Immigration to Roman London

Identifying migrants in Roman London using lead and strontium stable isotopes

Authors:

Shaw et al

Abstract:

The ancient settlement of Londinium (London) has long been characterized as a major commercial and bureaucratic centre of the Roman province of Britain (Britannia). Primary source information indicates that people were drawn to the city from around the Empire. Mortuary and archaeological material evidence also attest to its cosmopolitan nature and have long been used to characterize the people who are buried in Londinium and identify where they may have originated. Within the past decade, researchers have successfully applied isotopic analyses of strontium and oxygen to human remains from various settlements in Roman Britain in order to identify the migrant status of the inhabitants. Recent studies have highlighted the utility of lead isotopes for examining past mobility, particularly for the Roman period. The aim of this project, therefore, was to apply lead and strontium isotope analyses to dental enamel samples from twenty individuals excavated from Londinium. The results suggest that the geographic origins of the population of Roman London varied, comprising individuals local to Londinium and Britannia, but also from further afield in the Empire, including Rome. The findings from this study are a valuable addition to the growing stable isotope dataset that is helping to characterize the nature of migration in Roman Britain, and this has broader implications for interpreting the relationship of migration and identity in the province.

Basques are Closely Related to FIrst European Farmers

An international team led by researchers at Uppsala University reports a surprising discovery from the genomes of eight Iberian Stone-Age farmer remains. The analyses revealed that early Iberian farmers are the closest ancestors to modern-day Basques, in contrast previous hypotheses that linked Basques to earlier pre-farming groups.

The team could also demonstrate that farming was brought to Iberia by the same/similar groups that migrated to northern and central Europe and that the incoming farmers admixed with local, Iberian hunter-gather groups, a process that continued for at least 2 millennia.

link.

Immigration to America From China, India Over Take Mexico

During my adult life, the main source of immigration to the U.S. has always been Mexico. Thus, I was surprised to see that for 2013, immigration from China and India exceeded that from Mexico. The data comes from analysts at the US Census Bureau, Eric B. Jensen, Anthony Knapp, C. Peter Borsella, and Kathleen Nestor, and presented at a recent conference under the title, "The Place-of-Birth Composition of Immigrants to the United States: 2000 to 2013."

link.

Madjedbebe: a Pleistocene Quaternary Site Older Than 50k Years Old in Australia Suggesting Different Culture

The archaeology, chronology and stratigraphy of Madjedbebe (Malakunanja II): A site in northern Australia with early occupation

Authors:

Clarkson et al

Abstract:

Published ages of greater than 50 ka for occupation at Madjedbebe (Malakunanja II) in Australia's north have kept the site prominent in discussions about the colonisation of Sahul. The site also contains one of the largest stone artefact assemblages in Sahul for this early period. However, the stone artefacts and other important archaeological components of the site have never been described in detail, leading to persistent doubts about its stratigraphic integrity. We report on our analysis of the stone artefacts and faunal and other materials recovered during the 1989 excavations, as well as the stratigraphy and depositional history recorded by the original excavators. We demonstrate that the technology and raw materials of the early assemblage are distinctive from those in the overlying layers. Silcrete and quartzite artefacts are common in the early assemblage, which also includes edge-ground axe fragments and ground haematite. The lower flaked stone assemblage is distinctive, comprising a mix of long convergent flakes, some radial flakes with faceted platforms, and many small thin silcrete flakes that we interpret as thinning flakes. Residue and use-wear analysis indicate occasional grinding of haematite and woodworking, as well as frequent abrading of platform edges on thinning flakes. We conclude that previous claims of extensive displacement of artefacts and post-depositional disturbance may have been overstated. The stone artefacts and stratigraphic details support previous claims for human occupation 50–60 ka and show that human occupation during this time differed from later periods. We discuss the implications of these new data for understanding the first human colonisation of Sahul.

