Richard Lynn writes in his book Eugenics:
The final strategy for the promotion of positive eugenics would consist of the acceptance of good-quality immigrants. Historically, the leading instance where immigration has had a positive impact has been the admission into the United States and Britain of Jewish refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe, principally over the years 1890–1914, and from Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Several studies have shown that these Ashkenazi Jews have mean IQs of around 115 (Herrnstein and Murray, 1944; MacDonald, 1994). They have high educational and occupational achievements consistent with their high levels of intelligence. For instance, it has been shown by Weyl (1989) that Jews in the United States are approximately five times overrepresented among the professional and intellectual elite of U.S. scientists, physicians, lawyers, writers, musicians, and businesspeople, than would be expected from their numbers in the population. At a very high level of achievement, it has been shown by H. Zuckerman (1977) that Jews, who comprise approximately 3 percent of the U.S. population, contribute 27 percent of the Nobel prizewinners. There is no doubt that Jews have made an immense contribution to the scientific, cultural, and military strength of the United States.
The contribution of Jewish immigrants to the United States is strikingly exemplified by the development of the atom bomb over the period 1939–45. The principal physicists responsible for building the atom bomb in the Manhattan Project were Albert Einstein (whose letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 was responsible for the president instigating the project), Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and Klaus Fuchs, all of whom were Jewish immigrants from Central Europe; and Julius Oppenheimer, whose family were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Paradoxically, if Hitler had pursued a eugenic policy of building good relations with the Jews, the first four of these and many other gifted Jews would have remained in Europe, and Hitler could have recruited them to work on the development of a German atom bomb. When this had been built, it would have enabled him to coerce the rest of the world into submission and achieve his ambition for Germany to secure world domination. The development of the atom bomb is an instructive example of the eugenic principle that nations that possess highly intelligent manpower and apply this to the development of advanced weapons are able to defeat nations with fewer resources.
Another group of immigrants who have had a positive eugenic impact in the United States are the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans. Their average intelligence level is around 105 (Lynn, 1997); and their high educational and occupational achievements, particularly in science and technology, were documented by Flynn (1991), who also argued that they have personality qualities conducive to high achievement. Among the U.S. professional and scientific elite, they are about five times overrepresented (Weyl, 1989), and they too have made significant contribitions to U.S. economic, cultural, and military strength.
Even though Jewish and Asian immigrants as a whole have made a positive eugenic impact on the U.S. population, the best approach to immigration policy would be to select immigrants as individuals rather than by ethnic group. There is a large range of desirable and undesirable qualities within each group. The easiest way of implementing such a policy would be to admit immigrants with strong educational qualifications and professional skills, which serve as reasonably good proxies for intelligence and the absence of psychopathic personality. To some extent, selective immigration policies of this kind are operated in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These countries have quotas for the numbers of immigrants they accept, and some of these are reserved for those with useful skills. For instance, Australia operates a “skill stream,” under which applicants for immigration are only accepted if they have vocational qualifications; and in the 1990s approximately half of immigrants were admitted under this rule (Miller, 1999).
In the United States a quota for the admission of immigrants with skills was contained in the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. This quota was reduced in the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act in favor of the admission of larger numbers of relatives of immigrants who had already been accepted. The effect of the change in the immigration criteria introduced in the 1965 Immigration Act appears to have been to lower the quality of immigrants. With respect to intelligence, it has been shown by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) that the children of immigrants have lower average IQs than the native-born American population. In an analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data set, Herrnstein and Murray found that the average IQ of the children of Hispanic immigrants was 81, of black immigrants 88, and of European immigrants 97.
This conclusion has been corroborated by studies of the earnings of immigrants. In the mid-1980s it was shown by Borjas (1990, 1993) that the earnings and skills of immigrants as a whole declined following the 1965 act. He showed that this deterioration in the quality of immigrants was attributable to a change in their ethnic and racial origin. Before 1965 most immigrants came from Europe and were of good quality, as defined by their educational qualifications and earnings. From the 1980s onward, most immigrants were Hispanic, black, or southeast Asian and were of poorer quality. The conclusion that recent immigrants have been of poorer quality than earlier immigrants has been endorsed by a number of subsequent investigators. The consensus emerging from these studies has been summarized by Hayfron (1998): “The results seem to indicate that, after accounting for the usual factors that determine immigrant earnings, recent cohorts have lower earnings than their native counterparts” (p. 294). Hayfron has reached the same conclusion in an analysis of the earnings of cohorts of immigrants into Norway, finding that “the quality, as measured by education and earnings, of successive waves has declined over time” (p. 301).
A reduction in the numbers of immigrants admitted on the basis of their skills also occurred in the closing decades of the twentieth century in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In Europe, immigrants are not generally accepted on the grounds of skills, although there is large-scale immigration of relatives, asylum seekers, and illegals. As in the United States, the impact of recent immigration into Europe appears to have been dysgenic. Immigrants in a number of European countries, including Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy, on average have lower earnings, higher unemployment, and substantially higher crime rates than the indigenous populations (Tonry, 1997; Solivetti & D’Onofrio, 1996).
There are three broad strategies for the promotion of positive eugenics. These consist of the provision of financial incentives for the elite to have children, the promotion of the belief among the elite that they have an ethical obligation to have children, and the admission of good-quality immigrants, using the criterion of the possession of educational qualifications and professional skills.
In practical terms, it has to be accepted that all of these strategies would be difficult to implement in the Western democracies on a sufficient scale to have much significant eugenic impact, given the current climate of opinion. The provision of financial incentives for the elite to have children would provoke envy. Attempts to promote the ethical obligation of the elite, and especially elite women, to have children would be attacked by feminists and much of the media. The attempt to reduce the immigration of those with poor educational qualifications and skills would be attacked by the ethnic and racial groups who would be disadvantaged and by a variety of proimmigration lobbies, who are unaware or unconcerned about the negative impact on the genetic quality of the populations of much current immigration into the Western democracies. As with programs of negative eugenics, the major problem for classical positive eugenics in the Western democracies at the dawn of the twenty-first century lies, contrary to the frequent assertions of the critics, not in the identification of the traits that would be desirable to improve, nor in the genetics of what could be achieved in principle, but in the political difficulties of the introduction of measures that would have significant eugenic impacts.
Paul: “Luke, of all people, you cannot seriously be happy clapping for this vile science? The National Socialists believed in eugenics. In fact their program started on Long Island. For shame.”
Luke: “National Socialists also believed in gravity. Should we reject gravity? The US, England and Scandinavia practiced eugenics much more than the Nazis, should we hate and reject everything done by the US, England and Scandinavia?”
