
Indian Americans: The New Model Minority - queensnake
http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americans-opinions-contributors_immigrants_minority.html
======
ajju
Here's a suggestion from an Indian American on immigration policy: Don't force
skilled immigrants (even those with graduate degrees from US universities) to
work at the same employer for 5-8 years just to get a permit to stay in the
country.

I have to stay with the same employer on an H-1B visa while my application for
a greencard is pending (currently, people who applied in 2001 with a bachelors
degree or 2004 with a masters degree are being considered).

 _Half_ of my immigrant classmates (Indian or not) from gradschool would have
started a startup if they didn't have to stay stuck with the same employers to
be in this country.

~~~
statictype
Why not start a startup in India? Internet access to people in India is still
on the way up and has not yet reached critical mass. You could launch a
business there targeting India-specific needs. The possible market there is
larger and not yet saturated.

FWIW, I'm kind of the opposite of you.

I'm an American citizen working in India.

~~~
jey
" _I'm an American citizen working in India._ "

Why? (I'm American but my parents are immigrants from India.)

~~~
statictype
_shrug_ , just because. I was born and brought up in America but my parents
wanted to moved back when I was 15. So I did my undergrad in India and just
continued living there. Didn't find any compelling reason to go back to
America after that. (Not that I don't like the place - I do. But I'm
comfortable living in India too)

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biohacker42
Again with the pseudo science IQ crap!

Here's a much better metric for _immigrant quality_ what ever that means. The
more expensive the trip is, which has very good correlation with distance, the
higher IQ the immigrants will have on average. Bonus points if the only way to
get here involves a plane.

No wonder Indian immigrants are doing so well in America. Considering they are
located on opposite end of the earth, and given the average income in in India
vs the price of plane tickets, it's fairly obvious you'd have to be pretty
extraordinary to even make to the US.

~~~
g__g
I live in India. Although it's not really hard for me to get a plane ticket to
America, your reasoning I think correctly sums up everything.

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ajju
As an Indian American, I appreciate the attention. I truly do. But comparing
an IQ score derived from the average score of immigrant Indian American kids
on an arbitrary _memory test_ (it was 112) to the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews
(110, claims the article) to show them in better light is scientifically wrong
in so many ways, (not to mention, an indicator of nothing) it made me want to
stop reading the article.

~~~
vizard
112 was quoted as IQ score for Indian-Americans.

~~~
ajju
"When statistical adjustments are used to convert the backward digit span
results to full-scale IQ scores, Indian Americans place at about 112"

I don't know how you can meaningfully relate a score on a "backward digit"
memory test to an exact IQ score. Nevertheless, I am editing my comment to
reflect that it's an IQ score derived from the test and not the score on the
test.

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dangoldin
The suggested action ("A new immigration policy that prioritizes skills over
family reunification could bring more successful immigrants to the U.S. By
emphasizing education, work experience and IQ in our immigration policy,
immigrant groups from other national backgrounds could join the list of model
minorities.") is similar to Australia's immigration policies which is based on
a point system.