Carlos Bait: A comparison of worldwide phonemic and genetic variation in human populations

A comparison of worldwide phonemic and genetic variation in human populations

Authors:

Creanza et al

Abstract:

Worldwide patterns of genetic variation are driven by human demographic history. Here, we test whether this demographic history has left similar signatures on phonemes—sound units that distinguish meaning between words in languages—to those it has left on genes. We analyze, jointly and in parallel, phoneme inventories from 2,082 worldwide languages and microsatellite polymorphisms from 246 worldwide populations. On a global scale, both genetic distance and phonemic distance between populations are significantly correlated with geographic distance. Geographically close language pairs share significantly more phonemes than distant language pairs, whether or not the languages are closely related. The regional geographic axes of greatest phonemic differentiation correspond to axes of genetic differentiation, suggesting that there is a relationship between human dispersal and linguistic variation. However, the geographic distribution of phoneme inventory sizes does not follow the predictions of a serial founder effect during human expansion out of Africa. Furthermore, although geographically isolated populations lose genetic diversity via genetic drift, phonemes are not subject to drift in the same way: within a given geographic radius, languages that are relatively isolated exhibit more variance in number of phonemes than languages with many neighbors. This finding suggests that relatively isolated languages are more susceptible to phonemic change than languages with many neighbors. Within a language family, phoneme evolution along genetic, geographic, or cognate-based linguistic trees predicts similar ancestral phoneme states to those predicted from ancient sources. More genetic sampling could further elucidate the relative roles of vertical and horizontal transmission in phoneme evolution.

Could Ebola Reaching Central America or Caribbean Trigger a Mass Emigration?

The head of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) warned an Ebola outbreak in Central America or the Caribbean could trigger a mass migration to the U.S. of people fleeing the disease and implied established Central American illegal trafficking networks could introduce the infected into the U.S., during remarks at a Tuesday panel on security issue in the Western Hemisphere at the National Defense University.

“If it comes to the Western Hemisphere, the countries that we’re talking about have almost no ability to deal with it — particularly in Haiti and Central America,” SOUTHCOM Commander, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, said in response to a question of his near term concerns in the region.
“It will make the 68,000 unaccompanied minors look like a small problem.”

An Ebola outbreak could encourage the poor and increasingly desperate populations in Central American countries — like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — to leave in droves.

link.

Pacific Island Nations Looking to Procure Land Elsewhere to Survive Inundation by Rising Seas

The president of the Pacific island state of Kiribati favors buying more land abroad after a purchase in Fiji, to secure both food supplies and perhaps a future home if rising sea levels swamp low-lying atolls.

Anote Tong, in Norway on a stopover to view melting Arctic ice pushing up sea levels before he attends a U.N. climate summit in New York on Tuesday, said he wanted to lay conditions for "migration with dignity" from the islands.

Kiribati, a nation of 100,000 people scattered over 32 Pacific atolls, completed a deal with Fiji this year to buy 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares) of forest land for A$9.3 million ($8.3 million) on the island of Vanua Levu, he said.

"With sea level rise, the value of land will go up," Tong predicted in a weekend interview, nursing a cold from a visit to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. "I am not going to relocate my people, but someone else might" in coming decades.

"Some people have suggested 'why not (buy more land in) Australia and New Zealand, they are selling land to the Chinese?'," he said. "My view is 'yes' ... property poses the least risk" compared to other investments.

link.

inundation 

Visualizing Cultural Movement From 600 BC to Now

link.

Beijing Think-tank Claims Emigration is a Money, Brain Drain for China

A Beijing-based think tank urged the central government yesterday to upgrade its immigration office to a ministerial-level agency to tackle a "migration deficit" caused by a growing trend of people taking their skills and wealth abroad.

The number of mainland emigrants reached 9.34 million last year, compared with 848,900 immigrants, leaving a migration deficit – or an excess of emigrants over immigrants – of 8.5 million.

The figures were contained in the Annual Report on Chinese International Migration 2014, published by the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG).

