From: USNAVYO3
Re: Joe Guzzardi's Column: Joe To Dubya—Use ICE Agents Against Illegal Alien Coddler Eliot Spitzer
The New York license issue holds a special resonance for me. Last month, I was denied renewal of my license because, although I have a social security number, I don't have a card.
I'm a military officer and I carry a military ID card which bears my Social Security number. My military ID also has my photo, a scan of my DNA (nope, not joking), and an embedded microchip.
While one does occasionally hear of an illegal alien in the military, as an officer I am required to be a citizen. I had to endure a three-year background check where each facet of my life was carefully examined.
When I reasonably pointed out to the DMV apparatchiks that I held one of the US's most secure forms of identification and that a Social Security card is one of the most easily- and often-forged documents in the world, I was politely but firmly invited to leave the building.
Maybe some good will come out of Gov. Spitzer's plan to reward illegal aliens with driver licenses.
Since these persecuted, hard-working undocumented workers (as Spitzer portrays them) will now have a document they can call their very own perhaps we can get back to calling them "illegal aliens."
When we selfish immigration realists protest Spitzer's scheme to give illegal aliens and terrorists driver licenses — literally carte blanche to go wherever they like in the country without challenge—we must remember that Spitzer is also ending discrimination against US military officers.
Presumably I will now, just like the illegal aliens, be able to obtain my license without a Social Security card.
I'm sure Spitzer wouldn't want to be guilty of failure to support the troops.
USNAVY03 is an executive for an investment adviser in New York and former active duty US Navy officer now in the Navy Reserve. Send him mail c/o [email protected]
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From: David Ellis
In 1993, I was a homebuilder in a small mid-western city when two men approached me looking for work.
They told me they left Los Angeles because illegal aliens took over the construction laborer's jobs by working for lower wages than they were willing to accept. The two workers explained how their livelihood had been literally stolen by aliens while the government stood by and watched.
Since there were few Mexicans and even fewer illegal aliens in the mid-west at the time, I told them they wouldn't have any problems hiring on.
By the time we left the mid-west in 2003 to live on Florida's Gulf Coast, we had so many Mexicans that Spanish was spoken everywhere. We had been invaded and it was disgusting.
Of course, we were told that the illegal aliens had come to town to take jobs Americans wouldn't do. The problem was they really wanted to take mine!
Send Ellis mail c/o [email protected]
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From: Stephen Bennett (e-mail him)
One component of all the various amnesty bills really sticks in my craw: The provision that amnestied aliens must be of "good moral character."
But they have all broken multiple laws and stolen social services neither intended nor paid for by them.
Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promises to revive as standalone legislation the DREAM Act, recently killed, to provide amnesty for child invaders who, in all probability, will grow up to become ethnic identity activists for more freebies for fellow aliens.
One more thing: with the amnesty granted them by the DREAM Act, first two people sponsored for citizenship by those children whose education was financed by American taxpayers will be their illegal alien madre and padre.
Bennett is a safety and environmental consultant specializing in power plants who recently committed himself to patriotic immigration reform
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From: Ben (e-mail him)
Re: A Reader In India Disputes Rushton On Intelligence
I refer to the letter from Indian reader Ganesh Thiyagesan that disputes Rushton's summary of evidence of the relatively low Indian IQ as outlined in his column Indians Aren't That Intelligent (On Average).
On the contrary, substantial evidence supports Rushton. IQ is known to highly correlate with international test results. Here I present two data points of the relatively poor academic achievement of Indians in India compared to international standards.
First, India's largest educational non governmental organization (NGO), Pratham, carried out a survey of learning achievement in 2005 and repeated the survey with a bigger sample of about 330,000 household in 2006. It visited 20 homes each in 30 randomly selected villages in each one of 549 Indian districts, and interacted with all children aged 6 to 16 years old in the sample homes.
