For people who immigrate to the US from a reasonable or well off quality of life, they are often less risk averse in the US than your average US citizen from my sampling.
Many take risks to start businesses, make big purchases, pursue a novel career and so on. These are often fairly large financial risks, many with bankruptcy as an option, and I often ask what their backup plan is should their risky endeavor fail. I often hear some quick poorly thought out plan and after a few more questions, the real backup plan emerges: or I'll just go back home.
If you're not fleeing dire conditions, many immigrants come to the US to gamble for an opportunity to great success. If they succeed, they stay, if they fail, they go home. I had several immigrant friends that did just this. The vast majority now live back in their home countries and based on their social media, they seem to be doing quite well there. The few who have stayed are doing markedly better than they did in their home countries, jumping several socioeconomic brakets.
But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American? And if it's smth like ability, then how is it not well deserved? :)
> But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American?
They did not. They self-selected from largely good opportunities at home which they leveraged into good opportunities in the US.
Successful indian-americans are not generally dalit. In fact relatively few indian americans originate from lower-caste families.
And there are too many different kinds of american poor to average them. Who is the "average poor american"? A black american? A native american? A resource or industry-cursed white? An invalid vet? The opportunities, or lack thereof, are different for all of them.
1) Where do you derive the data about "largely good opportunities at home"? Also, what does caste have to do with anything? The actual economic opportunity, quality of education, etc. is what should be compared.
2) Even in the less-dysfunctional countries like India or Russia, an average person makes much less money and receives far less assistance from the state than an average US poor, especially as far as "opportunities" go. Look up the numbers; for a nice example my family made less money per year than the yearly govt spending on an average public school student in the US.
There are some types of poverty in the US that could be explained by bad luck, like being disabled, sure. The other ones using hardship as an excuse just make me laugh.
Like, as far as I recall, Nigerian Americans are one of the best educated immigrant groups, far above US-born whites. You cannot seriously claim they face less racism than US-born African-Americans, or that they experienced less hardship in Nigeria; on top of that they also have the difficulties that immigrants face. Sure, they may self-select - but that's exactly my point - any advantage these self-selecting individuals have, they deserve - probably twice over.
Most American poor are vastly more "privileged" (I don't like the word, but it fits) than almost anyone else in the world. But they waste the opportunity, for whatever reason.