The deficit has increased 129 per cent since 1990, when it was 3.71 million. It makes China the fourth-largest source country for international emigrants after India, Mexico and Russia. The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the top four destinations for mainlanders.

The number of emigrants resulted in a brain drain and money outflow, said the report.

"Most of the Chinese emigrants are middle-class people aged 35-55," it said. "Their leaving weakens middle-class support for China’s social transformation and causes a huge loss to society’s reforms and progress."

Their departure also took away a huge amount of wealth.

In 2012, 6,124 Chinese moved to the US through the investment immigration scheme, causing an asset outflow of between US$3 billion and US$6 billion – and that is without taking into account expenditure on things including home purchases.

Meanwhile, the outflow of wealth and talent was not offset by immigration, with relatively high barriers for entry hindering the numbers arriving.

link.

British PM Cameron Calls for More Restrictions on Future EU Members' Populations

Britain will push for tougher accession terms for any new members of the European Union to limit their citizens' access to the bloc's labor markets, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday.

Cameron is under pressure to limit foreigners' entry into to the British labor market and has unveiled a series of measures to stop EU migrants being able to claim welfare benefits as soon as they arrive in Britain.

Immigration is a particularly sensitive issue in Britain, where many eastern Europeans, including Poles, Hungarians and Czechs, have come to work following their countries' accession to the EU in 2004.

[...]

Speaking at an EU summit where the bloc's governments confirmed plans to start membership talks with Serbia next month, Cameron said admitting new countries should not be allowed to lead to "big movements of population".

"We have to learn the lessons of history. Enlargement has been a success. Transitional controls have been a success," he said. "We need to go one step further and have more robust transitional controls in the future."

[...]

Popular newspapers are focusing on what they see as a pending influx from Bulgaria and Romania at the beginning of 2014 when transitional curbs on those countries end.

Anxious not to be outflanked by the anti-EU, anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP), Cameron has said he shares public concerns about the end of restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians working in Britain.

The two Black Sea states joined the EU in 2007, and Croatia became the EU's 28th member last year. But it will likely take at least a decade before any new countries are admitted.

Other than Serbia, four more countries are candidates for accession: Iceland, Turkey, Montenegro and Macedonia.

link.

Birth Tourism: I can see no way this could go wrong...

10,000 [...] Chinese babies were born in America last year, according to an estimate by an online platform dedicated to monitoring and rating confinement centers for Chinese women giving birth in the States.

link.

Borderless World: Threat or Menace?

The audio is pretty bad.

PreColumbian Migration to the Americas Was Very Complicated

Reconciling migration models to the Americas with the variation of North American native mitogenomes

Authors:

1. Alessandro Achilli (a)
2. Ugo A. Perego (b,c)
3. Hovirag Lancioni (a)
4. Anna Olivieri (b)
5. Francesca Gandini (b)
6. Baharak Hooshiar Kashani (b)
7. Vincenza Battaglia (b)
8. Viola Grugni (b)
9. Norman Angerhofer (c)
10. Mary P. Rogers (d)
11. Rene J. Herrera (e)
12. Scott R. Woodward (c,f)
13. Damian Labuda (g)
14. David Glenn Smith (h)
15. Jerome S. Cybulski (i)
16. Ornella Semino (b)
17. Ripan S. Malhi (d,j)
18. Antonio Torroni (b)

Affiliations:

a. Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e Biotecnologie, Università di Perugia, 06123 Perugia, Italy;

b. Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie “Lazzaro Spallanzani”, Università di Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy;

c. Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, Salt Lake City, UT 84115;

d. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61801

e. Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199;

f. AncestryDNA, Provo, UT 84604;

g. Département de Pédiatrie, Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada H3T 1C5;

h. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616; and

i. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, QC, Canada K1A 0M8

j. Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61801;

Abstract:

