Manhattan Institute developed an assimilation test in 2006 to measure
assimilation to the US by country. Liberal excuse maker Bret Schulte wrote the
Liberal admission and rebuttal below: Mexican Immigrants Prove Slow to Fit In, Why Mexicans assimilate at rates
lower than newcomers from other parts of the world. By Bret Schulte 5/15/08
(USN&WR)
- IN THE HEART
OF California's iconic Orange County—home to Disneyland and the
bourgeois teens of MTV's Laguna
Beach—is troubled Santa Ana. The county seat of 353,000, where
nearly 6out of every 10 adults over age 25 lack a high school diploma, suffers
from crippling poverty and an explosion in crime. In 2004, the Nelson A.
Rockefeller Institute of Government placed Santa Ana at the very top of its
Urban Hardship Index—officially dubbing it worse off than Miami, Detroit,
Cleveland, and Newark, N.J. With 76 percent of its population Hispanic, mostly Mexican
immigrants, Santa Ana is the poster child for the troubles of the country's
immigration policies and of Mexican immigrants in particular.
Now, a new study lays bare what sociologists and others have
long argued: Mexican immigrants are assimilating to life in the United States
less successfully than other immigrants. Sponsored by the conservative
Manhattan Institute think tank, "Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the
United States" by Jacob Vigdor, a professor of public policy studies and
economics at Duke University, introduces a novel assimilation index that uses
census and other survey data to measure how similar select immigrant groups are
to native-born Americans. Using such factors as intermarriage, English ability,
military service, homeownership, citizenship, and earnings, Vigdor assembled a
100-point assimilation index. The closer to 100, the more assimilated an
immigrant group. Overall, the report shows immigrants are weaving into the
American fabric at a remarkable clip, despite arriving poorer and knowing less
English than immigrants of a century ago. And they are gaining speed, with new
arrivals assimilating faster than those who came more than 20 years ago. With a
score of 53, Canadians are the most assimilated, followed closely by Filipinos,
Cubans, and Vietnamese. The main outlier: Mexicans, with a score of 13—followed
by Salvadorans.
Why Mexicans are faring so poorly in the United States is
complicated, experts say. But the root of the problem is no surprise: Many
Mexicans are here illegally, depriving them of rungs on the economic ladder and
the opportunity to gain citizenship. "There are certain jobs or certain
services you just can't get [as an illegal immigrant]," Vigdor says.
"There are plenty of indications here that for those Mexican immigrants
who are interested in making a more permanent attachment to the United States,
their legal status puts very severe barriers in that path."
Since the 1990s, Mexicans' immigrant story has differed from
that of their peers. When comparing Mexicans and Asians, "Asians show up
with a lot more money, oftentimes," notes Dowell Myers, a demographer at
the University of Southern California. "They have a higher education to
begin with, and many of them are entrepreneurs." Past decades saw influxes
of refugees from countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. Today's Asian
immigrants are some of the best and brightest, which puts them on a faster
track to assimilation via economic success.
The Asian experience recalls a general rule of today's immigrants.
The farther you have to migrate, the wealthier you probably were in your
country of origin. "Poor people can't afford a plane trip across the
ocean, but poor people can walk across the border," Myers says. "Poor
Africans and poor Chinese can't do it." Because of their proximity to the
United States, poor Mexicans can make the trip. Indeed, their poverty impels
them to risk the border crossing. But when they arrive, they arrive
significantly disadvantaged, and they often qualify for jobs that offer little
opportunity for social advancement. Other factors may also contribute but are
more difficult to quantify: The leading contender is that the sheer number of
Latinos in the United States has created a subculture that slows assimilation.
Indeed, in a unique multigenerational study spanning four
decades, Generations of Exclusion, sociologists Edward Telles
and Vilma Ortiz found that many immigrants and their children had made slow
progress assimilating for cultural and economic reasons. A large community
means a large dating pool: Only 17
percent of third-generation Mexicans studied had married non-Hispanics. The
authors found adult Mexican-Americans in the third and fourth generations lived
in more segregated neighborhoods than they did as youths, largely because of
the many new immigrant arrivals. Educational levels, meanwhile, lagged behind
the national average. However, English ability was nearly universal, even among
first-generation immigrants, which should ease the concerns of some lawmakers
who want to make English the natural language. Significantly, though, 36
percent of fourth-generation Mexican-Americans studied could still speak
Spanish.
Perhaps most telling: Of the approximately 1,500 surveyed in two
distinct immigrant communities—Los Angeles and San Antonio—most identified as
"Mexican" or "Mexican-American" even into the fourth
generation. It's that kind of cultural signifier that has so many white
Americans concerned that this is a group not interested in becoming American.
Ortiz says her interviews demonstrated that that was not the
case. She argues that the above factors, especially segregated neighborhoods,
"all probably lead to a stronger sense of identification of being Mexican
or Mexican-American," she says. "The fact that they are maintaining a
sense of Mexicanness is to some extent a reaction to how American society
doesn't fully accept Mexican-origin folks." The continued ethnic
identification is similar to that of other groups that have felt oppression
from the majority, African-Americans and American Indians among them. Rubén
Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at the University of California-Irvine, notes
that "the people who have been most ostracized, stigmatized, and
racialized...assert that now with pride, and they dig in their heels, and they
become that which they had been labeled pejoratively."
Rumbaut, a leading researcher in immigrant studies, argues that
assimilation is like a tango. Each party has to avoid stepping on the other's
toes. "Assimilation, unlike acculturation...includes how they are welcomed
or not by native groups," he says. In one study that included members of
77 nationalities, Rumbaut asked participants if they agreed that the United
States was the best country in the world. Those most likely to agree were
Vietnamese and Cubans or those who had benefited from refugee assistance. The
least likely were Haitians, Jamaicans, and others with black skin "who
bore the brunt of racial discrimination in their adoptive society,"
Rumbaut says. "The moral of the story is you reap what you sow. I see
assimilation as a relationship and not some robotlike process of adaptation to
a new environment that takes place only on the part of the assimilated."
The fact is that despite all this, Mexican immigrants and their
children are advancing. That's because just about every immigrant, no matter
what the country of origin, is here to work. "Couch potatoes don't emigrate,"
Rumbaut says. Indeed, Mexican immigrants start with nearly nothing "but
actually climb more than Asians do," Myers points out. "The Mexican
immigrants are the poorest of immigrants, by and large, but the majority become
homeowners in the United States." That includes the folks here illegally.
Myers calls that a far better measure of assimilation than self-identifiers
such as "Mexican" or Mexican-American." He likens that to New
Yorkers in Los Angeles rooting for the Yankees. "They wave the Mexican
flags...but these are the same people who will enlist in the U.S. Army and be
proud about it. Their identity is a composite of their heritage and current
loyalty."
Rumbaut points out further, if less positive, proof of
assimilation. Over time, Mexican immigrants and their children are more likely
to become obese and get divorced. The incarceration levels of subsequent
generations also spike. "That is a part of feeling more comfortable. Now
you don't have to act like a guest," he says. "There are a lot of ways
that becoming American is negative."
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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