Talk:Immigrant paradox in the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rsr788.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:51, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Editing page
Hello, Wikipedia community! I will be editing and expanding this page over the next few weeks as part of a class project.Rsr788 (talk) 04:14, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Infobox map.
Utterly useless without an explanation of what each colour indicates. Well done, Wikipedia... 86.131.45.198 (talk) 09:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Hello, if you click to enlarge the image it shows a legend of what each color means. I was unsure as to how to include the legend in the image caption with proper formatting (I'm still quite unfamiliar with the wiki coding language and copy-pasting in the regular editor messes up the formatting). If you know how and would like to help that would be much appreciated! Rsr788 (talk) 16:04, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I've added a note in the caption requesting that viewers enlarge the image if they wish to see the legend. I hope that is satisfactory. Rsr788 (talk) 16:15, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

First sentence - recent and first-generation immigrants
The delineation between recent and first-generation immigrants is appropriate (even though it may seem redundant) because (1) recent immigrants outperform more-established first-generation immigrants and subsequent generations on many outcomes. (2) First-generation immigrants, regardless of recency of arrival in the host society, outperform subsequent generations of immigrants. I feel that upon reading the entirety of the article one can see that this delineation is useful and appropriate, and is not actually redundant.

Also, apologies for round-about wording in the lead. I am accustomed to using a certain writing style and to me the way the lead is currently written (i.e., rather than saying "is the phenomenon by which") sounds choppy, but understand if this is incompatible with Wikipedia standards. Rsr788 (talk) 00:09, 6 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for discussing on Talk. The lead as currently written ("recent and/or first-generation immigrants often outperform more established first-generation immigrants...") is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, the term "first-generation immigrant" is ambiguous, as discussed in Immigrant generations. Secondly, "and/or" is almost always unnecessary outside of legal writing: saying that a laptop is "heavy or bargain-priced" in everyday language does not exclude laptops which are both heavy and bargain-priced. Third, saying that "first-generation immigrants often outperform more established first-generation immigrants" is saying that FGIs in general outperform established FGIs, where what we want to say is that non-established (i.e. recent) immigrants outperform established FGIs.
 * That's why I think the phrasing "recent immigrants often outperform more established immigrants..." is better.
 * Re writing style, I'm very much a follower of Strunk and White:
 * Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. --
 * Also, I'm not sure what "by" means here. Consider "The immigrant paradox is the phenomenon by which X outperform Y, despite Z." Let's try unwrapping the "by which" clause. We get: X outperform Y, despite Z, by the phenomenon of immigrant paradox. Is it really "by" that phenomenon? If we didn't want to put "immigrant paradox" at the beginning of the sentence, we could say: X outperform Y, despite Z; this is the immigrant paradox". Would you say "this phenomenon is the immigrant paradox"? --Macrakis (talk) 17:19, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I see what you are saying. If I understand what you mean, then the sentence would look like this: "Recent immigrants often outperform more established immigrants on a number of health-, education-, and conduct- or crime-related outcomes, despite the numerous barriers they face to successful social integration," rather than this: "Recent immigrants often outperform more established immigrants, subsequent generations, and/or non-immigrants on a number of health-, education-, and conduct- or crime-related outcomes, despite the numerous barriers they face to successful social integration."

Also, I would say both "this is the immigrant paradox" and "this phenomenon is the immigrant paradox," both sound fine to me. In any case, I'm okay with how it's written currently :) Rsr788 (talk) 18:35, 7 December 2017 (UTC)