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With a victorious–if only symbolic, temporary, and ultimately futile–stand against amnesty looking to be secured thanks to the majority of Republicans in the House, the only part of the federal government I still have any hope at all in (and that hope is shaky to say the least), let’s take a look at international sentiments towards the requirements for citizenship.
In the most recent wave conducted by the WVS, running from 2005-2008, respondents were asked about the importance of four factors in deciding whether or not a person should have citizenship conferred upon him. They were having ancestors from the country, being born in the country, adopting the customs of the country, and obeying the laws of the country. Pithily, the angles we’re exploring here are blood, soil, culture, and law. The first table shows the percentages of respondents in each participating country who judged it to be “very important” that a person have ancestors from the country to be considered a citizen of it:
| Blood | %VI |
| Mali | 74.1 |
| Morocco | 66.9 |
| Egypt | 63.9 |
| Burkina Faso | 61.6 |
| South Africa | 61.1 |
| Thailand | 57.1 |
| India | 56.6 |
| Jordan | 54.2 |
| Ghana | 52.9 |
| Indonesia | 51.6 |
| Ethiopia | 51.3 |
| Mexico | 50.3 |
| Malaysia | 50.1 |
| Vietnam | 47.3 |
| Georgia | 46.2 |
| Rwanda | 46.1 |
| Zambia | 42.8 |
| Cyprus | 41.3 |
| China | 39.3 |
| Uruguay | 37.6 |
| Poland | 37.5 |
| Turkey | 34.4 |
| Chile | 33.4 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 26.9 |
| Bulgaria | 26.6 |
| Spain | 25.3 |
| South Korea | 24.6 |
| Serbia | 24.0 |
| Ukraine | 22.9 |
| Argentina | 21.2 |
| Moldova | 20.8 |
| Slovenia | 19.4 |
| Brazil | 18.5 |
| Romania | 17.9 |
| Italy | 14.6 |
| United States | 14.1 |
| Australia | 11.3 |
| Taiwan | 10.2 |
| Germany | 9.6 |
| Finland | 9.4 |
| Norway | 6.7 |
| Andorra | 4.9 |
| Switzerland | 4.5 |
| Sweden | 3.3 |
People of northwestern European descent put the least emphasis on the blood bond of a nation’s population. The US is no exception. After all, how can a nation of immigrants, which we’ve always been since we gained our independence from Great Britain in 1923, prefer that its citizens’ family trees be rooted firmly in the land of amber waves of grain? To the contrary, those people are the ones we look down upon with the most superciliousness and disdain today. Northwestern Euros are followed by central, southern and eastern Europeans, then Asians and Latin Americans, and finally by Middle Easterners and Africans, who put the greatest amount of emphasis on it.
There’s a pattern here that surely doesn’t come as much of a surprise to regular readers of the chickadee’s blog. Relatedly, this list looks like it proxies pretty well for a measure of national pride. Parenthetically, I plan on correlating these results with reported rates of consanguinity by country.
The paradox presented here for many like myself is that the places inspiring the warmest feelings and that I would like most to live in are the places that tend to put the least effort into maintaining what they have. It’s tragic. It doesn’t strike me as overly cynical to presume that this is almost inevitable, as though liberalism doesn’t know when or where to stop and just keeps cruising along the progressive highway past the promised land and over the cliff. Unfortunately, the one nation that regularly pops up as an exception to the putative rule in discussions like this was not included in this battery of questions. But even Japan has started down the slippery slope towards open immigration, recently introducing a point system, akin to the policies employed in Australia and Canada, where preference is given to highly skilled prospective immigrants.
What of birthright citizenship? Our own 14th amendment has been read by the courts in such a way that if one is able to spawn somewhere in the country, through hook, crook or otherwise, then said spawn is, jus soli, a child of the land he was born on.