In this study we evaluated migration models to the Americas by using the information contained in native mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) from North America. Molecular and phylogeographic analyses of B2a mitogenomes, which are absent in Eskimo–Aleut and northern Na-Dene speakers, revealed that this haplogroup arose in North America ∼11–13 ka from one of the founder Paleo-Indian B2 mitogenomes. In contrast, haplogroup A2a, which is typical of Eskimo–Aleuts and Na-Dene, but also present in the easternmost Siberian groups, originated only 4–7 ka in Alaska, led to the first Paleo-Eskimo settlement of northern Canada and Greenland, and contributed to the formation of the Na-Dene gene pool. However, mitogenomes also show that Amerindians from northern North America, without any distinction between Na-Dene and non–Na-Dene, were heavily affected by an additional and distinctive Beringian genetic input. In conclusion, most mtDNA variation (along the double-continent) stems from the first wave from Beringia, which followed the Pacific coastal route. This was accompanied or followed by a second inland migratory event, marked by haplogroups X2a and C4c, which affected all Amerindian groups of Northern North America. Much later, the ancestral A2a carriers spread from Alaska, undertaking both a westward migration to Asia and an eastward expansion into the circumpolar regions of Canada. Thus, the first American founders left the greatest genetic mark but the original maternal makeup of North American Natives was subsequently reshaped by additional streams of gene flow and local population dynamics, making a three-wave view too simplistic.

Arizona's Republicans Must be INSANE!

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona - and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution - to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists - things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop.

But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB 1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the "anchor" and leave.

The question is whether that would violate the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that "all persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." It was intended to provide citizenship for freed slaves and served as a final answer to the Dred Scott case, cementing the federal government's control over citizenship.

WHAT THE FSCK!?!

I thoroughly understand the frustration over illegal immigration. We have been locked in a struggle with dealing with the USCIS and its stupidity in trying to get Lyuda's citizenship for the past three years. We can't even have her family come and visit because of the stupid immigration rules. We sit here more than a bit jealous and angered over the fact that others come across the border relatively easily.

HOWEVER!

Arizona is going down the path of nullification. Oh, they are skirting the line, but damnit, it is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States that being born in the US - irrespective of whether or not your folks are citizens - grants you citizenship! This is an incredible slippery slope otherwise. How many people can prove they are citizens? They may have their birth certificate...somewhere.

This is fscking insane.

Note: I have been a borderer. I have lived in areas with high illegal immigration. I have been frustrated. However,

THIS

IS

NOT

THE

ANSWER!

This is WRONG!

The greater Republican Party better put immense pressure on the Arizonians to withdraw even considering this bill or I and many others will be defecting to the Democrats. Furthermore, we'll be working our damnest to crush the party.

Yes, I am a Republican and I find this abhorrent.

The Greenlandic-Arctic Population Shuffle

Thirty-six-year-old Professor Eske Willerslev, University of Copenhagen, and his team of fossil DNA researchers have done it a couple of times before: rewritten world history. Most recently two months ago when he and his team discovered that the ancestors of the North American Indians were the first people to populate America, and that they came to the country more than 1,000 years earlier than originally assumed. And the evidence is, so to speak, quite tangible: DNA samples of fossilised human faeces found in deep caves in southern Oregon.

This time, focus is on Greenland, and the scientific evidence is DNA analyses of hair from the Disco Bay ice fjord area in north-west Greenland, which are well-preserved after 4,000 years in permafrost soil. The team’s discovery makes it necessary to review Greenland’s immigration history. Until now, science regarded it as a possibility that the earliest people in Greenland were direct ancestors of the present-day Greenlandic population.

It now turns out that the original immigrants on the maternal side, which is reflected in the mitochondrial DNA, instead came from a Siberian population whose closest present-day descendants come from the Aleutian Islands on the boundary between the Northern Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea and the Seriniki Yuit in north-east Siberia. Discovered in more recent times by the Dane Vitus Bering in 1741, the Aleutian Islands today include some 300 islands spanning 1,900 km from Alaska in the USA to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia.