The findings make grim reading. In 2006, nearly 47 percent of children who were in school and studying in grade 5 could not read the story text at grade 2 level of difficulty. In arithmetic, 55 percent of grade 5 and 25 percent of grade 8 children could not solve a simple division problem (3 digits divided by 1 digit). The data is presented here.
The above figure is self-explanatory, but let's highlight the findings. Look at the following groups of primary grade Indian students and their reading skills.
In other words, an average Indian student (defined as 50 percentile) is almost 3 years behind in reading by the second grade.
The question naturally arises as to whether India's abject poverty leads to such poor academic achievement. India is a very poor country. A recent report released by the National Commission for Enterprises in Unorganized Sector demonstrates that up to 77 percent of Indians, i.e. approximately 836 million people, subsist on less than US $0.50 a day.
India has a higher rate of malnutrition than children in Ethiopia. Therefore, will richer Indian children therefore fare dramatically better if they attend rich private schools?
Such a study has in fact been carried out and the results are available here.
Page 33 the 70-page report:
"Findings: The findings are, to say the least, quite worrying. Students from the 'top' schools of our metros are performing below average international levels. The performance of the class 4 students is significantly lower than the international average in each one of the 11 questions. More strikingly, students of a higher class (class 6) performed only marginally better than the international average for class 4 students."
Considering India's astounding 39% illiteracy rate, children who go to (1) top (2) private and (3) metro schools are often the elite. Yet their achievements are still "significantly lower" than the international average.
Second, some speculate that India may evolve towards a Brazilian model, where a highly intelligent and competent elite will lead, while the country as a whole will be dragged down by a large, amorphous, and anonymous mass of desperately poor and illiterate people.
There is a surrogate data point for this: the International Math Olympiad (IMO). The IMO is the World Championship Mathematics Competition for High School students and is held annually in a different country. The first IMO was held in 1959 in Romania, with 7 countries participating. It has gradually expanded to over 90 countries from 5 continents.
Ranking is population size dependent (i.e. larger countries should have proportionately larger numbers of very bright and intelligent high school students and thus should score higher in rank). It is therefore instructive to compare India to China.
Here's the summary of the results of the last 20 years, from 1987 - 2007, when data is available. Note that the equal sign " = " means draw with another country or countries.
India's Ranking:
|
India |
|
|
|
|
|
25 |
17 |
10 |
21 |
15= |
14 |
14 |
15 |
7 |
18 |
14 |
7 |
9 |
15 |
14 |
36 |
35 |
25 |
China's Ranking:
|
China |
|
|
|
8 |
2= |
1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
6 |
1 |
|
1= |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Even allowing for the speculation that there is a wider standard deviation of Indian IQ, poor China still trounces poor India, year after year, at the very top level.
And furthermore China, while having a higher GDP per capita (PPP adjusted) compared to India, is also a poor country. Lynn in 2006 noted that poor China has an IQ that is not incomparable to that of its much richer East Asian neighbors: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan.
And yet India's IQ is, as all evidence demonstrates, significantly lower. Of note, this stark IQ differential is by no means limited to India alone. There is an over 20-point IQ gap separating the four South Asian country cluster (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) and the four North East Asian country cluster (Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan).
As Rushton notes, IQ's utility is in prognosis and forecasting, and it is best viewed as a prospective and prognostic variable.
To the extent that IQ predicts national GDP and wealth, it is not surprising that Shankar Acharya, Honorary Professor at Icrier and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, famously quipped: "As an economy, we are simply not in China's league."
Ben describes himself as a former modern liberal turned "evolutionary conservative". He is of Northeast Asian descent and is a professional who is currently residing and working in Toronto, Canada.
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From: Darren Simmons
Re: A Reader In India Disputes Rushton On Intelligence
Perhaps readers noticed, but in case they did not—most of those great Hindu success stories the Indian reader extolled occurred in the West or colonies thereof.
Simmons writes that his Christmas wish list includes his hope that "political correctness falls by the wayside so intellectual life can flourish once more."
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