The next table shows the percentages of respondents in each participating country who deemed it very important that a person be born in the country if he is to be entitled to citizenship:
| Soil | %VI |
| Mali | 68.5 |
| South Africa | 67.8 |
| Ghana | 67.7 |
| India | 66.3 |
| Zambia | 63.0 |
| Malaysia | 60.1 |
| Thailand | 59.4 |
| Egypt | 58.6 |
| Mexico | 58.5 |
| Jordan | 58.3 |
| Indonesia | 56.9 |
| Ethiopia | 53.9 |
| Rwanda | 52.3 |
| Morocco | 51.0 |
| Burkina Faso | 48.9 |
| Chile | 47.5 |
| Georgia | 45.5 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 44.1 |
| Uruguay | 43.2 |
| Vietnam | 42.6 |
| Poland | 40.4 |
| Spain | 39.2 |
| China | 38.4 |
| Cyprus | 37.5 |
| Turkey | 34.3 |
| Italy | 32.1 |
| Moldova | 31.9 |
| Serbia | 28.4 |
| Ukraine | 28.3 |
| Bulgaria | 26.9 |
| Romania | 25.5 |
| United States | 25.3 |
| Argentina | 24.9 |
| Brazil | 23.5 |
| Slovenia | 22.9 |
| South Korea | 20.5 |
| Andorra | 17.7 |
| Taiwan | 16.0 |
| Australia | 15.7 |
| Finland | 15.7 |
| Germany | 11.4 |
| Switzerland | 8.4 |
| Norway | 7.9 |
| Sweden | 5.0 |
Keep in mind that the four categories considered here are not mutually exclusive, but can and do layer upon one another. It appears that most Malians, for example, feel it of great importance that citizens be born in the country, to people who have previously established ancestral ties to it, adopt Malian cultural norms, and that they respect the law of the great trading empire.
The following table shows the percentages of respondents in each participating country who deemed it very important that a person adopt the customs of the country to become a citizen of it:
| Culture | %VI |
| Georgia | 83.6 |
| Mali | 73.3 |
| Egypt | 68.7 |
| Morocco | 68.4 |
| Australia | 68.0 |
| Ghana | 66.5 |
| Thailand | 65.0 |
| Turkey | 63.6 |
| Vietnam | 63.4 |
| Jordan | 61.9 |
| Indonesia | 61.9 |
| Malaysia | 60.4 |
| South Africa | 59.4 |
| Burkina Faso | 59.4 |
| United States | 59.4 |
| India | 58.4 |
| Mexico | 58.2 |
| Zambia | 56.8 |
| Ethiopia | 53.9 |
| Germany | 53.4 |
| Bulgaria | 53.3 |
| Chile | 50.3 |
| Slovenia | 48.2 |
| Spain | 47.2 |
| Rwanda | 46.8 |
| Finland | 46.6 |
| China | 44.1 |
| Uruguay | 43.3 |
| Cyprus | 43.0 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 42.8 |
| Switzerland | 42.1 |
| Taiwan | 39.9 |
| Ukraine | 39.5 |
| Moldova | 38.5 |
| Norway | 36.7 |
| Romania | 35.7 |
| Poland | 34.7 |
| Italy | 34.7 |
| Argentina | 33.6 |
| Serbia | 33.5 |
| Andorra | 30.4 |
| South Korea | 27.1 |
| Brazil | 26.3 |
| Sweden | 24.1 |
Are we all Georgians now, senator?
I’ve always felt a special affinity for Australia. If I were to leave the US, I’d head down under (Switzerland would be a close second, but the cultural and linguistic distances would probably be too far). It may not count for much of anything in the grand scheme of things, but they are one of the few Occidental nations whose population still maintains, with some pride, a semblance of a revered, historically-rooted national identity (the others being Israel, Ireland–dare I say–these United States, and possibly Germany). That shows up here.
With the importance of blood ties to citizenship being an idea entertained only by the most reprobate–hell, even the idea of citizenship is becoming beyond the pale–the concept of a national culture is the next wall the forces of the Cathedral are determined to scale. They’ve already infiltrated so far that only the most ‘extreme’ talkers on the mainstream right would call for a national policy resting on the three xenophobic pillars of borders, language, and, most germanely for us, culture!
