Post by admin on Jul 11, 2008 12:10:03 GMT -5
This past week we had some discussions similar to what is in this article. I felt this is a well written piece and I put it under schools for a reason. I would hope that not only our schools, but all of our governing entities are paying very close attention to the western and southwestern states who have been dealing with similar issues to ours for far longer. To take a look out west is an eye opener that gives us all reason to expect caution.
www.nypost.com/seven/07112008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_unspeakable_peril_for_latinos_119389.htm
THE UNSPEAKABLE PERIL FOR LATINOS
McCain: Like Obama, dodges the vital question of assimilation.
By Rich Lowry
John McCain and Barack Obama both gave speeches at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Wash ington - and in the 4,600 words they spoke between them didn't mention assimilation once.
Never mind that assimilation is the key to the historic success of American immigration. We all know how it classically works: An immigrant group comes to the US with low levels of education and income, living in ethnic enclaves and clinging to its original culture; then, its children improve their socio-economic lot, and the children-of-the-children get even further ahead, until they are all doctors and lawyers living in the suburbs and recalling the culture of the homeland mainly during holidays or ethnic festivals.
But for the bulk of new Latino immigrants - Mexican-Americans - it's not working this way. In their book-length study "Generations of Exclusion," UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz paint an alarming picture of assimilation proceeding only haltingly and sometimes stalling out entirely.
Telles and Ortiz use extensive post-1965 survey data from Los Angeles and San Antonio to follow four generations of Mexican-Americans. Generally, they find clear progress from the first generation to the second, in educational attainment, income and linguistic and cultural assimilation. But then progress gets slower and sometimes reverses.
Consider education. After big initial gains, Torres and Ortiz found, "Mexican-American schooling remained fairly flat in succeeding generations."
Education affects economic status. "Our findings show a consistent lack of economic progress across generations-since-immigration," they write, and "income and earnings for the fourth generation do not differ significantly from those of the second and third generation." The upshot: "The income inequality between Mexican-Americans and other Americans worsened in most cases between 1970 and 2000."
How about moving out of ethnic enclaves? "The children of the original respondents lived in neighborhoods that were even more Hispanic than the ones they grew up in," they write. High levels of immigration make residential integration more difficult, while weak educational attainment creates a trap: It limits Mexican-Americans' "ability to move out of the barrio, which in turn further reduces other types of assimilation."
Over time, Mexican-Americans have more diverse friendships and intermarry more - two other key indicators of assimilation. But the process is very gradual: "Assimilation in terms of social exposure is so slow that even in the fourth generation most Mexican-Americans continue to have Mexican-origin spouses, live in mostly Mexican neighborhoods, and have mostly Mexican-origin friends."
Telles and Ortiz are hardly right-wingers. They denounce immigration restrictionists as nativists and blame the failures of assimilation on racism. But the logic of their analysis suggests that less immigration would promote assimilation "because opportunities for speaking Spanish, living in barrios, and marrying other persons of Mexican origin would diminish."
They propose a "Marshall Plan" for the public schools. Good luck. Here's a more attainable idea: If we have a population of Americans of Mexican origin who are having trouble getting a firm grasp on the rungs of upward mobility, the last thing we should be doing is importing poorly educated Mexicans to further overwhelm their schools, compete for their jobs and populate their neighborhoods with people even less poorly assimilated than they are.
The fate of Mexican-Americans is crucial to the country. In 1970, one in every 70 US-born children had a Mexican immigrant mother; today it's one in 10. Astonishingly, more than half of these mothers have not graduated high school.
For a frank discussion of any of this, don't look to John McCain or Barack Obama.
www.nypost.com/seven/07112008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_unspeakable_peril_for_latinos_119389.htm
THE UNSPEAKABLE PERIL FOR LATINOS
McCain: Like Obama, dodges the vital question of assimilation.
By Rich Lowry
John McCain and Barack Obama both gave speeches at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Wash ington - and in the 4,600 words they spoke between them didn't mention assimilation once.
Never mind that assimilation is the key to the historic success of American immigration. We all know how it classically works: An immigrant group comes to the US with low levels of education and income, living in ethnic enclaves and clinging to its original culture; then, its children improve their socio-economic lot, and the children-of-the-children get even further ahead, until they are all doctors and lawyers living in the suburbs and recalling the culture of the homeland mainly during holidays or ethnic festivals.
But for the bulk of new Latino immigrants - Mexican-Americans - it's not working this way. In their book-length study "Generations of Exclusion," UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz paint an alarming picture of assimilation proceeding only haltingly and sometimes stalling out entirely.
Telles and Ortiz use extensive post-1965 survey data from Los Angeles and San Antonio to follow four generations of Mexican-Americans. Generally, they find clear progress from the first generation to the second, in educational attainment, income and linguistic and cultural assimilation. But then progress gets slower and sometimes reverses.
Consider education. After big initial gains, Torres and Ortiz found, "Mexican-American schooling remained fairly flat in succeeding generations."
Education affects economic status. "Our findings show a consistent lack of economic progress across generations-since-immigration," they write, and "income and earnings for the fourth generation do not differ significantly from those of the second and third generation." The upshot: "The income inequality between Mexican-Americans and other Americans worsened in most cases between 1970 and 2000."
How about moving out of ethnic enclaves? "The children of the original respondents lived in neighborhoods that were even more Hispanic than the ones they grew up in," they write. High levels of immigration make residential integration more difficult, while weak educational attainment creates a trap: It limits Mexican-Americans' "ability to move out of the barrio, which in turn further reduces other types of assimilation."
Over time, Mexican-Americans have more diverse friendships and intermarry more - two other key indicators of assimilation. But the process is very gradual: "Assimilation in terms of social exposure is so slow that even in the fourth generation most Mexican-Americans continue to have Mexican-origin spouses, live in mostly Mexican neighborhoods, and have mostly Mexican-origin friends."
Telles and Ortiz are hardly right-wingers. They denounce immigration restrictionists as nativists and blame the failures of assimilation on racism. But the logic of their analysis suggests that less immigration would promote assimilation "because opportunities for speaking Spanish, living in barrios, and marrying other persons of Mexican origin would diminish."
They propose a "Marshall Plan" for the public schools. Good luck. Here's a more attainable idea: If we have a population of Americans of Mexican origin who are having trouble getting a firm grasp on the rungs of upward mobility, the last thing we should be doing is importing poorly educated Mexicans to further overwhelm their schools, compete for their jobs and populate their neighborhoods with people even less poorly assimilated than they are.
The fate of Mexican-Americans is crucial to the country. In 1970, one in every 70 US-born children had a Mexican immigrant mother; today it's one in 10. Astonishingly, more than half of these mothers have not graduated high school.
For a frank discussion of any of this, don't look to John McCain or Barack Obama.