Huh?

This is just a ridiculous analogy and would not be worth even a mention if it weren’t for the huge number of commenters (with entertaining things to say) blasting the author’s conclusions and demonstrating the good sense of Americans generally.

Here is Noah Smith’s opening paragraph of Best Immigration Policy Is More Immigration (hat tip: Paul):

In my family, we have a cooking technique that is especially useful for making stews and other mixed-ingredient dishes. If there is ever doubt as to whether or not to add more of an ingredient — onions, olive oil, Cholula sauce — we err on the side of adding more. This approach has long been my default attitude toward immigration — more is better.

There is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about assimilation and whether well-educated immigrants assimilate better than the uneducated.  The author does say that maybe we shouldn’t have so many uneducated ones.  And concludes with this:

So it would seem to be a good idea for us to tilt our immigration policy toward more skills-based immigration. When it comes to the “More!” cooking technique, high-skilled immigrants are the ingredient that goes well with any dish.

Brilliant, isn’t it!

Bloomberg commenters were having none of it.  As of this writing, there are 500 of them.  Some are hilarious!

Here is the latest one (an hour ago as I post this):

Jim:  It’s unbelievable how many idiots there are in the world, and how many of those idiots are in the media profession.

Somalis cook too!

And, LOL!, here is one involving another cooking technique!  Somali refugees in America like cooking too—roast lamb in this case!

Susan Betts (responding to Dave Kelly):

Having been someone that worked with the influx of Somali folks that came in this country in the 90’s these idealistic people have no idea in so far as practical application what they are talking about. Most are very very unskilled, don’t speak English well enough, don’t understand the basics requirements of what a land lord will require of them and don’t care. I had one land lord end his participation in the county program for housing because these people built fires to roast lambs in the middle of the living room and would not stop. It damaged his property so badly that he ended up suing the county. They ignore occupancy laws and many many other things that would take forever to itemize. I think you get my drift. There assimilation was all federal, state and county funded once those dollars were gone it has been a real mess. I am speaking for Ohio and Minnesota.