Immigrants Are Fitting In More Quickly, Mexicans Lag Behind
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Andres Viglucci, McClatchy-Tribune, May 18, 2008
A wide-ranging and provocative new study of immigrants’ integration into U.S. society has concluded that newcomers today are assimilating more quickly than their predecessors did 100 years ago—with Cubans, Vietnamese and Filipinos among those leading the way.
The study, conducted by a Duke University economist and published last week by the Manhattan Institute, a free-market-oriented conservative think tank in New York City, seeks to break new ground on one of the most contentious topics in the debate over immigration—the question of how the immigrant stream of the past 25 years is jelling with its sometimes wary host.
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Mexicans—by far the most numerous nationality—lag significantly behind other big immigrant groups, possibly because a lack of legal status keeps many Mexican immigrants from advancing.
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Economic, cultural, civic
The study, based on U.S. Census Bureau and survey data, considered assimilation as of 2006 on three fronts—economic, cultural and civic—and assigned each immigrant group a number ranging from zero to 100 that indicates how similar its members are to native-born Americans. The higher the number is, the more assimilated the group.
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Though Cubans scored well above the national average of 28 on Vigdor’s assimilation index, other principal nationalities in Miami, including Haitians, Brazilians and Nicaraguans, pulled down the local score.
The study—”Measuring Assimilation in the United States”—is meant to inform the immigration debate and makes no recommendations, Vigdor [Jacob L. Vigdor] said Monday.
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Rising numbers
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Critics of the influx often compare current newcomers unfavorably to their counterparts in the previous great wave of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contending the newest immigrants fail to assimilate.
Vigdor’s conclusion appears to undercut that argument, while highlighting issues such as Mexican immigrants’ markedly slower assimilation.
The study found that today’s newcomers are at this point less integrated than their counterparts 100 years ago. That’s likely because those immigrants a century ago were largely European, with one of the largest groups coming from England, and thus started out with cultural and economic levels closer to that of native-born Americans.
By contrast, today’s newcomers, who are mostly from Asia and Latin America, start off further behind, Vigdor said.
But today’s immigrants are making faster progress. As a result, even as immigration has skyrocketed, assimilation has remained stable, Vigdor concluded. “This is something unprecedented in the United States,” he said.
Immigrants are integrating rapidly on the economic and civic fronts—that is, in terms of income, education and naturalization and military service, among other factors. But they are doing so more slowly in cultural terms—in learning English and intermarrying with the native-born.
That may in part reflect the difficulty immigrant adults have in learning English, as well as pressures among the newly arrived to marry within their group, Vigdor said.
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Children who arrive before age 5 become indistinguishable from native-born children along economic, cultural and civic lines as they grow into adulthood—with the exception of Mexicans.
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(Posted on May 19, 2008)
Comments
I’m not surprised that Cubans lead the way in assimilation. If we concentrate on the first wave that came here in the early-to-mid 1960’s, we’re talking about the most European of citizens in all of Latin America.
Posted by Ed at 6:10 PM on May 19
One of the most infuriating experiences of my long and varied career was working for a semester as a “bilingual aide” in an elementary school. I was a bit older and quite a lot more educated than most of the teachers, who seemed very wary of me. Mainly, I was curious to find out once and for all whether or not bilingual education was a waste of time.
There was a Japanese kid, a couple of Chinese, a chubby Korean, and several hundred Mexicans. The Asian kids got no bilingual education, and they were out playing and interacting in English. The Mexican kids hung together and spoke Spanish all the time.
“Bilingual”, apparently, meant Spanish speaking. When I asked about this, all I got was that close-mouthed, blank-faced, paranoid look so characteristic of the politically correct crowd. An elementary school is for all intents and purposes a hostile work environment for any white male anyway, and I soon satisfied my curiousity and moved on.
Posted by generalquagmyer at 8:56 PM on May 19
I hate to spoil the party here, but the author of this study was a guest on the Laura Ingraham radio show this morning, and said that the reason Mexicans weren’t “assimilating” is that many of them are illegal, and thus are afraid to come out of the shadows. The obvious solution is amnesty, so that nobody will be afraid to “assimilate.” The author is a supposed conservative with a supposedly conservative think thank.
