In happiness surveys, Latin America does pretty well -- I think as a region it comes out on top.
This is contentious, but for most of the immigrants, they didn't move because the culture was more enjoyable here. Most of the Latin American immigrants had ther livelihood strip from them in two stages: one, from general industrialization pressures that have affected practically every country, forcing specialization into cash crops to compete, two, increasing competition from the USA and other countries, coupled with crop failures endemic to semi-arid areas.
The few areas in which modestly educated Latin Americans could reliably compete were in illegal cash crops (for which they had less competition in the USA), which continues to cause economic distruption and criminal activity, and manual labor. Those forced into either business might have better chances in the USA, but on the whole they're happy countries. When you're there, you can feel it.
As for success and low IQs, if I recall correctly, someone got the bright idea of testing Caltech professors while Feynman was there -- this may have been prompted after he won the nobel prize, and found out his score from highschool was 125. When they tested the professors, the scores were surprisingly low. I forget who it was, but someone got to make a big deal of his 105 score, since it was three points higher than Feynman's.
My point is that these measures can be stunningly irrelevant, and, if so, while they might have some utility for, say, selecting an undergraduate class, they are often best ignored by an individual when it comes time to decide what one is capable of.
This is contentious, but for most of the immigrants, they didn't move because the culture was more enjoyable here. Most of the Latin American immigrants had ther livelihood strip from them in two stages: one, from general industrialization pressures that have affected practically every country, forcing specialization into cash crops to compete, two, increasing competition from the USA and other countries, coupled with crop failures endemic to semi-arid areas.
The few areas in which modestly educated Latin Americans could reliably compete were in illegal cash crops (for which they had less competition in the USA), which continues to cause economic distruption and criminal activity, and manual labor. Those forced into either business might have better chances in the USA, but on the whole they're happy countries. When you're there, you can feel it.
As for success and low IQs, if I recall correctly, someone got the bright idea of testing Caltech professors while Feynman was there -- this may have been prompted after he won the nobel prize, and found out his score from highschool was 125. When they tested the professors, the scores were surprisingly low. I forget who it was, but someone got to make a big deal of his 105 score, since it was three points higher than Feynman's.
My point is that these measures can be stunningly irrelevant, and, if so, while they might have some utility for, say, selecting an undergraduate class, they are often best ignored by an individual when it comes time to decide what one is capable of.