In a sign of the difficulties GOP leaders face in keeping their unruly caucus on-message, retiring tea party firebrand Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Wednesday that the immigrants given new protections by the president could become “illiterate” Democratic voters.
“The social cost will be profound on the U.S. taxpayer — millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming into the United States who can’t speak the English language,” Bachmann told reporters at the Capitol. “Even though the president says they won’t be able to vote, we all know that many, in all likelihood, will vote.”
Bachmann added: “The president has a very single-minded vision. He’s looking at new voters for 2016…. People do vote without being a citizen. It’s a wink and a nod, we all know it’s going to happen.”
When asked by The Washington Post why she chose to use the word “illiterate” to describe a group of mostly Spanish-speaking workers, Bachmann said her view was informed by trips to the border.
“Some are, some aren’t,” Bachmann said of the literacy of illegal immigrants. “I’ve been down to the border. The reason why I would say that is I spent four days at the border and spoke to American Hispanics on the border. That’s what they told me. Those are not Michele Bachmann’s words, those words came from Hispanics who live on the border…. I’m not using a pejorative term against people who are non-American citizens. I’m only repeating what I heard from Hispanic Americans down at the border. That’s what they told me.”
According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, nearly half of Hispanics in the US have below average literacy aka they are illiterate.
IQ surveys show that American Hispanics average around a 90 score, ten points below whites.
I’ve lived in the US since 1977. It’s clear that the country is becoming dumber every year and a major reason for that is hispanic immigration. Jason Richwine did his PhD thesis in this at Harvard. jasonrichwine
The IQ disparity between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites has major implications for immigrant IQ. Over 56% of immigrants living in the U.S. in 2006 were Hispanic— that is, born in either Mexico (32% of total immigrants), Central American and the Caribbean (17%), or
South America (7%). And while a few Hispanics have roots in the southwest going back centuries, nearly 75% of Hispanic Americans in 2006 were first or second generation immigrants. An accurate measure of IQ among Hispanic Americans is thus a useful proxy measure for the IQ of Hispanic immigrants.
They’re the fastest-growing ethnic group but the most poorly educated. Do we have what it takes to close the gap?
From their first day of kindergarten to their last day of school, Latinos, on average, perform far below most of their peers. They now constitute the largest minority group in the United States and the fastest growing segment of its school-age population. As such, they are inextricably bound up with the nation’s future.
The Latino public school population nearly doubled between 1987 and 2007, increasing from 11 to 21 percent of all U.S. students (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2009b). The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2021, one of four U.S. students will be Latino. In key states in the U.S. Southwest, such as Texas and California, the Latino school-age population is already approaching one-half of all students. In these states, the future is already here.
But it’s a troubling picture. Latinos are the least educated of all major ethnic groups (see fig. 1, p. 27). Although a large gap exists between the college completion rates of whites and blacks, both groups show steady growth. However, the growth in college degrees for Latinos is almost flat. The failure over more than three decades to make any progress in moving more Latino students successfully through college suggests that what we have been doing to close achievement gaps is not working…
Can schools close these gaps? It is instructive to look back to the first days of schooling to see the differences that exist at that point. Data from the 1998 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study show that only one-half as many Latino children as white children fall into the highest quartile of math and reading skills at the beginning of kindergarten, and more than twice as many fall into the lowest quartile. The gap is even wider between Latino and Asian students (see fig. 2)…
Latino students are many more times as likely as students from other ethnic groups to come from homes where parents do not speak English well—or at all—and where parental education is low. More than 40 percent of Latina mothers lack even a high school diploma, compared with only 6 percent of white mothers; and only about 10 percent of Latina mothers have a college degree or higher, compared with almost one-third of white mothers (see fig. 3). Although Latino students may come from loving homes, limited education and resources do affect their education outcomes. There is no better predictor of how well children will fare in school than parents’ education attainment (Murnane, Maynard, & Ohls, 1981).
