A Modest Proposal on Immigration

Average IQ around the world.

According to research, job interviews are of no value in choosing good employees. In fact, they are of worse than no value, because they can distract from meaningful measures. When a personal interview is not included, results improve.

This should have been self-evident without a study. What are interviews but an open invitation to prejudice? To form a judgment on someone after talking with them for a half hour is prejudice by definition. People are never so simple nor superficial that this can be done.

Unfortunately, personal interviews are becoming more popular. And the reason should be obvious: because they allow employers to discriminate. Not that they might want to otherwise, but all the “affirmative action” mandates from government make it necessary.

And those who suffer are not just those you might expect. Apparently, HR people, almost all female, regularly discriminate against good-looking women seeking employment. The interviewers don’t want the sexual competition.

There is, at the same time, a highly accurate predictor of future employee performance readily available. It has been tested and shown repeatedly to be the most accurate measure. And it ensures that there can be no prejudice or discrimination, because it is anonymous. But it is never used.

It is called an IQ test.

Despite what you might have heard, IQ tests are not culturally skewed. This can be, and has been, scientifically demonstrated. They do measure something real, because IQ scores tally closely with several other factors: academic success, career success, employee performance, and, perhaps most interestingly, criminality.

A low IQ score clearly predisposes to breaking the law. A high IQ score corresponds with never doing so.

You want honest employees, surely.

One reason that the use of IQ tests is generally frowned upon is that different ethnic groups differ in their average IQ. Use IQ testing, and, inevitably, whites, Jews, and East Asians would be hired in numbers disproportionate to their share of the population. For highly skilled or senior jobs, men would be hired more often than women. Our current quasi-religious dogma is that all ethnicities and both sexes are equal in average intelligence, and must be hired in equal numbers. Evidence be damned.

When you think of it, this dogma is no more sensible than a belief that all human beings are of equal intelligence. How could that be so? Is that your own experience?

But in fact, even the notion that individuals vary in intelligence is controversial. You get blarney like the “multiple intelligences” theory: everyone is equally intelligent, just in different ways. Quite wrong, in scientific terms. At base, the problem is that people do not want to believe that so much of what they can achieve is predetermined and beyond their control. People want to believe that, but for discrimination or bad breaks, they too might have been as talented and successful as the next guy. And they still might be so. In fact, if they are not, they have been swindled.

All of which, of course, is not to say that this is always a false assumption. There is indeed massive discrimination in the system.

We see it, for example, in job interviews.

But it is in everyone’s best interest if the person who can best perform the job is always the person who gets the job. Businesses become more profitable, prices go down, efficiency improves, pollution is reduced, and so on. Push comes to shove, you want the guy performing your brain surgery to be the most competent available, right?

IQ testing would be valuable in another way, if we only had the will.

Immigration is currently a hot topic. Those who want to close the door on immigration are, I believe, misguided. That would lead to a declining population, on current demographic tends, and a declining working population inevitably means a declining standard of living, and increased vulnerability of our way of life to outside enemies. Not to mention the liability of the growing numbers of pensioners. On the other hand, those concerned about immigration point out, justly, whether we admit it or not, that with immigration now comes violence—increasing terrorist attacks. Yet many recoil at screening out Muslims as a group. Others object that immigrants are taking jobs from poorer local workers.

Canada and Australia believe they have fixed the latter problem: they give preference to immigrants who are well-educated and well-heeled. Problem: the ruling classes of the Third World are terminally corrupt. That is why the Third World is the Third World. And we are importing them. We are self-colonizing with a corrupt ruling class.

Solution: a values test is a fine idea, but it can be too easily fudged. The dishonest immigrant will know well enough what answers are expected, and will have no problem supplying them.

How about an IQ test? Let in the true elite, not a corrupt ruling class. How about we let in only immigrants who score higher on average than the average Canadian? By doing this, we would be screening out the corrupt but successful through corruption: the worst element. We would be screening out those statistically likely to be or become criminals or terrorists. We would be screening for those likely to be economically successful, to contribute to instead of take from the general wealth. On balance, the brightest from abroad should not cost jobs to Canadians of any class, but create new economic opportunities for everyone.

And, since intelligence is indeed largely hereditary, we would be building for a permanently better future.

Besides being best for Canada, we would also be humanely screening for the ones who most need the break of immigration to Canada, and who could themselves most benefit from it. Their likely gratitude should cement their future commitment, in turn, to Canadian culture and Canadian values.