pay someone for math at $100k (avg in mixed locations) - $300k (avg in silicon valley) how are we ever going to have excellent math teachers. The people competing for a 50k te…

I think you see a similar phenomenon across many aspects of contemporary American life. We've found inferior-yet-workable ways to route around the increasingly dire financial situation of the average family, often by lowering standards, paying with debt, or simply with outright theft. 30 years ago, Sheila may have driven her new car to college (both of which she's paying for with a summer job), picking up a few new c…

> Today, she'll drive her used car, financed for 5 years, to a college she's paying for with tens of thousands of dollars in loans, and she'll just pull up some YouTube videos or songs that she's pirated to pass the time.

Education aside, this is an odd comparison. She can have access to a big chunk of all the songs ever recorded, on-demand and for FREE (ad-supported Spotify). Comparing this unfavorably to "a few cassette tapes" is beyond absurd. Similarly, the used car she buys now is leagues better than the one she'd buy back then; not just for her, but environmentally and in terms of safety.

The cost of education is a real shift. But if these are the best examples you can think of to extend that to describing the average family as having "declining standards", you're proving the exact opposite point.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#254

Post by wutbrodo » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #124

rayiner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? I find the quote very compelling as someone from a family of immigrants. My cousins left Bangladesh as children. Their parents left professional jobs to take service jobs (“hard times”). But the kids worked hard, majored in engineering, science, business, medicine, and accounting (“strong men and women”), and secured professional jobs for themselves (“good times”). I see the next generation being bombarded with i…

Quotations, like any other meme, do not exist in a vacuum, and are sometimes taken up by ideologies to justify different agendas. It's fine to like a quote for the value it resonates with oneself, but you can't ignore that it also exists within a larger culture- http://tiny.cc/pinojz

Yes, you can. Those who get hysterical about which other people might believe the same things are actively ceding control of that message to them (the "Hitler was a vegetarian!!" problem)

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#255

Post by AstralStorm » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #235

munk-a wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how relevant that is. Some people will always get divorced and while there are ways to address that (and, multi-generational houses that lower the stress of child rearing may reduce it) I think we can treat them as independent and still see benefits in multi-generational household. Instead of having either one parent or the other and placing the full responsibility on that single person, a multi-generati…

I don't understand what divorce has to do with my comment? I was talking about people who don't get along with their own parents and/or with their spouse's parents. Neither has any necessary connection to the topic of divorce. Plenty of people remain married despite the fact that they have a poor relationship with their own parents or with their spouse's parents.

Nobody is forced to stay in the multigenerational home unless they cannot afford something else.

But you cannot choose to stay if there's no space... Modern houses are often too small to fit a multigenerational family.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#256

Post by wutbrodo » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

yourapostasy wrote: post #71

aluminussoma wrote: post #41

The education entrepreneur Adam Robinson did his own survey a few decades ago. He found that while children of two immigrants did better on standardized tests than children of two non-immigrant parents, the "best" combination came from having an immigrant father and a non-immigrant mother. ("Best" when focusing solely on standardized test results)

That's curiously specific, as in the gender role and immigrant standing are tied together, but apparently that isn't the case. Googling around found the following editorialization of the source material [1] that gave a TL;DR faster than I can type it up: Study of NYC school data and using custom questionnaires of teens across the world testing into Stuyvesant HS Cutting to the conclusion: Groups that overcame socioec…

> One parent to impart work ethic, one parent to impart language.

This at least passes the sniff test. I know plenty of 1.5 or 2nd Gen Indian Americans who seamlessly assimilate because they and/or their parents speak English, in an accent coded as classy (ie British-sounding)[1]. This is even true to some degree in the workplace: I work with some brilliant first gen Chinese immigrants, but there's a practical ceiling on their ability to work at higher levels because of the increasing importance of communication as you rise,and the way their thick accents and lack of vocabulary interact with that. A hypothetical kid of theirs with the same level of talent would shoot up the ranks.

[1] Note that this doesnt cover all Indian accents, only most traditionally upper-class ones.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#257

Post by burnte » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

DiffEq wrote: post #187

burnte wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is, all immigrants are people who moved here from other nations. They may have different reasons, times, methods, causes, and there may be different subgroups, etc, but there certainly is a single group of immigrants just like there's a single group of Americans, sheep, and pizzas.

Surely you understood what I was saying but so we don't talk past one another: Yes there is a category of people called an immigrant that one can define. However when you look at groups or even individuals in that category there are certain differences, many times vast and very meaningful differences, between the things in each of those categories. So to treat the whole group the same would be foolhardy; thus the nee…

Yes, but if that superior work ethic is a trait more frequently expressed in immigrants than natives, then that's important, and that's the distinction being made here. They didn't look for the best immigrants for this study, this was a study of random immigrants. The entire point is to show how this group called "immigrants" is different, not it's subgroups. The selection criteria itself was immigrant vs non-immigrant. you're saying that's not valid because it should have been more narrow, but it wasn't invalid because they were explicitly looking at the group as a whole.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#258

Post by danans » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #240

kaitai wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History echoes and echoes and echoes. Redlining is still huge in its effects on generational wealth: housing is the single largest mechanism for wealth transfer in American families, and systematically and intentionally excluding black Americans has resulted in billions in dollars of vanished wealth. Go back in history and look at the Freedman's Bank: established during Reconstruction for freed slaves, it was placed…

> [...] So much money. And immigrant families, because they're coming here now, have not faced the same systematic impacts. I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying immigrant families are in a better financial situation than the discriminated-against blacks, because they weren't discriminated against in the same way? Many immigrant families bring very little with them and have to start from scratch.

> Many immigrant families bring very little with them and have to start from scratch.

However, what they usually bring is intact community and family support structures. Trust is one of the most valuable and scarce resources there is. It can even make up for a lack of money, because valuable services are often provided reciprocally to members of the community at low or no cost, and people tolerate sharing resources more easily with people they trust.

But if there's neither trust nor money, it's a much harder struggle.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#259

Post by namirez » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #196

namirez wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country Categorically false! Most of immigration to the US is family based; actually about two-third of them. source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/17/key-facts-a...

I find it strange that you're able to define it as categorically false given that the parent didn't specify what U.S immigration selection bias was being compared against.

> what U.S immigration selection bias was being compared against

If it's not clear to you, take a look at immigration policies of Canada and Australia. In the US, only 12% of visas are employment based which are very strict in terms of skills.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#260

Post by Tyr42 » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #13

blakesterz wrote: post #4

This reminds of a line from 30 Rock by Jack Donaghy: "Diversity is the engine that drives this country. We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes." Feels like one of those things that we all thought was true.

John Adams said something similar, though he meant it in the opposite way: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestr…

I have a rebuttal on the quote, as it applies to the Romans in particular. Where the author goes into how people in "hard times" still get stomped by the Romans more often than not.

And people use that myth as a way to make political arguments about decadence. I'm not doing it justice, just take a look.

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...