“They must have crossed the ice from the Aleutian Islands via Alaska and Canada and then on to Greenland. We have always known that the first immigrants came to Greenland approx. 4,500 years ago, because tools from that time have been found. But what we did not know was that they probably came via the Aleutian Islands, which our DNA research now shows. The project was actually close to being shelved. Originally, I was in the most northern part of Greenland with Claus Andreasen from the National Museum of Greenland, Nuuk, looking for DNA traces. It was a total failure. But in another context, I found out that archaeologist Bjarne Grønnow from the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, had made some excavations at the Qeqertasussuk settlement in the northern part of West Greenland in the 1980s. And then, among all the samples taken from the frozen culture layers on the site, I suddenly found a tuft of hair which I analysed together with my colleague Tom Gilbert,” says Eske Willerslev.

‘The forgotten Greenlandic hair’ from the samples was subsequently analysed for so-called mitochondria. They are the genes on the maternal side, a kind of cellular power plant, and they are well-suited for comparative DNA studies of mammals, including humans. The Willerslev team then checked the results of the analysis of the Greenlandic hair against an international DNA database and the database came up with the eastern part of Siberia and the Aleutian Islands, which is populated by a group that has peopled other places in the Arctic area.

Another interesting finding is that there is no connection between this DNA mass and the most recent immigration to Greenland, the Thule culture, the ancestors of modern Greenlandic Inuit.

Humans wander in far more complicated ways than we ever thought. The original story of how the Americas were populated or the Out of Africa hypothesis or imigration to Australia or into Polynesia has all turned out to be a lot weirder and more exciting than we ever thought.

That last is very interesting.

Immigration Assimiliation Rates: A New Study

The popular press spin on the above report is here at the Washington Post:

Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today.

Modern-day immigrants arrive with substantially lower levels of English ability and earning power than those who entered during the last great immigration wave at the turn of the 20th century. The gap between today's foreign-born and native populations remains far wider than it was in the early 1900s and is particularly large in the case of Mexican immigrants, the report said.

The study, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank, used census and other data to devise an assimilation index to measure the degree of similarity between the United States' foreign-born and native-born populations. These included civic factors, such as rates of U.S. citizenship and service in the military; economic factors, such as earnings and rates of homeownership; and cultural factors, such as English ability and degree of intermarriage with U.S. citizens. The higher the number on a 100-point index, the more an immigrant resembled a U.S. citizen.

I haven't had time to read the report, so I will reserve judgement, but there's a quote on immigration from the book I just finished reading:

Why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of us Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

- Benjamin Franklin

Replace Palatine and Germanize with Mexican and some verb form of Latinization, Anglifying with Americanizing and Colony with Nation and you get a very Tancredo-esque rant. Interesting, no? IIRC, 60+% of Americans can point to German ancestry and at one point the Germans were supposed to have assumed that the US would side with them since there were so many German descendants in the US circa Great Mistake #1. For some reason the phrase "German spirit with an English veneer" comes to mind wrt that. Yet, I would hardly say that America was Germanified despite the majority of the population being of German descent.

Oh yes, he didn't consider most Germans white. Or French. Or Russians. Or Swedes. or Italians. Or... Hence the comment about "Complexion." Yes, the same thing went for the Irish. These days few to any consider the the Italians anything other than white. I had an amusing conversation with a Latino friend about whether or not the Italians should be considered Latino or not. It was amusing and not very serious at all. It is very interesting that over time the White label has grown more and more inclusive. I have to wonder in 50 years time will Latinos as a whole and especially Mexicans be "White," too?

Mexican American Integration & Education Study

Second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans speak English fluently, and most prefer American music. They are increasingly Protestant, and some may even vote for a Republican candidate.

However, many Mexican Americans in these later generations do not graduate from college, and they continue to live in majority Hispanic neighborhoods. Most marry other Hispanics and think of themselves as "Mexican" or "Mexican American."

[...]

