White Other

I was filling out a registration form recently to access information on a U.K. government website, when I was asked to indicate my ethnic group. You know the old saying that England and the U.S. are two countries separated by a common language? It appears we're separated by more than just that. Check out the list...

Which ethnic group would you describe yourself as being in?

White British
White Irish
White Other

Black British
Black Caribbean
Black African
Other Black background

Asian British
Chinese
Indian
Pakistani
Bangladeshi
Other Asian background

White & Asian
White & Black African
White & Black Caribbean

Other mixed background
Other ethnic group

Prefer not to say

This list tells you a lot about the U.K. and the history of the British Empire, doesn't it? I'm guessing the 2010 U.S. Census will have different choices.

My Ambiguous Ethnicity

I was filling out an on-line questionnaire from a London arts center the other day. I haven't been to Britain for a few years, but I bought my concert ticket on-line, so they still had my contact info.

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When I got to the end of the questionnaire, they asked the usual demographic questions about age, race, and the like. But I was taken aback somewhat by the list of ethnicity choices. It says something interesting about the difference between Britain and the U.S.

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Here's the list:

Which ethnic group would you describe yourself as being in?

• White British
• White Irish
• White Other
• White & Black Caribbean
• White & Black African
• White & Asian
• Other mixed background
• Asian British
• Indian
• Pakistani
• Bangladeshi
• Other Asian background
• Black British
• Black Caribbean
• Black African
• Other Black background
• Chinese
• Other ethnic group
• Prefer not to say
  

For the first time ever when filling out a questionnaire, I didn't know what race I was. I finally settled on "White Other," which seemingly could leave me Hispanic, Icelandic, or Italian.

A Policy of National Self-Sabotage

(Click on the cartoon for a larger view.)

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One of the strongest things about the American system is that politicians listen to "the people." And one of the weakest things is, yes, that politicians listen to "the people." The first instance we know as democracy, and the second is called pandering. Statesmanship, I would argue, is the wisdom to know when to listen and when to lead - and the fortitude to follow through in the face of opposition.

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Where are the statesmen on the issue of American immigration? And why is it that Catholics and British newsmagazines seem to be the only ones saying anything sensible on the subject? The following opinion piece/analysis appeared in the Economist's April 12 edition. It's a bit long, but very informative. And I hope you find it persuasive, as well:

One of the most unjustly neglected films of the past few years is Mike Judge's “Idiocracy”. Mr Judge is the genius behind Beavis and Butt-Head, two of the most disgusting creatures on television, and Hank Hill, one of the wisest. In “Idiocracy” he turns his talents to futurology—and to the troubling question of the long-term impact of dysgenic breeding, junk food and grunge culture on America's collective IQ.

The premise is simple. Two typical citizens—the army's “most average” soldier and a street prostitute—find themselves transported 500 years into the future. They soon discover that they are towering geniuses compared with the knuckle-draggers who inhabit the America of 2505. The country's best university is run by Costco. People are named after brands such as Frito and Mountain Dew. Starbucks has become a chain of brothels. The president is a former porn star and wrestling champion.

One might imagine that America's politicians would do all that they could to prevent Mr Judge's dystopia from materialising. But when it comes to immigration they are doing exactly the opposite—trying their best to keep the world's best and brightest from darkening America's doors.

Consider the annual April Fool's joke played on applicants for H1B visas, which allow companies to sponsor highly-educated foreigners to work in America for three years or so. The powers-that-be have set the number of visas so low—at 85,000—that the annual allotment is taken up as soon as applications open on April 1st. America then deals with the mismatch between supply and demand in the worst possible way, allocating the visas by lottery. The result is that hundreds of thousands of highly qualified people—entrepreneurs who want to start companies, doctors who want to save lives, scientists who want to explore the frontiers of knowledge—are kept waiting on the spin of a roulette wheel and then, more often than not, denied the chance to work in the United States.

This is a policy of national self-sabotage. America has always thrived by attracting talent from the world. Some 70 or so of the 300 Americans who have won Nobel prizes since 1901 were immigrants. Great American companies such as Sun Microsystems, Intel and Google had immigrants among their founders. Immigrants continue to make an outsized contribution to the American economy. About a quarter of information technology (IT) firms in Silicon Valley were founded by Chinese and Indians. Some 40% of American PhDs in science and engineering go to immigrants. A similar proportion of all the patents filed in America are filed by foreigners.

These bright foreigners bring benefits to the whole of society. The foreigner-friendly IT sector has accounted for more than half of America's overall productivity growth since 1995. Foreigner-friendly universities and hospitals have been responsible for saving countless American cities from collapse. Bill Gates calculates, and respectable economists agree, that every foreigner who is given an H1B visa creates jobs for five regular Americans.