Up to this point, our Scandinavian representatives haven’t shown support for any standards on citizenship at all. But we have yet to discuss governmental policies. The Golem will keep the baddies out, we just need to equip him with the right tools. And then make sure he doesn’t strike out against refugees–political, economic, religious, or otherwise–or those offended by depictions of Muhammad, or undocumented workers, or visa overstayers, or asylum seekers, or those looking for a better life, or those who love to feed from the public trough, or…
| Law | %VI |
| Sweden | 95.6 |
| Norway | 93.5 |
| Australia | 93.1 |
| Finland | 88.4 |
| Switzerland | 87.6 |
| Taiwan | 86.7 |
| United States | 85.0 |
| Georgia | 84.6 |
| Germany | 83.5 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 83.2 |
| Indonesia | 82.9 |
| Turkey | 82.4 |
| Bulgaria | 82.1 |
| Mali | 81.7 |
| Mexico | 80.8 |
| Ghana | 80.4 |
| Romania | 78.7 |
| China | 78.2 |
| Burkina Faso | 78.1 |
| Vietnam | 78.0 |
| Italy | 77.7 |
| Jordan | 77.3 |
| Egypt | 76.9 |
| Malaysia | 74.8 |
| Morocco | 74.6 |
| Uruguay | 74.1 |
| South Africa | 72.9 |
| Chile | 71.3 |
| Slovenia | 71.2 |
| India | 70.9 |
| Zambia | 70.4 |
| Moldova | 68.1 |
| Poland | 68.1 |
| Ethiopia | 64.7 |
| Argentina | 63.5 |
| Rwanda | 62.1 |
| Ukraine | 58.7 |
| Cyprus | 58.2 |
| Spain | 58.1 |
| Serbia | 55.0 |
| Thailand | 54.4 |
| Andorra | 49.4 |
| Brazil | 43.5 |
| South Korea | 40.4 |
Several charts in rapid succession there, so here’s an overall “standards” index that simply sums the percentages of “very important” responses across the four dimensions considered previously. How curious that Mexicans make greater demands of their citizens than Americans do of their’s:
| Standards | Index |
| Mali | 297.6 |
| Egypt | 268.1 |
| Ghana | 267.5 |
| South Africa | 261.2 |
| Morocco | 260.9 |
| Georgia | 259.9 |
| Indonesia | 253.3 |
| India | 252.2 |
| Jordan | 251.7 |
| Burkina Faso | 248.0 |
| Mexico | 247.8 |
| Malaysia | 245.4 |
| Thailand | 235.9 |
| Zambia | 233.0 |
| Vietnam | 231.3 |
| Ethiopia | 223.8 |
| Turkey | 214.7 |
| Rwanda | 207.3 |
| Chile | 202.5 |
| China | 200.0 |
| Uruguay | 198.2 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 197.0 |
| Bulgaria | 188.9 |
| Australia | 188.1 |
| United States | 183.8 |
| Poland | 180.7 |
| Cyprus | 180.0 |
| Spain | 169.8 |
| Slovenia | 161.7 |
| Finland | 160.1 |
| Moldova | 159.3 |
| Italy | 159.1 |
| Germany | 157.9 |
| Romania | 157.8 |
| Taiwan | 152.8 |
| Ukraine | 149.4 |
| Norway | 144.8 |
| Argentina | 143.2 |
| Switzerland | 142.6 |
| Serbia | 140.9 |
| Sweden | 128.0 |
| South Korea | 112.6 |
| Brazil | 111.8 |
| Andorra | 102.4 |
Things are grim on this side of the pond, but they’re even grimmer in Europe. With the rise of nationalist parties in several European countries, I wonder when (or if) we’ll begin to see the same.
SWPLs, stop emulating the Swedes and start taking after the Andorrans!
WVS variables used: V217, V218, V219, V220
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
My cousin just attained citizenship in Australia (he gets to keep U.S. citizenship too). He fits their culture perfectly – a total free spirit.
It's sad. Swedish schoolchildren are now outperformed by those of Poland and Estonia – much poorer but Muslim-free countries. People here in Sweden are very intelligent, but they don't have any grip on reality; they live in their heads seemingly immune to empirical data.
