Emil Kirkegaard: Somalis in the USA: also not a success; on the other hand, they become American citizens are breakneck speed

Excerpt:

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Anyway, what I wanted to write about today is America’s growing Muslim program. Although America doesn’t really need to deliberately import low skill migrants to offset their aging population, they have decided to do so anyway. In particular, let’s look at Somalis. The national IQ of Somalia is about 68, and the population is about 100% Muslim. Since low IQ and Islam are the best predictors of immigrants performing poorly in Western countries, let’s look at whether America has been able to work some kind of magic. First, the numbers:

Somalis are curiously concentrated in 3 states, and about 40% of them live in Minnesota alone, so that’s likely where the best social statistics can be found. As a comparison, here’s the overall economic contribution of Somalis to the Danish economy, as estimated by the Danish government in 2023:

Somalia is the worst performing group covered. Previously, the new arrivals from ‘Syria’ did worse, but they have been improving a bit as they learned how to live in Denmark. The average Somali costs the Danish government, and thus taxpayer, about 130k DKK per year, or about 18k USD per year. The lifetime cost is not calculated, but if they live about 75 years on average, it would be about 1.4 million USD per person (the calculation is more complicated in real life because the numbers above are not age corrected, but cover the population as it is today).

Has America been able to work any magic? A glance at newspapers suggest this is not the case:

Granted, this is a 2009 article, but we can also find a Wikipedia page about Somali gangs in USA, and various government agencies have pages about the problems with Somalis. However, these are not hard numbers. Can we do better? Yes, I was able to find this article about sub-Saharan Africans in USA. Highlights:

• “Meanwhile, Somalis had the lowest levels of educational attainment, with 14 percent holding a bachelor’s degree or higher.”
• “while Somali-headed households had the lowest median incomes ($32,000).”
• “or major origin groups, poverty rates were highest among Somalis (37 percent)”
• “Immigrants from Somalia (68 percent) and Ethiopia (65 percent) had the highest rates of naturalization”
• “South Africans had the lowest rate of being uninsured (8 percent) while Nigerians and Somalis had the highest rates (20 percent and 18 percent, respectively).”
• “Remittances accounted for 35 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Somalia”

So, in other words, Somalis are the worst educated, lowest income, had the highest rate of poverty and being uninsured, and Somalia’s economy runs on migrants sending welfare money back. Finally, they are very eager to gain US citizenship, gaining it at the highest rates. Not mentioned here is that they also reproduce fast:

Their fertility rate was a staggering 5.2 children per woman, only beaten by the literal Amish and ultra-orthodox Jews.

Just as a comparison for the income number (household median), they are poorer than every other group listed on Wikipedia:

Native African Americans have a household income of 48,297, so Somali households are still 34% lower.

Given all of these findings, it is no surprise that local politician Tim Walz is keen on importing more of them as part of “strong moral tradition”.