For her part, Miss Ingraham (another “conservative,”) bragged that the daughter she just adopted from Guatemala is indeed assimilating into American culture, because the daughter loves Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants. What a way to define American culture, the first cartoon character speaks Spanish half the time, and the other one is a cubic sponge.
Meaning that both “conservative” and “assimilate” don’t mean quite what they used to mean.
Posted by Question Diversity at 10:10 PM on May 19
>>>Immigrants are integrating rapidly on the economic and civic fronts—that is, in terms of income, education and naturalization and military service, among other factors. But they are doing so more slowly in cultural terms—in learning English and intermarrying with the native-born.
Little wonder, with all the government handouts and perks directed at them.
And where were they when our fathers and forefathers were doing the hard work of founding and building this nation??
Now they can’t wait to get over here, since the hard work’s been done, and lap up the gravy. And most Americans are either too dumb, lazy, complacent or brainwashed to put a stop to it.
Posted by James at 10:51 PM on May 19
You know, with so many areas of our once-great land now dead or in desperate need of restoration and repair, it’s amazing that a country should regard further immigration as desirable.
This is like a family whose house is falling down and whose children are poorly dressed and malnourished planning an expensive trip to the Holy Land. The priorities of the press and government here are insane and beggar the imagination.
Posted by at 11:30 PM on May 19
“Mexicans—by far the most numerous nationality—lag significantly behind other big immigrant groups, possibly because a lack of legal status keeps many Mexican immigrants from advancing”
Mexicans don’t assimilate because they don’t have to. There numbers are so numerous, they can continue to basically live in a mexican culture here in the US. Also, most of the mexican immgrants are uneducated and at the bottom of mexican society whereas others tend to be more educated when they get here.
Posted by kc at 6:24 AM on May 20
The facts stated in the article above are simple to explain: only the most intelligent (and at least moderately affluent) Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos immigrate into the US, while only the most simple-minded and low-class Mexicans immigrate, the more intelligent Mexicans staying at home, because they are already rich and have a better life in Mexico than they’d have in the US.
Posted by herman at 7:37 AM on May 20
There is a nation just to the south of the United States to whose culture Mexicans are perfectly assimilated, and that is where they should live, voluntarily or otherwise.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 10:20 AM on May 20
“only the most intelligent (and at least moderately affluent) Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos immigrate into the US”
Not true with the Filipinos. Filipinos are a mixed lot, you have the relatives (ALL RELATIVES) of the military men, the nurses and teachers. The US military bases are in one of the poor provincial town, so the relatives are mostly poor. But look at the Filipinos now, on top of the Asian ladder here in the US, most productive ethnicity in the US, a big percentage of them are in the workforce. Just look at that Filipino guy in black eyed peas. He’s partly black yet instead of feeling sorry for himself for being an outcast, he made something of himself.
So please dont excuse anyone by saying, he’s too black, he’s too poor or whatever. Hardwork will get you somewhere.
Posted by Joanne at 3:34 PM on May 20
Mexicans don’t want to assimilate. Ask them.
Posted by at 9:08 PM on May 20
I find this article pretty suspicious. I find it hard to believe that some of those SE Asian nationalities are assimilating as well as they claim. It is not as if we are speaking of Japanese people.
Posted by Courtney at 12:39 AM on May 21
Houston is ‘blessed’ with a large population of mostly illegal Mexican immigrants, being a ‘sanctuary’ city. Well, today’s Houston Chronicle ran an interesting front-page story, as if we haven’t heard more than enough about what kind of trash Mexicans really are…
Camillo Garza BEAT HIS 3-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO DEATH! Because the child was too slow in learning to use the potty. But like El Presidente Grande, Jorge Boosch tells us every chance… “Family values don’t stop at the border.” Nor, it would seem, does that endless wave of Mexican crime — crimes of every conceivable type and description!
Posted by Fed Up at 7:37 AM on May 21