Faith in the unelected

I have a new essay out this morning on the power of unelected officials within the government. It grew out of my frustration that judges are invoking "non-partisan experts" in the bureaucracy to strike down White House policies. Here's a sample:

Take Trump’s executive order that disqualified some transgender people from military service. In halting the order (later reinstated by the Supreme Court), a federal judge declared that Trump’s justifications were “contradicted by the studies, conclusions and judgment of the military itself.” The judge inferred that Trump must therefore be motivated by illegal “animus” toward transgender people. 

Now, perhaps the military’s studies are rigorous and not motivated at all by political correctness. Perhaps Trump’s new policy is indeed unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the danger here is obvious: The military has effectively vetoed an order by the commander-in-chief. If the military brass is owed such deference, it is easy to see how it could head off interference from the civilian leadership simply by producing a study that confirms its own beliefs.

Read the whole thing at National Review.

The 28 counties where a majority of school-age children speak Spanish at home

It is no surprise to see California and Texas well represented on this list, but look at Kansas, Nebraska, and Washington. Concentrations of Spanish speakers can be found farther north than most people realize.

County, State	Total, ages 5-17		speak Spanish at home, 5-17:		% 5-17 who speak Spanish at home
Starr, Texas	14,649		13,693		93.5%
Maverick, Texas	12,963		11,341		87.5%
Webb, Texas	64,686		54,852		84.8%
Santa Cruz, Arizona	9,665		8,170		84.5%
Zapata, Texas	3,437		2,885		83.9%
Hidalgo, Texas	201,133		157,717		78.4%
Presidio, Texas	1,480		1,143		77.2%
Imperial, California	36,611		26,724		73.0%
Reagan, Texas	818		539		65.9%
Seward, Kansas	5,124		3,353		65.4%
Cameron, Texas	95,782		61,979		64.7%
Hudspeth, Texas	692		444		64.2%
Ford, Kansas	7,240		4,596		63.5%
Ochiltree, Texas	2,408		1,520		63.1%
Kenedy, Texas	124		77		62.1%
Adams, Washington	4,768		2,936		61.6%
El Paso, Texas	168,715		103,833		61.5%
Bailey, Texas	1,530		935		61.1%
Monterey, California	81,463		49,172		60.4%
Val Verde, Texas	9,995		5,978		59.8%
Yuma, Arizona	37,866		22,630		59.8%
Miami-Dade, Florida	397,099		235,932		59.4%
Jeff Davis, Texas	352		205		58.2%
Zavala, Texas	2,636		1,493		56.6%
Colfax, Nebraska	2,249		1,227		54.6%
Franklin, Washington	21,204		11,505		54.3%
Colusa, California	4,411		2,356		53.4%
Titus, Texas	7,007		3,655		52.2%

Source: American Community Survey, 5-year sample, 2013-2017

Just say no to the two-minutes hate

When the media claimed that white Catholic Trump-supporting boys mocked an elderly American Indian at a demonstration, several of my fellow conservatives participated in the two-minutes hate against the boys, fanning the flames of Outrage Culture with over-the-top condemnations.

After the story collapsed, apologies of the “I shouldn’t have rushed to judgment” variety were issued. One could fairly ask why anyone would ever rush to judgment after so many similar reports have crumbled upon further review. But there’s an even larger problem here -- it’s that too many conservatives felt the urge to weigh in at all. Even if the initial reporting had been accurate, it should have been filed away in the vast folder labeled “people being rude at a political protest” and dismissed without comment. By contrast, accusing Catholic kids of having metaphorically “spit on the cross” is about the worst possible response. Joining the pile-on legitimizes the media’s elevation of this inconsequential event and encourages more hysteria in the future.

One might argue that it is “principled” for us to condemn all instances of conservatives behaving badly, while it would be “partisan” or “tribal” to ignore them. No. The principled response to a two-minutes hate is to reject it. Ridicule the idea that any lessons can be drawn from a single instance of some person being rude to another person in a country of 328 million. Oppose all manifestations of Outrage Culture.

Obviously, the media focused on the MAGA-hatted white Catholic boys to bolster the narrative that all four groups – Trump supporters, whites, Christians, and males – are menaces to society. By that standard, however, virtually any political narrative finds support during demonstrations. Indeed, the boys were apparently being harassed by a group of black protesters shouting epithets. In response, should we demand an apology from the NAACP? Conclude that black nationalism is a dire threat? Write think pieces about how whites are oppressed?

I’m not engaging in whataboutism. I’m rejecting the idea that any of these incidents say anything about the broader political situation. They do not deserve our attention, let alone our outrage.

"The most conspicuous failure of high-immigration globalism"

Dear @realDonaldTrump: Public reporting states the killer in the terrorist attack was born in Strasbourg, France. So before you make any more despicable statements that use the deaths of innocent people for your own purposes, get your facts straight.#WednesdayWisdom https://t.co/izMIFUwhFU

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 12, 2018

Unfortunately, the Strasbourg attack makes an NR piece I wrote a year and a half ago relevant again:

Western-born Muslim terrorists are actually the most conspicuous failure of high-immigration globalism. 