Our elites surely will get it eventually. So far most numbers such as life expectancy and GDP per capita have moved forward, but these numbers must invariably move backward toward the average of countries sending their people.
Surely the statistical end of the seemingly inevitable march of progress will cause progressives to take notice? Their secular religion is built on the notion of things getting better into the future after all.
Our elites love capital, but excess/investable capital is only a function of developed countries because in third world countries the poor consume all excess capital.
Mr. Epigone. I am an Azerbaijani student in American, in California. When I go back to Azerbaijan I want to make it a more desirable place to live for myself and my family. Will eugenics work? I have read many things on Greg Cochrane's blog that show me how easy it is.
For which IQ range will I have to select? Right now Azerbaijan has a population of about 9 million people. Assuming an average IQ of 88 (from PISA scores), if I wanted to select people with IQs >= 115, that would be about 3.59% of the population of azerbaijan, from the z-score (this is true if the standard deviation for IQ is 115, which everyone says it is).
Please reply to me. What political course of action should I take? I really want to improve my country and make it more like the western world; should I sterilize the remaining 96.41%? Which program would be best for this? A stealth sterilization program that presents itself as a UN sponsored antivirus vaccine push but is actually depo provera? Once people find out they can't have children, I as a dictator can deal with them using tear gas and bullets (real ones if they refuse to back down)
And how will I recover the population numbers? 3.59% of ~9 mil people is 332,100 people. If I push for high birth rates (up to 10 per family) the population will increase to 1,660,500 within a generation. And better yet, they will all have IQs >= 115!! And with the extra resources left by the removal of imbeciles will have a much higher standard of living.
I think you in advance for your most gracious reply, sir.
I correct myself – if the standard deviation is 15 NOT 115.
Please answer me. My comment is reasonable and I don't want it to be ignored.
Spagheti,
I assume you're trolling, but I obviously don't have water tight solutions for the US, let alone Azerbaijan. Start by doing some breeding of your own.
I was not trolling.
My main issue was whether such a policy will work? Will it increase economic productivity? Will it increase Average IQ?
I am very close to the ruling family and I can make them aware of this.
I thought Azerbaijan had a parliamentary system with a president and prime minister, but I don't know jack about the country. Who is the ruling family?
Anyway, you're being too ambitious. Without a national data bank of IQ scores gathered from mandatory testing across the entire country, you'll have to proxy for intelligence. Perhaps something like government subsidized child care for those with graduate degrees and government reimbursement for contraceptives for those earning under a certain income threshold.
There is a de facto ruling family. The parliament is basically rubber stamp. Well all that has been tried in places like singapore and failed. I think only a forceful way remains. The thing is we are desperate to increase our human capital. And certainly depressed by what we have.
You are ancestors were brutally culled in the arctic millenia ago. The only reason you have the intellectual ability to be able to do what you do. An accident of nature.
Is it not possible for us to do something for ourselves? What logistical difficulties are there in collecting a national data bank of scores (IQ tests, or something similar)? How expensive would it be?
Is it my fault my ancestors didn't move to the arctic like the ancestors of europeans and chinese? I want to belong to an intelligent nation with a high civilization. What way is there to accomplish this?
@spagetiMeatball —
If you are not trolling and being sincere, it is possible for the Azerbaijani government to 'seed' a bunch of Azerbaijani women with the donor material of Nobel prize winners or other very smart men and give them a bunch of money for their trouble. This is humane, and the benefits are:
(1) The women are happy to have smart kids, who will be their own kids
(2) The women are happy to get a bunch of money, and
(3) It scales up, because you can basically open this thing to the masses of women. The kids of a genius father and a median Azerbaijani mother would still be above the Western average.
Now that would truly be a brave new world!
This has the benefit of bringing outside genius alleles. There are doubtless certain genius alleles that are not present at all in the local population which would help a lot.
I read somewhere that one of the benefits available to someone like Marco Polo was that hosts along the journeys would make their daughters available to bring some good DNA into clan. They didn't know exactly what DNA was, but they were practical people.
