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This is because the specimens of our ethnicity that manage to make it to the US are at the very top of the bell curve, else your government doesn't even let us in (barring family visa etc. but families of the top people are also very close to the top). Under any fair system the ones we do send over should rightfully be ruling over you. Well, we sort of do (see how many CEOs, COOs, CFOs etc. of your biggest firms are South Asian) but there are still quite a lot of native whites, certainly far in excess of the proportion of "elite worthy people" that are white in the US these days.
Any level of achievement for South Asians beneath this is a sign that there is systemic disadvantage towards us. The fact that we earn more than the unselected whites means zilch. Also note that this situation is of your own making, if you don't want this to be the case then loosen your immigration requirements to let our average people also come to the US etc.
I fully agree that most Indians in the West are very clever. That is why laws that give them further privileges on the basis of being economically disadvantaged are egregious!
But they are economically disadvantaged. Assuming a no HBD secnario an Indian who is top 0.1% should be top 0.1% in the US too (or rather, their children since immigrants uproot their life to move and have to climb back up, but given enough time this should happen). Such people only being top 1% is a sign of systemic discrimination against them.
Now in an HBD scenario the top 0.1% of India may well correspond to only top 1% (or lower) in the US, but you have to actually make this argument, and nobody of repute in the West is doing so.
No they won't. You'll get regression to the mean. People in the top 0.1% got there by a combination of advantage and luck. Their children may inherit the advantage, but would have average luck, so they wouldn't be in the top 0.1%.
Fair point.
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Surely the top 1% in the US have a higher standard of living than the top 0.1% in India. They're more likely to have servants in India and I admit the cost of living is lower.
But this website says we're talking about people with roughly $1-3 million in assets. It's an older website and I'm doing guesstimation. https://www.livemint.com/Money/HJkSWsigdz6Xvkg8wpr6jK/Where-are-you-in-Indias-wealth-distribution.html
This website says the top 1% of Americans have at least $11 million in assets. Plus there are probably many things you can only get in the US and can't really get in India at all, I imagine.
https://dqydj.com/top-one-percent-united-states/
By moving to the US and going from 0.1% India to 1% American, they're getting at least a 3-5x increase in wealth! How is this being discriminated against? If being discriminated against increased my wealth like that, sign me up!
Furthermore, European countries belong to Europeans. We are well within our rights to bar or restrict immigration however we see fit. If the PLA or Indian armies march in and burn down Washington and London like we did to the Old Summer Palace, then that would no longer hold. But for the moment, we still hold sovereignty. Poorer countries around the world have broadly gotten a very good deal, getting free access to political and economic institutions we designed, mostly effective security we paid for, an unprecedentedly open trading environment and intellectual property we invented and then provide at charity rates. Compare the Bengal Famine, which was our fault, to the Green Revolution! India and various African nations get cheaper drugs, aid and various concessions on climate action (which is itself a tragifarce but that's another matter). Whatever harm we inflicted with stupid fads like 'overpopulation' and 'socialism' had terrible impacts on us as well. We have been very generous and asking for more is unreasonable.
While I am aware that it is conventional to blame the British for the Bengal famine, it is one of only two wartime famines in history where the aggressor gets a free pass. (The other is the 1920-21 famine in Soviet Russia, which tends to get lumped in with the Holodomor as a "Communist famine" when it actually has more to do with the Russian Civil War). If you believe in food availability theory, then the main cause of the Bengal famine was the loss of rice imports from Burma as a result of the Japanese invasion. If you believe in Amartya Sen's theory of famine caused by failure of exchange entitlement, then the main cause of the Bengal famine was economic disruption caused by the Japanese invasion of Burma. Nobody thinks there is a plausible counterfactual where the Japanese do not invade Burma in 1942 but there is nevertheless a famine in Bengal in 1943.
I thought we were exporting food from India even as the region was in famine, but on closer inspection this doesn't seem to be such a major factor, if it happened at all. It's more that there was a lot of shipping needed elsewhere, natural disasters, a bit of scorched earth due to the war and issues of prioritizing food for warfighting. I suppose the Bengal famine can't really be considered our fault then. Anyway, the broader point I was making still stands, that whatever we did wrong pales in comparison to what we did right.
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And black people living under Jim crow were 3-5x better off than if there was no slavery and their ancestors (and themselves) were still stuck in Africa, however they were very much still being discriminated against. What you're saying is like telling a black dude to be thankful of Jim Crow because back in Africa things are worse.
Same here, we were top 0.1% back home, we want to be in the same social stratum here (and yes, for a fixed level of wealth, being at the top has its own benefits regardless, a Medieval lord living 700 years ago didn't have a higher PPP than a SF techbro today but he still got massive advantages from being placed at the top of the social hierarchy that the techbro doesn't get at all).
But the context of our discussion is that I'm literally mentioning affirmative action for 'Subcontinent Asian Americans'! Not only are they getting a huge increase in wealth by coming to the West, they're also getting more favorable treatment than natives! Am I really supposed to feel sympathetic for the plight of an ethnic group earning more than my own, in countries that we founded, wielding disproportionate political influence - such that they can pervert our system to get government aid they clearly don't need?
What is your specific gripe? I know Asians are discriminated against in university entrance admissions. So are whites, to a lesser extent.
Expecting to keep the exact social stratum you were in once you move to a massively different culture is a silly expectation, only our culture could even come up with the idea. People are naturally clannish and distrusting of foreigners. Our elites have been immensely tolerant of their own replacement - see the current PM of the UK! I doubt that any culture in history has been more welcoming to outsiders than us. Complaining that we are still not tolerant enough is ridiculous.
You can't even complain about not getting 'prima nocta', surely the most enjoyable privilege of medieval lords. Our insane system covered up 'Subcontinent Asian' child rape gangs for decades, lest they be accused of racism or Islamophobia for arresting predominantly Pakistani gangs.
Complaining that our system unfairly privileges thuggish Muslim rapists over capable Indian workers who'd get obliterated by HR for 1/1000 of what the former does is reasonable. Or maybe the Indian rape gangs are smart enough to not get caught - our dopey police certainly don't go out of their way to uncover these things.
In material terms, the West still rules the world. We could launch a decapitation strike against India and Pakistan's nuclear arsenals this year and be confident of destroying them before they can launch. Their missiles are short-ranged and fairly inadequate. This assumes Russia is included as part of the West. Only China would be a major threat since they're somewhat more secure in their arsenal. We could rule the world (even China if we moved earlier) like gods, raining down fire or nerve gas on anyone who falls short on their tribute payments. We chose not to do so, we chose to advance notions of human equality, we chose to grant independence and considerable aid and privileges to nations we could've dominated absolutely and eternally. We ritually abase ourselves in various international forums, decrying our mistreatment of them! We teach in our own schools to our own children that the great empires our ancestors created were actually evil. We turn a blind eye on the infiltration of foreign elites into our heartland, on various abuses inflicted upon us. This is an enormous historical anomaly. Recall what Mithridates VI did to Roman settlers in what was then called Asia - he exterminated them all.
Nobody else has ever been as liberal and tolerant as we have been, whilst also possessing the power to exploit those he tolerates.
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The glaring difference between those scenarios is that you chose to move.
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