For supporters of mass immigration on both sides of the Atlantic, the way to address Muslim terrorism is to forget the “Muslim” part and focus on the “terrorism” part. Carefully vet incoming immigrants to ensure they have no ties to terrorist groups, then let immersion in Western culture remove any latent sympathy for radicalism. Unfortunately, terrorism committed by Western-born Muslims discredits that approach. Such terrorists could never have been “vetted,” since they are not immigrants, and assimilation has obviously not worked for them. In fact, they are so disaffected, so alienated from Western culture, that they wish to kill their fellow citizens. 

The immigration scholar Peter Skerry has observed that “assimilation is not a simple linear progression, but one that moves back and forth across the generations.” As the West accepts more Muslim immigrants, how much risk will we face from a “de-assimilated” second generation? That is a question that many would prefer not to confront. It would require acknowledging that Muslim immigration per se has fostered a small but dangerous Islamic terrorist movement within the West itself. It would also require acknowledging that the world’s peoples are not interchangeable parts that can be scattered around the globe without long-term consequences. For that reason, Western-born Muslim terrorists are like a glitch in the Matrix — a dose of reality that immigration advocates cannot explain away. 

Read the whole thing.

The most amazing turnaround

U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and then began a slow, decades-long decline. Like most people, I assumed the decline would continue indefinitely. It seemed we had extracted most of the oil that was cost-effective to extract, and now other countries could produce oil more cheaply. In 2008, no one was expecting a sudden recovery. Well, let me re-phrase that: I wasn't expecting a recovery, and if energy industry experts were bullish at the time, their optimism didn't trickle down to the masses. Nevertheless, U.S. oil production not only increased after 2008 but reached record levels -- all in just ten years! This is an amazing accomplishment for the energy industry and one of the U.S. economy's great success stories.

Most people have heard about fracking, horizontal drilling, the North Dakota boom, and so on. But how many people are aware that the overall production increase has been this steep?

On the new public charge rule

As I discussed here last spring, the Trump Administration has proposed a new rule to enforce the statutory ban on admitting any alien who is "likely to become a public charge." The new definition of public charge will be "an alien who receives one or more public benefits." That replaces the old interpretation of a public charge as someone who "primarily" relies on certain cash handouts or long-term care. In my opinion, the new rule is clearly an improvement, but it doesn't go far enough. Here are the five key points from the formal comment I submitted:

1. Immigrant welfare use is high. 

2. The public charge law is rarely enforced. 

3. Any receipt of means-tested anti-poverty benefits by immigrants or their dependents should count toward the public charge determination. 

4. Immigrants without at least some college should bear a heavy burden in proving they will not become public charges. Having a job is not enough. 

5. Case-by-case discretionary power should be limited.

Please read the whole thing for the details. The comment period is open until December 10.

Also, please enjoy this video of me talking about the problem of immigrant welfare use.

Two new papers on immigrant assimilation

Today the Center for Immigration Studies published a new study from me on the grandchildren of low-skill immigrants. Do they close the socioeconomic gap? From the executive summary:

The intergenerational assimilation of low-skill immigrants is an important issue in the broader immigration debate. If the children and grandchildren of low-skill immigrants eventually rise to the same socioeconomic level as natives, then the poverty-related problems caused by low-skill immigration, though painful today, will dissipate over time. 

Past research on the assimilation of Americans who have ancestors from Mexico (the largest source of low-skill immigration to the United States) indicates that Mexican-Americans continue to lag behind in the third generation and beyond. However, reliance on survey respondents self-identifying as Mexican-American has made this research less than definitive, as not everyone with Mexican-born grandparents has retained a Mexican-American identity. 

To solve this "ethnic attrition" problem, researchers have turned to the 1997 panel of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97). Unique among government data sets, the NLSY-97 includes grandparent birth data that can objectively identify the Mexican-American third generation with no ethnic attrition. In replicating and extending a recent NBER working paper that uses the NLSY-97, this report affirms that although Mexican-Americans make progress over time, the third generation still has significantly lower education and earnings compared to fourth-plus generation white Americans.

Please read the whole thing.

I followed the same theme in a new article for Academic Questions. I note that the problem of ethnic disparities in university admissions -- including the messy attempts to correct them through  "affirmative action" -- is exacerbated by low-skill immigration. Because of the persistence of disparities across generations, low-skill immigration effectively creates new groups and adds to the size of older groups that require special preferences. From the introduction:

Racial preferences strike many people as wrong, but there is a certain level of discomfort with a demographically unrepresentative student body as well. Since we must have one or the other, schools have adopted a muddled, dishonest policy on race that leaves no one satisfied. 

The impasse is to some degree an inevitability born of our history, as the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow affects white-black relations to this day. The school admissions mess has been exacerbated, however, by our country’s more recent choice to accept large scale, low-skilled immigration. As with all immigration, the low-skilled variety comes with both costs and benefits to the United States. What is underappreciated, however, is the persistence of some of those costs across generations. When the children and grandchildren of low-skilled immigrants do not rise to the same socioeconomic level as natives, they add to the number of underrepresented groups. The newer groups lodge familiar requests for representation and generate familiar quandaries for elite schools. Put bluntly, affirmative action in college admissions is no longer just about black Americans, and low-skilled immigration is the main reason for it.

Read the whole thing at this link.