Telles and Ortiz noted that some Mexican Americans were able to move into the mainstream more easily than other minorities. Mexican immigrants who came to the United States as children and the children of immigrants tended to show the most progress, perhaps spurred by optimism and an untainted view of the American Dream.

"A disproportionate number, though, continue to occupy the lower ranks of the American class structure," the sociologists said. "Certainly, later-generation Mexican Americans and European Americans overlap in their class distributions. The difference is that the bulk of Mexican Americans are in lower class sectors but only a relatively small part of the European American population is similarly positioned."

More than any other factor, Telles and Ortiz said, education accounted for the slow assimilation of Mexican Americans in most social dimensions. The low educational levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of integration.

"Their limited schooling locks many of them into a future of low socioeconomic status," they said. "Low levels of education also predict lower rates of intermarriage, a weaker American identity, and a lower likelihood of registering to vote and voting."

Education is key to virtually everything in this country. Whether formal or self education, it has become crucial that people have the equivalent of a bachelor's degree to any real degree of success any more. Even so, it's no guarantee that you will be able to use the knowledge gained to get anywhere in life.

It should be noted that one of the great assimilation tools that the US has traditionally had was the public educational system. Peer pressure combined with a monolithic, inclusive education has taken peoples of disparate backgrounds and molded them into being 'Americans.'

My wife is an ESL student. She's taken ESL classes and they have helped her. Yet, some of the classes for ESL at the secondary school level were not aimed at bridging into English as a first language classes. It should be the goal. The singular goal. First and last and everything between goal. If for no other reason that it creates a huge parallel infrastructure that helps eat budgets and that is a disastrous thing for our underfunded educational system as it is.

Anyways, take a read. It's interesting stuff up there. I'll be hunting for a copy of the book.

Ex Mex

As some of you know, Mexico and the politics of immigration have been one of my main reading themes these days. I really want to get a better understanding of what is going on here. There is an awful lot of FUD out there about the illegal immigrants. That said, it is one of the most important issues that we have today. We have 12 million illegals in the country. They're mostly not bad people, just individuals that are seeking a better life. Just like the rest of the immigrants that are seeking to come to the us. Just like Americans, they work for it. Often times they work under some rather nasty conditions and there's de nada they can do because if they complain to the cops, well, they're illegal and could quite probably be deported for it. That said, they are, despite what some corners would like us to believe, criminals: they have most definitely broken the law in a nontrivial way.

Yeah, I am a 'rule of law' stickler and not just here: if you don't like the law, get it changed, but until then, follow it. Considering the immigration nightmares we've faced trying to get Lyuda's family to immigrate, we have some nontrivial biases here too. It really pisses us off that we have been unable to get my sister-in-law here as either a student or under the fact that she is an ubercompetent, trained professional in an in demand field (nurse), yet can get past the evil embassy.

That said, I really want to fill out my opinion with more facts than merely personal experience. There's more to this than merely my personal feelings of frustration, anger, and idealism: there are real people with real hopes, dreams, and needs involved seeking a life that they can't get in their home country. In the vast majority of the cases that would be Mexico.

The books I have read about the subject have been from the right (oy) to the left (ugh) on the political spectrum, but before I picked up Ex Mex the only books on the immigration issue that I had read were all written by Americans. While I had read some Mexican history books that had been contributed to by Mexicans, mostly they too had been written by Americans in Mexico. I do have a tome sitting up on the to-read stack that is a Mexican history written exclusively by a Mexican historian in English, I hadn't gotten to it yet due to its size. I have had a reading cycle that has been going something like this: mischief related reading (normally embedded or real time computing)->paleo related reading->Mexican/immigration politics & history->mischief related reading. I couldn't take too much time between getting back to the mischief related reading since I am cramming as much into my brain as fast as I can, yet still I needed a mental rinse between each lathering so to speak. Hence, Krauze's tome is simply too long at this point.

