From Reason:

By Ronald Bailey

... Hispanic educational achievements and incomes do lag behind those of white Americans. And certainly there is a substantial genetic component to intelligence; genes are, after all, the recipes that build bodies and brains in response to environmental cues. Yet as Unz’s analysis of Lynn and Vanhanen’s data shows, the average IQ of a population can change in a generation whereas its genetic makeup cannot. So what else might account for relatively lower Hispanic achievement so far in the U.S.?



The University of Texas economist Stephen Trejo suggests a number of possibilities. For example, Mexican immigration has lasted longer than immigration from any other country, promoting the growth and stability of culturally comfortable ethnic enclaves and slowing the process of assimilation.



Sounds plausible to me. And what are the implications of that for immigration policy?

Trejo also proposes that earlier generations of unskilled immigrants faced a far less steep learning curve for moving up in a modern economy. In his 2005 book Italians Then, Mexicans Now, the Bard College sociologist Joel Perlman bolsters this point: “The crucial difference between the immigrant experience a hundred years ago and today is that relatively well-paid jobs were plentiful for workers with little education a hundred years ago, while today's immigrants arrive in an increasingly unequal America.”



Sounds plausible to me. And what are the implications of that for immigration policy?

Trejo also wonders if some fairly significant proportion of Mexican-Americans have simply already melded into the white population and so are not counted in the sorts of IQ, income, and education statistics cited by Richwine and other researchers.



I'm sure that was true to some extent several generations ago, but it has been in the self-interest of marginally Hispanic individuals to assert their Hispanic identity for over 40 years. For example, way back in 1975 my friend with the Spanish surname whose father dropped out of Yale on December 8, 1941 to enlist and whose mother is the closest living version of Katharine Hepburn was besieged by colleges recruiting the Spanish-surnamed to bestow affirmative action upon.

Perlman concludes that “Mexican economic assimilation may take more time—four or five generations rather than three or four.”



In the meantime, pay no attention whatsoever to the state of New Mexico unto the Seventh Generation of Hispanic-Americans.



Comrades! The Great Leaders' Five Generation Plan has not failed. It cannot fail! The Five Generation Plan just hasn't been tried long enough. It just needs another Five Generations (and maybe another Five Generations after that — when it's time for your distant descendants, if any, to know how many Five Generations it will take, they will be informed through the proper channels, probably by then via a sub-quarkian cognitive implant).



But, even under this best case scenario, isn't "four or five generations" a mite long to wait to break even? What's the national ROI on this four or five generation project, anyway?



In short, we are being told to Bet the Country on hopes and fumes.

Possibly so. But ultimately, modern Hispanic immigrants seem to be no stupider than the immigrant ancestors of other Americans.



Robert Oppenheimer's immigrant father? Seriously?



How much of the media momentum to crush Jason Richwine isn't just a Pavlovian response to the felt need for a triple bankshot strategy to prevent peasants with pitchforks from finally noticing that one Ellis Island immigrant group really is higher in IQ on average?



Perhaps the single most beneficial contribution to improving the quality of intellectual discourse in the United States would be if the gentiles of America could somehow convince Jewish-Americans that the gentiles already know that Jews are smarter than they are on average; moreover, that this knowledge — rather than making the gentiles want to come after the Jews with their torches and crude farm implements — inclines the gentiles of America to like Jewish-Americans for being smart and witty and good with money.