The right kind of immigrants

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.The other day, Bo French, a candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, a powerful regulatory body that oversees the oil and gas industry, posted a picture of a group of around 10 undergraduates who looked to be Indian American cheering the Texas Longhorns’ 20-point fourth-quarter comeback against top-ranked Ohio State.“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” he wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” French followed up to say that he “weeps for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans.”Many on the New Right flocked to social media to defend French.First off, the University of Texas at Austin’s undergrad student body is made up of over 80% Texas residents, significantly higher than the average for most state schools nationally. Roughly 10% of students are from outside the state. Foreign students comprise around 4% of the latest freshman class, which is around the national average.Of course, there’s no way French could determine whether the cheering students were Texans or foreigners based on how they “looked.” What he meant by “Texan” was “white.” Everything else is a distraction.Non-Hispanic white residents make up approximately 38% of the population of Texas. The non-Hispanic white population of the University of Texas is roughly 32%. The demographic change in the state is driven by Mexican immigration.But it’s true that the Indian-origin population of the University of Texas is “overrepresented.” Texas has an automatic admission to the top 5% of a high school graduating class, and Indian Americans excel at academics. We can have a meritocratic country that rewards the brightest and hardest working, or we can have a country where bean-counters reward people according to skin color. It seems increasingly clear that a growing contingent on the New Right, like the identitarians of the Left, crave their own affirmative action. Yes, it’s every nation’s prerogative to set immigration policy limits, whether it’s how many people or from where. Concerns over importing too many immigrants from the same place at the same time are completely legitimate, especially since we’ve not only stopped expecting newcomers to assimilate and embrace the constitutional order but stopped expecting it of our own children.But an argument for selective immigration is a lot different than deriding a bunch of students over immutable differences like the color of their skin or their ethnicity.With all the hysteria, you might be surprised to learn that Americans of Indian descent make up somewhere around 1.5% of the entire U.S. population and around 1.8% of the Texas population. The notion that Indians are overrunning the nation is preposterous. The idea that they are not assimilating isn’t true.Of Indian immigrants 5 and older, 79% are already proficient in English. Anyone who’s ever watched a spelling bee understands that Indian American children probably have a pretty good aptitude for language. Around 77% of Indian Americans ages 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree. Around 45% have advanced degrees.Educational attainment doesn’t always translate into material success. But Indian Americans thrive in capitalism. High numbers become doctors and engineers. The CEOs of Google, Microsoft, IBM, and FedEx are Indian Americans right now. The median annual income among Indian-headed households was $151,200 in 2023, the highest of any ethnic group in the country. The crime rate among Indian Americans is virtually imperceptible.Sounds like the kind of immigrants we want.If newcomers, for instance, congregate in welfare enclaves and import Third World ideas, that’s a problem. But all that success was attained without government help. Around 6% of Americans of Indian descent live below the poverty line. To put that in perspective, depending on how you measure it, immigrants from places such as Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria have welfare dependency rates from 40%-70%.Much anti-Indian rhetoric I see from postliberal theocratic types maintains that Hinduism is incompatible with American life. There is no Hindu terrorism, and I’ve yet to run across any Indian American who champions instituting a caste system in the United States.If we’re going to continue to have some level of immigration, and it seems highly likely that we will — a near-record high 73% of voters in a rolling Gallup poll agreed with the statement that immigration was a “good thing” — we should be prioritizing and celebrating those who are best suited to acclimate to American culture and rejecting those who are not.THE GOP’S TENT IS TOO BIG IF BO FRENCH FITS UNDER ITBut these nimrods running around referring to themselves as “heritage” Americans because their ancestors came to this country early on engage in a kind of stolen valor. The U.S. isn’t an aristocracy. You can be proud of your family history, but you don’t have a higher tier of citizenship because of your skin color or the accomplishments of your great-grandparents. Anyone who got here and was naturalized or born here is an American. They are judged by their actions. That includes my wife, whose maternal side reaches back to before the revolution, and mine, which barely reaches back to the Nixon administration.All people have cultural, ideological, and theocratic baggage. They have their own principles, habits, rituals, outlooks, temperaments, hierarchies of morality, and societal arrangements that form their worldview. Immigration only works if newcomers shed that culture and embrace our civic identity. Not sure there are more obvious ways to do that than wearing a cowboy hat and erupting in rapture with 100,000 of your neighbors to cheer a team nicknamed the Longhorns, who play one of the country’s quintessential games.