On the other hand, Castenada's Ex Mex seemed the right length and was explicitly on the immigration issue and written from the Mexican point of view. So! I picked it up and read it as soon as the next cycle came around. Unfortunately, I am very disappointed with the book. Taking a line from my wife as she learns how to appease her English profs, the book was super-repetitious. It kept looping through the same information in different chapters. At times I could swear I was reading the exact same text as from a previous chapter. Perhaps this is a writing style in Spanish, IDK, but since I don't - to my everlasting shame - read Spanish, I can't say. However, when rendered into English, its pretty awkward and makes for a unpleasant read. The total amount of original information contained in the book, and that which is worth making the effort to read, could have been contained in a single, much smaller essay or magazine article.

That said, there are bits that are interesting and worth reading. None of the books I've read to date on Mexican history touched much on the Bracero Program. In fact, I barely knew it existed, nevermind that it was a 'bitter' experience for Mexicans. Castenada highlights this and points out that the idea of a guest worker program is nothing new. I'm not really fond of the idea because of my liberal-ish thoughts that this would lead to the same problems that have arisen elsewhere (frex, the Turks in Germany).

One tidbit that I hadn't heard before is that there is a strong opinion among demographers, according to the author, that somewhere between 2016-2022, the immigration flow will largely stop. Huh?! I hadn't heard that before. My own head in sand? Or something that people in the political debate just didn't want to discuss? The reasons are pretty good that they argue this. The reason is that fertility is continuing to fall in Mexico just as it is all over the world and not just in the first world countries. Virtually all nations are falling to or below replacement levels. Mexico is no exception (fwiw, amusingly, the US is one notable exception). If the trends hold true, Mexicans will reach a population growth that matches their job growth somewhere between 2016-2022. At that point the economy will provide enough jobs and wages that immigration pressure will fall off and probably end completely. That's interesting. I have to think through whether or not I buy it. Castaneda isn't sure he buys it. Even so, it's worth pondering.

One of the other points that make me take notice is that the Mexicans have a looooong history of coming to US illegally and the government - and Americans in general - just looking the other way. When Americans state that we are a nations of laws and that Mexicans, if they want to come here, should follow the rules, the Mexicans have a "huh!? What rules?!" The reason being that even though we had a set immigration policy, when it came to the Mexicans, we haven't enforced it, almost ever[1], over the course of one hundred years plus that the illegal immigration has been happening. Therefore, it has seemed and still does to the Mexicans that they had a special status, a special unsaid exemption and that those of us that talk of the "Rule of Law" are hypocrites. In some ways, they have a point, but only in some. We ought to acknowledge that we shouldn't have done that and that we did, but work to improve the situation, imo.

There's more in the book, but for the most part, I can't say a lot of it was that original. There bits (Mexicans have swung wildly from condemning anyone that leaves Mexico as traitors to declaring them heroes, frex) , pieces (almost ten percent of Mexico's population now resides in the US), and nibbles (Mexico tried in the 1970s to set up cross border cultural associations for the Latinos and Hispanics in the US of Mexican descent, but it failed badly since they viewed themselves as Americans of Mexican descent who loved Mexico, but not Mexican nationals), but by and large I have to say that if you would like to read this one, I'd wait until its in the bargain bin or pick it up used. I felt a bit cheated and disappointed by the book. The insight wasn't that deep. The prose and organization was awkward. The amount of new information, despite being written by the former foreign minister of Mexico, wasn't that large. Alas.

1. Notable exception being Operation Wetback.

Reading & Books Update

I haven't been reading as much as I'd like. Since my last reading update, I've only gotten through three books. My duties as a Papa and spouse have been slowing me down I have to say and long gone are the days of chewing through 3600+ pages a month. Alas. My wife is still astonished at the read I am able to read even so since she has been working on the same pair of books for quite a while now. She hasn't yet mastered the art of squeezing in a few pages at a time whenever she can. Those three books I read were pretty good though even so.