They even have an immigration point calculator:
<http://www.workpermit.com/australia/point_calculator.htm>

~~~
aditya
As is Canada's:
[http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/tool/index.as...](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/tool/index.asp)

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tokenadult
Oh, yeesh, not yet more junk science on IQ. First of all, digit span is
exquisitely subject to training effects

[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD...](http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ762777&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ762777)

(this is just one citation among many for this often-replicated result) and
digit span is not related to important cognitive functions that sum up to
"rationality" as distinct from IQ.

[http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...](http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852)

[http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-
Psycholog...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-
Psychology/dp/030012385X)

But in general about articles in the popular press posted to Hacker News about
IQ, what I say is that the obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a
research result like that is the article by Peter Norvig, director of research
at Google, on how to interpret scientific research.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

Check each news story you read for how many of the important issues in
interpreting research are NOT discussed in the story.

------
sanj
_A new immigration policy that prioritizes skills over family reunification
could bring more successful immigrants to the U.S._

And they would earn as much money as they could, and then they would leave.
Because people like being with their families, especially parents, especially
when they kids.

------
tokenadult
The most successful hack of the founders of the United States was to found a
constitutional and economic system that could bring in people from different
countries all over the world, and have them all work hard to build up a new
nation. There must be some reason that the smartest people (however we define
smart behavior) in many other countries see more opportunity in the United
States than they see in the countries where they grew up. Read the Federalist
Papers to become a better political hacker.

------
bluishgreen
"A new immigration policy that prioritizes skills over family reunification
could bring more successful immigrants to the U.S."

So if I can code and spell, and my wife cannot I get stuck without a family?
How many of your wives can spell Guerdon or whatever.

------
known
Isn't it desirable to include Indians in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa> based on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India>

------
gclaramunt
At the end it could be read as just another lobby attempt. Using the same
statistics, we can say that the majority of H1B visa fraud is committed by
Indians, and 100% of the arrested for that kind of fraud are Indians too...
that proves anything?

------
chiffonade
This whole "model minority" concept is so incredibly degrading and haughty.
It's a bunch of white people thinking they are doing a group of people a favor
by applying a label to them.

Oh you should be so proud - you're not like how most other dark skinned people
are! So smart and able to succeed!

~~~
randomwalker
That's funny--as a member of the group under discussion, I didn't feel
particularly degraded. Nor, for that matter, did I feel proud; rather, having
always felt that the curious facts mentioned in the article deserved
scientific study, I was glad that this was getting some attention in the
mainstream press. Maybe this will prompt some research into the cultural
factors in my community and how they translate into the observed behavior. I
have anecdotal explanations, as does everyone else, for why my people prefer
certain professions, but that's not science, and it doesn't answer why the
effect is so strong, even in comparison to other Asian groups.

As the article says, "Most Americans know only one thing about Indians--they
are really good at spelling bees." I'd much rather be labeled than ignored :-)

~~~
neilk
Do you really think it's something about Indians, or just the large numbers of
candidates and the selection process?

In my experience Indians are a lot more willing to commit to long-term,
difficult projects at the urgings of elders. But they share that with other
Asian cultures. This also helps explain the spelling bee thing; Indian
families are used to the idea of rote education being very important, and even
participating in the education of their child that way. Really, almost anybody
can get that good at spelling, it's just that more European-American parents
would tend to see it as pointless.

The one thing I do find interesting is how the gender split works. Asian
minorities (in the American sense: China, Japan, SE Asia) seem to have very
different expectations of boys versus girls. But modern Indian families, from
the castes that are likely to produce US-bound immigrants, seem to encourage
their daughters to go for technology jobs. For me at least, almost 100% of the
female engineers I've worked with in the Valley were Indian-born.

And the other thing I've always found strange: the QA departments of many
companies in the Valley are dominated by Indian-born women.

~~~
chiffonade
> Asian cultures.

Oh my god dude. You mean all the people from Asia who came to the US for the
explicit reason to bust their ass and get rich.

Go to Asia, if you've never been (I'm guessing not). You're going to find
plenty of lazy people who aren't that smart.

~~~
neilk
Uh, I have? Also, I am half Indian, half mix-of-all-European-countries-
Canadian, so I know what North American families are like as well as Indian
immigrant families.

In Indian families, children obey and rely on their parents well into
adulthood. At pretty much all levels of society. I am a committed Western-
style individualist, so I actually think this is a very bad thing.

So you're right that not everyone is a careerist, and that immigrants are
self-selected for ambition. But, the thing I was drawing attention to was that
an Indian parent can and will suggest a long-term career like going to medical
school, and many Indian kids actually do it _just because their parents said
so_.

This is changing -- today, Indian kids assert their own choices more and more
-- but it is amazing to me that there are Indian bachelors I know in their
30s, even some living in North America, who still expect mummy and daddy to
find them a bride.

