Posted on 11/10/2012 12:13:30 AM PST by JerseyanExile
Apart from some fatuous self-congratulation from Asian-American liberals, there has been very little discussion of the 73-26 Asian-American margin of support for President Obama in last Tuesday’s election. That’s slightly smaller than the highest estimate of Latino support for Obama, at 75-23. Asian-Americans are a small minority now but their numbers are growing rapidly.
Most conservatives consider Asian-Americans poster-children for the American model of self-motivated success. The facts bear this out. The Pew Research Center reported last July:
Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place more value than other Americans do on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success…
Asians recently passed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States. The educational credentials of these recent arrivals are striking. More than six-in-ten (61%) adults ages 25 to 64 who have come from Asia in recent years have at least a bachelor’s degree. This is double the share among recent non-Asian arrivals, and almost surely makes the recent Asian arrivals the most highly educated cohort of immigrants in U.S. history.
Compared with the educational attainment of the population in their country of origin, recent Asian immigrants also stand out as a select group. For example, about 27% of adults ages 25 to 64 in South Korea and 25% in Japan have a bachelor’s degree or more.2In contrast, nearly 70% of comparably aged recent immigrants from these two countries have at least a bachelor’s degree.
Asian-American kids occupy nearly three-quarters of the places at New York City’s exam-based high schools (including Bronx Science and Stuyvesant) although they comprise less than 12% of the student population. The main threat to the upward striving of working-class immigrant kids who study hard to get into top schools is the NAACP. The New York Times reported Oct. 15:
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other groups filed a racial bias complaint with the United States Education Department. They charge that reliance on a single test for determining who gets into Bronx Science and seven other specialized high schools discriminates against young African-Americans and Latinos. Other factors, like student grades, need to be considered as well, they say.
Asians “also stand out for their strong emphasis on family,” the Pew study reported. “More than half (54%) say that having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in life; just 34% of all American adults agree. Two-thirds of Asian-American adults (67%) say that being a good parent is one of the most important things in life; just 50% of all adults agree.”
If the Republican Party can’t win the support of the immigrant group with the strongest family values and the most success in achieving the American dream, what can it say to the Hispanics, the immigrant group with the least success in achieving the American dream?
I do not mean to be glib. The issue requires study. But I will venture a guess: Asian-Americans, like any other immigrant group, come here with the hope of bringing family members with them. Tough enforcement of immigration laws makes life as hard for them as it does for any other immigrant group, and frustrates their hope of reuniting families in America. The result of our present immigration laws is that we fail to keep out the illegals we don’t want, and make it harder to absorb the skilled and energetic immigrants we do want. There will be endless discussion during the next few months of Romney’s mistake in moving to the right of Rick Perry on immigration during the Republican primaries, and I will leave the detailed parsing to the professionals. I hope the professionals talk to Asian-Americans first.
America is unlikely to tolerate ethnic quotas (Asians in, Hispanics out). There are plenty of bright Hispanics as well (with 25% unemployment in Spain, German firms are recruiting Spanish engineers to fill the 30,000 job openings for engineers in Germany). But there is a sensible way to encourage the kind of immigration that boosts economic growth and discourage the kind of immigration that impedes economic growth.
The distinguished Canadian economist Prof. Reuven Brenner of McGill University wrote two years ago in First Things magazine:
Without innovation, America faces prolonged stagnation. The outlook seems bleak. Between 1988 and 1998, manufacturing productive growth rose from less than 2 percent to more than 5 percent per annum. By 2008, it had fallen back to the 2 percent range as the great wave of innovation abated. This outcome is not inevitable, however. America has been obtaining a disproportionate flow of skilled innovators by attracting these “vital few” to its shores. Without their contribution, America may neither sustain the economic growth required to absorb the penurious many nor raise their standards of living. The impact of the vital few does trickle down…
The problem lies in policy. American sentiment toward immigrants has swung from boomtown hospitality to churlish xenophobia in the course of the present recession…
It is hard to blame opponents of immigration. Earlier this year, the Pew Hispanic Center reported that California’s estimated 2.7 million illegal residents—7 percent of the state’s population—add $4 billion to $6 billion in costs. Cutting off state payments for the American-born children of immigrants supposedly would save about $640 million a year. By similar estimates, Arizona’s illegal immigrant population is costing the state’s taxpayers about $1.3 billion per year. Whether these estimates are exact or only in the ballpark, it is clear that poor migrants drain state finances under the present institutional and regulatory landscape, and the drain is substantial.