The first was Fastovsky's The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs. It was a good read and I recommend it for anyone that wants to take the step from being a mild to moderate dinosaur enthusiast on the road to a more serious student. However, should you be someone that was already a knowledgeable person, I'd skip this one. You probably know all that's contained therein.

The second book was Preston and Dillon's Opening Mexico. It covers a lot of the evolution of Mexico's politics over time. It bridged a lot of the happenings since the previous book I read about Mexico's politics, Distant Neighbors, was written around 1984 to Vincente Fox's administration. Noel, your books are on the lost. Just needed a little more general info before I delved into what I assume to be deeper works. I do recommend the book. I have been finding I am actually a bit embarrassed that I know so little about our neighboring countries compared to, oh, say, Rome. Or Germany. Or Russia.

A slight tangent here: after doing all that reading about Mexico and how the PRI authoritarian system worked, trappings of democracy w/o the substance, etc. I did realize that there was an interesting parallel in a another nation's unfolding evolution: Russia. The system that Putin seems to be working on there smacks of what the Mexicans did. I'll have to keep watching - and reading! - to see if the parallel holds true. Of course, it'll be a bit more Slavic flavored in its recipe than Latino, but...the shoe, it looks like it fits, at least for the moment.

The last book I finished was The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. That was a very fast read. It was mostly purely new knowledge for me since I am not that up on the genetic aspects of biology. Oh, I know some, but most of my knowledge is a tad dated. When I read Out of Thin Air, I brought up the surprising crocodilian evolution aspect. I emailed the guys at GNXP at the time - this was before I stopped reading - asking whether or not there might not be 'genetic scars' that could be identified one way or another as a way to test the hypothesis. I didn't hear back. However, upon reading tMotF, I found that my 'genetic scars' are technically called 'pseudogenes' or as the author calls them in the book, 'fossil genes.' They're also quite common in species studied to date. Us included. A way to verify of the idea of archosaurs were basally endothermic would be to compare the genes in birds related to metabolism and those in crocodiles. If there were pseudogenes that matched up in crocs with our avian friends, then there would be solid evidence about the metabolic rate for the dinosaurs as well as testing the above hypothesis. The crocodile genome mapping only recently - this year I think - got under way and there are several efforts to map the genomes of birds already, so there ought to be some information in the relatively near future to start doing research with.

At the moment, I am reading a rather different book, Russia's Far East: A Region at Risk. I get the distinct feeling I'd get more out of it if I had more than the first couple economics classes. I'm about a 1/6th done with it, but it is interesting though. I'm in the midst of the 1998 banking crisis within the book. We'll see home this goes. It's an interesting comparison between this book and the thesis of Siberian Curse. The authors of the book I am reading now are arguing what's needed to develop the far east. SC was arguing that market forces would end up not developing it nor should they. Since my wife is off on her anniversary gift trip to the Bahamas this week, I am sure to be able to read this one and start on the ones I have left and just ordered.

I made out like a bandit this XMas with books. My wife got me a very nice gift card and my uncle did too. Therefore, I went wild buying books. From the paleo side of things, I picked up Polar Dinosaurs of Australia (as an update), After the Dinosaurs, Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems, Supercontinent, Principles of Paleoclimatology, and The Eocene-Oligocene Transition. Related to what Julia did for me, I picked up Designing Embedded Hardware, Programming Embedded Systems, and An Embedded Software Primer. Makes ya wonder what I am up to, eh, Julia? ;)

I also want to pick up Continents and Supercontinents and maybe a book on Puerto Rico, another paleo book, something Byzantine, or maybe Greenspan's book. Not sure. I still have two books on Mexico to read. I need to order more on the KT Event to do the write up on that mass extinction. We'll see.

Gift cards from bookstores are my favorite gifts these days. ;)

Update: Whoops! I forgot that my cousin gave me a copy of His Dark Materials.

Take One Down...

Tancredo is going to bail.

WOOO!

UPDATE: Then he endorses Romney.