John Donvan

None of his positions, said Tom Tancredo, had anything to do with ethnicity or race. So far as I can judge, he is perfectly sincere about this. However, immigration policy ought to take ethnicity and race into account. For reasons we do not understand but which likely have some intractably biological basis, some human populations possess higher overall levels of human capital than others.

For example, the Great Wave of 1880-1920 included a large cohort of Eastern European Jews, most of them impoverished peasants or peddlers. Within a generation, and in the teeth of much naked anti-Semitism, their children were storming the Ivy Leagues. Twentieth-century Mexican immigrants, likewise poor peasants for the most part, have not much disturbed the Ivies”€™ tranquility, even after four or five generations.

A sensible immigration policy would favor high-human-capital populations as being more likely to enrich the USA. To speak in those terms, however, grossly violates current taboos (as Pat Buchanan discovered 20 years ago), and nobody should expect to hear such things said at a respectable forum such as Intelligence Squared”€”least of all in New York, where heads would explode upon hearing heresies of such deep turpitude.

Within the limits of what may currently be said aloud, though, this was a lively debate. Both sides were seasoned, well-informed, and punching at their full weight.

The evening’s real star was John Donvan, the moderator. If you attend many debate-style events, you know that an incompetent moderator can wreck one. Donvan not only kept the speakers in line, he was ruthlessly authoritative with questioners from the audience.

There’s always a fair sprinkling of cranks, monomaniacs, and pontificators at public debates waiting to squeeze in their tedious word. Donvan was having none of it. He swatted down anyone not asking a plain question strictly on the topic under discussion.

And we won! There were gadgets on our seats where we recorded our view on the topic at beginning and end. The pro vote was 16 percent going in, 35 percent going out. The con vote barely shifted. I’m always a bit suspicious of these things. Surely some people must lie to jack up their side’s figures.

Still, I’ll take even a dubious win on an immigration debate. We’re not likely to see any victories in Congress this decade.