The Real Menace

Tom Schaller brings us the cutting edge in anti-immigration arguments, the onrushing Mexican hordes are making us short:

This list I found online shows America already dropping to 27th in average adult male height by 2006, behind most of Europe and -- get this -- Iraq, which ranks 21st! Of course, with all the discussion of how immigration is adversely affecting the country, I wonder if the new study accounts for the decline in average height attributable to the arrival of millions of Mexicans and other Latin Americans who, on average, are shorter. No Latin American country ranks higher than 37th (Uruguay), and Mexico is 51st. (I once recall playing a pickup basketball game in Peru, ranked 39th, where I was basically a power forward. As Borat would say: “Niiiiiice.”)

From a sports perspective, it's interesting that the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries -- all full of tall people -- are places where basketball doesn't really seem to have taken off. One imagines that if that portion of Europe showed the level of enthusiasm for hoops that you see in Spain or Greece, it'd probably generate quite a few more players.

Photo by Flickr user Mr TGT used under a Creative Commons license