…The least the United States can do is try, explicitly, to attract the vital few to its shores and, at the same time, speed up the domestic production of talent.
…Congress should first increase visas for skilled immigrants—those who would invest in their own entrepreneurial ventures in the United States in particular. Congress also should facilitate a temporary worker program, but without instantaneously bestowing on those workers the many monetary government benefits for which America’s already taxpaying citizens are eligible. For immigrants in the United States who do not have proper documentation but who have built up equity in this country, opportunities should be provided to obtain legalization if they can demonstrate good moral character. Such an “earned” legalization should be achievable and verifiable in an accountable manner.
As Prof. Brenner observes, immigrants have made a disproportionate contribution to American economic growth in recent years. “At the height of the last tech boom in 1999, Chinese and Indian engineers were at the helm of 24 percent of the technology companies started in Silicon Valley,” he writes, adding:
In 25.3 percent of [high-tech and engineering] companies, at least one key founder was foreign-born.
• Of all immigrant-founded companies, 26 percent had Indian founders; 7 percent had founders of British and Chinese origin; 6 percent had founders from Taiwan; Japanese and German founders each led 5 percent; 4 percent had founders from Israel; 3 percent had founders from Canada; and 2.5 percent had founders from Iran.
• In Massachusetts the single largest founding group was Israelis, at 17 percent.
• Indian entrepreneurs dominated in New Jersey, leading 47 percent of all immigrant-founded start-ups.
• Immigrants also represented 24.2 percent of international patent applications filed from the United States in 2006. Chinese filed the largest number of patents, followed by Indians, Canadians, and British.
If we Republicans can’t persuade our most successful, entrepreneurial, family-oriented citizens to support us, we won’t be in business much longer.
What about not pandering to any pressure groups?
The term “Asian” describes people from vastly different backgrounds. I think that each needs to be considered uniquely.
There must be close to a billion people world-wide who want to emigrate to the U.S.A. We cannot take them all, period.
As to why Asians, as a group, tend to vote for the Democratic Party, I believe it has to do with where they settle within the U.S.
I was shocked to learn that this voting block votes liberal, because as a whole, they are very hard working individuals. It doesn’t make sense unless it is where they live and settle.
I went to a Young Republican meeting once, taken by a guy that I had helped become a minor player locally, (he could speak in public, and I used to know a lot about politics and talking points and current events and such), this was during an important, earth-shaking period, where we were all in the trenches (1995/1996? or so?), anyway, every guy there of the 30 or so (intimate conference table), were white and male, the only non-white was columnist Joseph Perkins who was to speak to us.
I was stunned, amazed. I asked the guys where their wives and girlfriends were, and they said it was a male group only, it was insane at that time of both republican ascendancy, yet of losing ground demographically,
I asked them if they had black and Hispanic buddies at work, if so, then where the hell are they? (I used to be passionate about government and politics) and they mumbled and seemed a little confused, they were shallow, protected, idiots.
Me and Perkins ended up afterwards basically shaking our heads at how maddeningly bloodless and rigid (clueless) the men there were, although they were all relativity young.
I’ve never been a republican, and I can tell you that some of the cliches apply to them, many of them live in little worlds of limited contact with the wider America, and Romney was the ultimate version of that, he was almost straight from that Jason Robards underworld of “A Boy and His Dog”.
‘Asian-Americans’ include immigrants from India
and muslim countries. We used to say ‘Oriental’
to indicate Japanese and Chinese.
To be PC-compliant, and to pull wool
over American eyes, we now include the above,
along with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.
I don’t know if we can break it out further than that.
Of COURSE muslims voted for Barry.
I can only give you anecdotal information, but will do so anyway. ;o)
When I moved to Oregon 20 years ago, the predominate minority was Asian. In the last 10 years, or so, they’ve been totally blown away, as far as minorities go, by the, mostly, illegal population.
I don’t know the numbers, but do know that Hispanics are socially conservative. But, they love the nanny giveaway state muy mucho. They look at the government as a source of wealth, and do what they can to score, on that point.
They love Obamacare, food stamps, welfare...you name it.
IOW, they absolutely are NOT a natural constituency for the right.
