01 July 2012

Tiger Immigrants ~ America's Newest Additions

Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead writes in the WSJournal about America's New Tiger Immigrants...
"The conventional picture is of an unstoppable wave of unskilled, mostly Spanish-speaking workers -- many illegal [...] But this picture is both out of date and factually wrong. [...] America needs and benefits from both kinds of immigration. Like all waves, the Asian influx mixes the skilled and the unskilled. But overall it resembles earlier waves of educated and already urbanized immigrants. [...] most of them have in spades what Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic. Arguably, in America's long history of immigration, the group that the new immigrants resemble most is the original cohort of Puritans who settled New England. [...] More Asian-Americans (69%) than other Americans (58%) believe that you will get ahead with hard work. Also, 93% say that their ethnic group is "hardworking." There also seems to be some truth in the "Tiger Mom" syndrome described by author Amy Chua. While 39% of Asian-Americans say their group puts "too much" pressure on kids to succeed in school, 60% of Asian-Americans think that other Americans don't push their kids hard enough. Other family values are strong as well. [...] The world's best, the world's hardest-working and the world's most ambitious are still coming our way."
And that's what has and continues to make America great.

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