There was a time when ambitious foreigners had little choice but to put up with America's restrictive ways. Europe was sclerotic and India and China were poor and highly restrictive. But these days the rest of the world is opening up at precisely the time when America seems to be closing down. The booming economies of the developing world are sucking back talent that was once America's for the asking. About a third of immigrants who hold high-tech jobs in America are considering returning home. America's rivals are also rejigging their immigration systems to attract global talent.

Canada and Australia operate a widely emulated system that gives immigrants “points” for their educational qualifications. New Zealand allows some companies to hand out work visas along with job offers. Britain gives graduates of the world's top 50 business schools an automatic right to work in the country for a year. The European Union is contemplating introducing a system of “blue cards” that will give talented people a fast track to EU citizenship.

The United States is already paying a price for its failure to adjust to the new world. Talent-challenged technology companies are already being forced to export jobs abroad. Microsoft opened a software development centre in Canada in part because Canada's more liberal laws make it easier to recruit qualified people from around the world. This problem is only going to get worse if America's immigration restrictions are not lifted. The Labour Department projects that by 2014 there will be more than 2m job openings in science, technology and engineering, while the number of Americans graduating with degrees in those subjects is plummeting.

The United States is fortunate that it can solve its talent problem with the wave of a magic wand, by simply expanding the supply of visas to meet the demand. Raise the cap on H1B visas—or better still abolish it—and increase the supply of green cards, and the world's brightest will come flooding in. A country that is blessed with a dynamic economy and a world-beating higher-education system does not even have to go around wooing people, as other countries do.

Yet America suffers from one big problem: its political system is especially dysfunctional when it comes to immigration. A few brave souls are trying to lift the H1B visa cap. But most politicians are more interested in bellowing about building walls to keep illegal immigrants out than thinking seriously about the problem. And a few are even actively campaigning to reduce the number of H1B visas in order to keep American jobs for Americans. As Mr Judge might well wonder: how do you win the global talent wars when Congress is already in the hands of the idiocracy?

The Pope's Last Day (in the U.S., that is)

If I hadn't seen it on video, I would think this event apocryphal.

For me, the most remarkable part of the Pope's Sunday schedule was his sendoff at JFK airport by 4,000 of his closest friends. Dick Cheney gave a speech that I didn't think an officer of our government would be allowed to give - plus, Dick Cheney isn't exactly known for his piety. And I'm surprised there's been no backlash. Maybe the press and the critics were just too worn out by that point to tune in to what Cheney said.

Here's Cheney's speech in its entirety, with the most striking paragraphs highlighted (by me). If you'd like to see the video, click here, then fast forward to minute 38. The video is even better than the written text.

Remarks by the Vice President at the Farewell Ceremony for His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
John F. Kennedy International AirportNew York, New York
8:08 P.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Your Holiness, President and Senator Clinton [who weren’t actually there, after all], Your Eminences Cardinal Bertoni and Cardinal Egan, Your Excellency Bishop DiMarzio, clergy and religious, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen, good evening. It's a privilege to join all of you as our esteemed visitor, the Holy Father, concludes his visit to the United States. It has been a memorable week, and Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the history of our country in a very special way.

Some 60 million Americans belong to his fold, and all of America respects this messenger of peace and justice and freedom. (Applause.) From the nation's capital to this great city of New York, our citizens have received the Pope with reverence and with affection, with songs of joy and with prayers of thanksgiving.

Your Holiness, on your first apostolic visit to the United States, you've encountered a nation facing many challenges, but with more blessings than any of us could number. (Applause.) You have met a people of resonating faith who affirm that our nation was founded under God, who seek His purposes and bow to His will. (Applause.) You have seen a country where the torch of freedom, equality and tolerance will always be held high; a country where you, a herald of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, will always be welcome. (Applause.)

To our diverse country, you have brought a universal message of hope and salvation. You have spoken to Americans with eloquence and feeling, and for so many, these have been days of reflection and personal renewal. Whether in your presence or listening across great distances, millions have found in your words hope against despair, certainty amid confusion, and strength for journeys of their own.

Your Holiness, here in New York you have addressed the representatives of many nations, and celebrated the Eucharist before many thousands. And you have moved us, in particular, by your visit to Ground Zero. (Applause.) There, you prayed for eternal light and peace upon the innocent victims of September 11th, 2001, and you asked that the rest of us may live so that all who died on that morning may not have been lost in vain. That is our daily meditation as well, and it remains our daily prayer.

