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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38728 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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I'm curious as to why Australia is an exception in the data.

I can't imagine the average IQ is uniquely low.

Is it just that Australia is actually able to prevent illegal immigration, visa overstaying notwithstanding, and selective pressure from the points system sufficiently counterbalances legal refugee intake?

Large numbers of Chinese immigrants.

We have strict maritime borders and a skills-based immigration system that prioritises qualified workers. Unlike most Western nations, our immigration, though high, is also selective.

It has the benefits of being a fairly isolated island. It’s not easy to sneak into an island if the nearest major population center (outside of NZ) is thousands of miles away. It’s the same reason that Covid was lower in Australia— it’s an island, and there was no reason to lock anyone down.

America has a very porous border with Mexico and another in Canada. It’s thus much easier to sneak in and thus vetting becomes difficult.

Isn’t the nearest population center to Australia Indonesia, easily within boat range? I have to imagine a more tolerant regime towards illegal migration would have loads of southeast Asian migrants.

They are not fond of illegal maritime arrivals.

That was my point- the reason there aren't boats from Java to Australia for fake asylum seekers looking to be mistreated by the standards of Australian labor law rather than the third world standards at home is because Australia won't allow it. If Australia decided to allow it they would have to deal with this problem.

Yeah, getting sent to an Australian immigrant detention island very far from the mainland would not be fun. Rather unlike how America deals with illegals.

Indonesian government thinks of human rights as nonbinding mild recommendations when it suits them.

…And? Indonesians could(and almost certainly would) leave if they had construction jobs to go do in Australia. The reason they don’t is because Australia takes steps to prevent it. If they didn’t I can’t imagine Indonesia giving a crap about some poor males choosing to be mistreated in a wealthier country instead of at home. They’re not DPRK level oppressive.

And Indonesia is more than happy to infringe the rights of wanna be asylum seekers to Australia if they are politely asked by the Australian government. And they rule Western New Guinea with an iron fist.

Yes, because Australia takes steps to prevent illegal immigration. If Java was the same distance from California that it is from Australia there'd be a regularly scheduled boat service to go work illegally in LA.

Because Australia has functionally no unselected immigration and the selected immigration is mostly chinamen, a high IQ group, and white New Zealanders, another high IQ group.

We actually still get a large number of British migrants as well. In 2023-24, the top five countries of origin were India, China, Australia (i.e. returning migration), the UK, and New Zealand. It's still relatively common for British people who want to move to consider Australia.

Isn’t most of the immigration in Australia from Asia? That would explain it, no?

It might also explain partially why they can tolerate such a high percentage of of their population being foreign born but not suffering the same intensity of issues like Europe.

I'm curious about how Australian demographics will look c2100. The primarily European population is quite low - could east Asian immigration ever reach the level where we'd see the first mostly European/east Asian mixed background society?

I think it will depend on where you are in Australia, but there are places where that's already close to the case. I work in one of the most heavily Asian regions of Melbourne and it... well, doesn't quite look like Hong Kong, but it's in the ballpark. My workplace is over 50% East Asian, with the rest including some South Asians, a small coterie of Anglo-Australians (incl. myself), and a handful of others. The clients we serve are around 50% European and 50% East Asian. My particular field may be skewed a bit, because it's mostly medical staff and we import a lot of doctors and nurses from Asia, so take this as the most extreme case, but it does happen.

There are lots of places, particularly in regional Australia, where it's basically 100% white, but there are others where I think we are visibly a hybrid Western European/East Asian country.

And, well... I'm actually pretty okay with that? I've developed a lot of affection for East Asian countries over the years - China, Korea, Japan. If the old White Australia is going to be hybridised with another culture, I'm glad it's them.

I can't imagine the average IQ is uniquely low.

They do have an extremely low-IQ indigenous population which makes up a small but perhaps significant percentage of total population.

Aren't aboriginals 3% of the population, and mostly heavily intermixed with British-descended whites? Hard to imagine any group, no matter how basal, having a major effect at those levels.

You don't actually need them to make up a large proportion for this effect to be visible. Consider a country of 1000 people, 999 of which have an IQ of 100 and the 1 remaining has an IQ of 99. The average is obviously just lower than 100, so a migrant coming to the country with an IQ of 100 will bring the average up. Obviously a contrived example but the principle certainly applies.

Anyway my guess is that this effect is probably due more to the proportion of Asian migrants that Australia receives than the proportion of Aboriginal natives it has.

This is broadly correct, yes. Depending on how you count Aboriginals are somewhere between 3 and 4% of the total population, but "how you count" is contentious because generally it's just self-declared, and because Aboriginals get affirmative action in some places, if you have any Aboriginal descent at all you're probably going to tick the box.

So what 'Aboriginal' means depends a lot on the region - there are remote communities that are almost entirely of Aboriginal descent, but Aboriginals you find in the larger cities are likely to be mixed race. There's a media tic you may notice where they will describe Aboriginals as "a proud, X, Y, and Z man/woman", listing all the Aboriginal cultures that person identifies with, and obviously it's just a sliver for each one. Here's one example - "I'm a proud Bardi, Miriwoong, Yamatji, Noongar man". This is the equivalent of me saying, "I'm a proud English, Irish, Scots, French, German, and Swedish man", on the basis that I have some sliver of descent from each of them.

Anyway, because the total number of Aboriginal people is relatively small, and because a large proportion of them are heavily mixed-race, I doubt that, even supposing that primarily-Aboriginal-descended people have 10 or 20 less IQ than others, they skew the figures that much. As far as I'm aware there is an IQ gap, and you may speculate as to the causes as much as you like, but I just don't think there are enough of them for it to be a major factor.

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