SM,
Dan's all over it. Are there sperm banks in Azerbaijan? If it is not feasible (or just not desirable) to solicit Y-chromosomes from certified European geniuses, how about making a patriotic pitch to professional Azerbaijani men to give the gift of life and then subsidize the women who agree to be carry the child?
Bringing some foreign high IQ blood can really be a positive thing for a nation. The Parsees have been of huge benefit to India over the centuries, filling the ranks of intellectuals even though their numbers are small. They are Zoroastrians originally from elsewhere and the Indians are generally quite glad to have them. Salting a middling place with geniuses can help a great deal if it is civilization you are after. New York's Jewish population has helped it to maintain world leadership and great wealth amid demographic diversity even as cities like Atlanta and Detroit and Los Angeles have declined.
The sperm bank idea could work. How much would it cost to build and operate one for say, 30 years? Or is it cheaper to hire the closest foreign one?
The thing about using european geniuses is…well then it wouldn't be us. It would just be YOU through US.
Yes. I am sorry to have bothered your post with only tangentially relevant comments, Epigone.
I've been wanting to improve my country for a long time, but reading blogs such as yours has made me realize how entrenched differences in human capital are, and how difficult it would be to upgrade oneself. But everyone has to start from somewhere, no? No matter how lowly or miserable.
If the goal is to get where you want to be without external input, that could take a very long time, because genius alleles that do not exist would need to randomly appear perfectly formed.
Getting a few genius alleles into the population does not have to mean replacing the population.
Consider the ability to digest lactose. Suppose these alleles to digest lactose originated in one guy. After many generations, this allele may spread through the population ***but that doesn't mean that everyone looks like that guy***. It just means that the particular good alleles for lactose got into the population and then those alleles multiplied, within that host population.
For example, they say some very key Neanderthal genes got into all Europeans even though Neanderthals are genetically only 2% of European ancestry or something.
Hmmm…good point Dan.
@spagetimeatball
(Assuming you're not trolling.)
Ignore all the nonsense about foreign geniuses. The most critical thing in any nation is relatedness. You want your people to be related to each other.
The best way to improve average IQ in a nation is not to breed from the geniuses but just increase the proportion around the 100-115 mark.
The best way to do that in any country imo is to breed from their own special forces as they will all be above average IQ for their country as well as supremely healthy and fit.
So, step one, make all IVF treatments use sperm from your own country's special forces.
Step two, dna screening, couples fertilize a dozen eggs and they are screened and the best one chosen to be implanted in the womb.
Make it a free service won with a lottery to start and then expand it.
As a state investment it will bring huge returns in GDP per capita so it's worth it.
Excellent post. I tried to use the data you extracted to draw some conclusions about Chinese attitudes towards citizenship:
http://lawandborder.com/?p=2691.
Am I off base, or are there other conclusions I should be drawing?
Where's Japan in those surveys?
spagetiMeatball: There may be nutritional or other environmental issues which are holding down Azerbaijan's mean IQ. Many countries in West Africa have mean IQs in the low 70s, while their descendants in the U.S. are about 85. The European admixture in the U.S. black population is not enough to account for that difference. The lack of famine in the U.S., along with various policies to ensure that certain micronutrients (particularly iodine) are available to everyone, has a lot to do with that gap.
Severe malnutrition as a child, even if only for a few months, can stunt the child's intellectual development. Iodine deficiency (and some others) will also do that. So eliminating those factors will raise the national IQ rapidly – the existing adults are pretty much stuck where they are, but the next generation can be much smarter than the current one with the right policies.
So: for Azerbaijan: Make sure that iodine is available to everyone – possibly by requiring that all salt in the country is iodized (or just subsidizing iodizing salt and other foods). Make sure that kids don't go hungry – in the U.S., we make sure that all kids get lunch at school. If the parents aren't poor, the kid has to pay; if the parents are poor, the kid gets lunch free. That may not be ideal in Azerbaijan, but something to make sure that even when harvests are poor, kids get fed nutritious food is *important*.