Asians...I just don’t get why they would vote for Obama. Most of them are highly motivated, and skilled workers. They don’t need, or want, handouts.
I just don’t understand their line of reasoning, especially since they aren’t treated well by minority standards.
“That is to say, assuming that they did assimilate well into the local population, the result would be their being considerably to the left of the general American populace irregardless of other factors.”
That was a very good, and insightful, sentence.
Amen to that!
my observations as an asian on asians.
an indoctrination that equates education with job creation. a belief that failure is catastrophic, therefore you work to avoid failure. (thus the asian work ethic is thus very different from our ethic which is to produce value or wealth). a feeling of resentment and entitlement when they find out that knowledge is not wealth.
thus wealth == knowledge to many asians. success is to get payed for displaying your acquired knowledge. but we conservatives know that knowledge is not wealth, (wealth is created by knowledge applied to fill a market need.
IMO, these tendencies and attitudes create a dependency and love of authority (licensing boards, regs, etc that limit lay competition and create value for knowledge).
I know many of these people. Many do not see themselves as permanent residents of the United States. Their parents (and in many cases children and spouses) are in the mother country. The money they make each week they keep just enough to survive another week and the rest is wired back home to support the family and into savings. Once the work dries up here they are gone.
Of course there are some with children who came not really planning on staying but entitlements are such that they really don't want to go back now. These people are going to work and try to make money but also try to get as many entitlements from the government that they can.
Accepting these people HURTS the Mexicans much more than helps. The Mexican government's economic plan is basically "go to the US, work and make money and send it home". That's the economic plan they have created for their people. The easy way out. Who suffers? The Mexicans who stayed home. The Mexican children who are without one and sometimes both parents (because the parents are in the US working. Then you have the illegals themselves. Being paid pennies that the American gets paid a lot more for. LEGALIZED SLAVERY. That's what it is. A form of slavery.
We cannot be part of Mexico's economic recovery plan. It's unfair to the Mexican people and unfair to the American people.
There's another group it's unfair to. The would be immigrants in Vietnam, Venezuela and many other nations who stand in line at the US Embassy in their own country. Many of them have stood in line for several years. The bar has been raised on them BECAUSE of those illegals here.
I do not support illegal immigration because it's unfair to too many people. And I have not even touched on how it can drive down the wages in this country. And it has already and will continue to do so.
That's my rant for the night.
Side note: There's a movie out there called "Under The Same Moon". It's about a little Mexican boy who lives alone with his grandmother. Once a week he runs to the pay phone and stands and waits for his mother to call. She's in the US working. Although the message appears to cater to the amnesty/open borders crowd I watched it from another perspective and even though it was unintentional I could see a message that goes along with what many of us believe. FAMILY first. What good is money if you have to break a family up to make it.
I was shocked to learn that this voting block votes liberal, because as a whole, they are very hard working individuals. It doesn’t make sense unless it is where they live and settle.
********************************
Could it be that they vote liberal because they know that they are succeeding much more so than blacks and hispanics in acedemics, business, etc., and WANT to keep the others at the bottom of the pile (which is what liberal politics does)?
If you hate conservatives so much why don’t you leave FR. We don’t need your negative attitude.
Romney ran a “Johnny One Note Campaign”. Used a poison dart blow gun when he should have used a cannon loaded with grape shot because he had pleanty of stuff he could fill that cannon barrel with..
They failed to hammer away on what will happen when Obama gets returned; The Obama 2013/14 Tax Increases. The impact of Obama’s energy policies..(a socialist construct never branded as such) and a bread and butter issue which reaches every into every “demographics” pocketbook...The impact of Supreme Court (snip)
Point being as far as I’m concerned in politics demographics aint good politics but bringing up B&B issues
reaches every “demographic”.
Gosh, did you recognize yourself in that little anecdote?
Interesting. Spot on ...
I belong to the American white male minority, and we are getting shat upon daily.
“I’ve never been a republican, and I can tell you that some of the cliches apply to them, “
So thats why you were constantly attacking the Republican candidate.
The GOP hasn’t had any better luck with Jews, either—and they have by far the most similar demographic profile to Asians. Much in common with Unitarians, too, and there aren’t too many Republicans there either.
We’ve got to get over the idea that if people care about their families that the are automatic Republican votes—as if Democrats don’t care about theirs as well.
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