Your Holiness, nearly 57 years have passed since the day of your ordination as a priest in June 1951. You might have found it hard to imagine then that you would stand before all humanity as a teacher, a statesman, and the shepherd of more than a billion souls. That is what God has called you to do. (Applause.)

In these 57 years, your wisdom and your pastoral gifts have been extraordinary blessings to our world. In these six days, you've shared those blessings very directly for the people of the United States. Your presence has honored our country. Although you must leave us now, your words and the memory of this week will stay with us. For that, we are truly and humbly grateful. (Applause.)

And so with the greatest warmth and respect, we thank you, we bid you a safe return to Rome, and until we meet again we ask Your Holiness to remember in your prayers the United States of America. (Applause.)

Godless Georgia

Even though based on seven-year-old data, the above map is enlightening. Among other things, it tells me that the Bible Belt runs north and south through the middle of the country, not (as we commonly think) east and west through the southern/southeastern reaches.

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The state where I now live, Georgia, is not as religious as it's reputed to be, though my home state of Oregon lives up to its billing as the least-churched part of the country.

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All the Mormons make it pretty easy to figure out where Utah is. And notice that Southern California is more churchgoing than Northern - thanks to the Catholic Hispanics?

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I'd love to see similar maps done separately just for Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, and Evangelicals. (Atheists would be good, too, Hemant, but until you start your own "churches," you're too hard to count.) - Update: there are some additional maps available here.

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Anyone like to add any sage observations?

News You May Have Missed: Murder Rate Hits 90% in U.S.

I've been reading lately about abortion practices in India and China, where it's a well-known practice to abort baby girls (er, female fetuses), because parents are constrained by law or economics to have only one child, and boys are more valuable to the family. Girls are merely money pits. This practice is technically illegal, but it happens, it's no big secret, sonogram manufacturers knowingly provide the equipment for it, and nobody ever seems to be prosecuted for it.

India and China didn't invent eugenic abortion, however. The Nazis didn't either, but during their Reich it was public policy, not something done in secret, to eliminate imbeciles and cripples. The picture you see here, which I found on Wikipedia, is from that time period. It promotes a forced euthanasia program; clearly, the regime would have supported eugenic abortion, as well. Translated, the poster says, "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too." Why waste money on worthless persons? Eliminate them for the benefit of all.

Peter Singer at Princeton is (in)famous for advocating something similar, but I've always considered him to be a fringe idiot, not someone in the vanguard of public thought.

Maybe I was wrong.

In today's NY Times on-line, I read the following:

Sarah Itoh, a self-described “almost-eleven-and-a-half,” betrayed no trace of nervousness as she told a roomful of genetic counselors and obstetricians about herself one recent afternoon.

She likes to read, she said. Math used to be hard, but it is getting easier. She plays clarinet in her school band. She is a junior girl scout and an aunt, and she likes to organize, so her room is very clean. Last year, she won three medals in the Special Olympics.

I am so lucky I get to do so many things,” she concluded. “I just want you to know, even though I have Down syndrome, it is O.K.”

Sarah’s appearance at Henry Ford Hospital here is part of an unusual campaign being undertaken by parents of children with Down syndrome who worry about their future in the face of broader prenatal testing that could sharply reduce the number of those born with the genetic condition.

Until this year, only pregnant women 35 and older were routinely tested to see if their fetuses had the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. As a result many couples were given the diagnosis only at birth. But under a new recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, doctors have begun to offer a new, safer screening procedure to all pregnant women, regardless of age.

About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.

Would you have guessed 90%? I'm flabbergasted. . . Particularly because this statistic comes from the NY Times, which is not exactly known for its pro-life advocacy. Elsewhere in the article we read such tidbits as:

Genetic counselors, who often give test results to prospective parents, say they need to respect patients who may have already made up their minds to terminate their pregnancy. Suggesting that they read a flyer or spend a day with a family [to learn what Down syndrome children are really like], they say, can unnecessarily complicate what is for many a painful and time-pressured decision.

So once again, the value of a human life comes down to the degree upon which it impinges on my own. We wouldn't want to "complicate" a "time-pressured" decision, would we? Somebody might have to miss a concert or a party or a business trip if forced to read a flyer or learn something more about the life they're considering terminating. How intrusive.

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I don't have kids and probably never will. But you don't have to have kids to know that something about killing people to improve the gene pool and personal convenience is very, very wrong.

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I encourage you to read the entire NY Times article (you can register for free). There's actually a positive spin to what's happening, in the form of parents with Down Syndrome kids getting the word out that these are human beings worthy of love. I'm just sorry it's come to this.