Thread: It's not your grandfather's assimilation

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/op ... 131405.php

Sunday, May 7, 2006

It's not your grandfather's assimilation
The Americanization of new Mexican immigrants is complicated by many factors

By ALAN BOCK


Let's dispose of a few myths first. The fact that U.S. unemployment is at about 4.8 percent, and the economy continues to grow suggests that illegal immigration is in little danger of taking many jobs from Americans who want them. The fact that immigrants keep coming despite beefed-up border enforcement suggests that there are jobs available to them, that the U.S. economy is healthy enough to absorb them, at least economically. Jeffrey Passel, who heads demographic research at the Pew Hispanic Center, notes that 94 percent of recent immigrant males participate in the work force, compared with 83 percent for native-born males.

I wish we didn't have a welfare state at all, but we do. Passel says low-income immigrants use welfare (as measured by the federal Temporary Aid for Needy Families, formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children) at a lower rate than lower-income native-born Americans. Illegals are not supposed to be eligible at all though some probably use the programs.

If you compare immigrants to the native-born population as a whole, use of welfare is somewhat higher, but Passel says that is because recent immigrants' income levels are lower. The drain on taxpayers is the welfare state itself; immigration is a small factor. It is true, however, that illegal immigrants tend to use hospital emergency rooms and some other health care services more extensively than native-born Americans, and many of those costs are sloughed off onto taxpayers.

I would be open to preventing people who had been in this country less than five years – or what the heck, 10 or 15 – from having access to certain government services.

I suspect it would make little difference, but it would be equitable, in that those who just got here haven't had time to pay taxes for long. But most immigrants, legal and illegal, don't come here to collect welfare – although many will take it, especially if it is marketed aggressively, as it sometimes is. They come to work.

The U.S. economy would hardly collapse without them, but most economists agree with Andrew Sum of Northeastern University, who told CNN's Chris Isidore that economic growth would have been slower the past several years – a half percentage point to 2 percentages points is the educated guess – if illegal immigrants had not been here.

what part of 'illegal'?

I hear lots of people say "what part of illegaldon't you understand?" as if our immigration laws had been handed down by God from Mount Sinai. But these are human-made laws, passed by Congress, an institution whose approval rating, at about 22 percent, is lower even than our president's.

That same Congress back in the 1970s, during an earlier government-induced energy crisis, passed a national speed limit of 55 mph, the penalties for which were more severe than for being an illegal immigrant, which is a civil infraction that carries no criminal penalties beyond potential deportation. I broke the 55 mph speed limit countless times, and I'd warrant that almost every protester against illegal immigration who is old enough to have lived through that era did so as well. What part of illegal didn't we understand?

We understood, if only implicitly, that some laws passed by imperfect human beings turn out to be duds, so out of line with the way people actually live their lives that they simply cannot be enforced without huge financial and social costs – and perhaps not even then. Eventually, when it became obvious even in Washington that the national speed limit did more harm than good and would never be successfully enforced, Congress repealed it.

The failed quotas

The quotas on immigration to the U.S. obviously haven't worked, and we should be grateful. If they had actually kept out willing workers the economy would be less robust, and the cost of living would be higher.

One way to alleviate the pressure these unrealistic laws have created is to increase the quotas, or even, as economists James Doti and Esmael Adibi suggested in these pages a few weeks ago, allow the marketplace rather than politicians and bureaucrats to determine how many immigrants the economy can absorb.

Although opponents of regularizing the status of currently illegal immigrants often cite economic arguments – the influx of aliens is depressing wages, destroying prospects for the American middle class, costing taxpayers money, etc. – I suspect the real reasons have more to do with culture shock and concern about how so many immigrants from one country will impact American society going forward.

People talk about Mexicans at job sites, but what really rubbed many Americans the wrong way was the prevalence of so many Mexican flags at the first pro-immigrant rallies. These seem, on much of the evidence of the rallies, to be people who, far from being eager to become "Americanized," show more loyalty to the country whose dire prospects they escaped than the country that gave them a chance to make better lives for themselves.

This hardly applies to all Mexican immigrants or even to all Mexican illegal immigrants. Many of them are eager to be absorbed by their adopted country and like so many previous waves of immigrants become "200 percent Americans."

But I believe any honest observer must acknowledge that assimilation of these newcomers in the ways that previous waves of immigrants were assimilated could be more difficult than in the past.

Understanding the reasons for these difficulties may not provide instant obvious solutions, but perhaps it can stimulate thought that might lead to amelioration.

The sheer numbers

The first reason, of course, is sheer numbers.

As recently as 1970, Mexico provided only the fourth-largest number of foreign-born Americans, behind Italy, Germany and Canada. There were about 760,000 Mexicans nationals in the United States in 1970, accounting for about 3 percent of the foreign-born. In 2004 there were 10.6 million foreign-born Mexicans here legally, accounting for 31 percent of the foreign-born.

This is not unprecedented. In some years in the late 1800s, Germans or Irish accounted for more than 30 percent of the foreign-born. While more immigrants arrived in the 1990s than in the peak decade of the Great Wave of immigration centered around 1910 (when total U.S. population was around 90 million compared with 280 million or so in 2000), the number of foreign-born as a percentage of the general population was higher in 1910 (14.7 percent) than it was in 2003 (11.7 percent).

It is worth remembering that the first major sociological study, called "The Polish Peasant," predicted that Poles from rural backgrounds would be a permanently unassimilable underclass. It took about two generations for the average income of Polish-Americans to exceed the average income of all native-born Americans.

Mexico is right next door

Another factor that could make assimilation more difficult today is proximity. Immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe had to cross an ocean, which in days of slower travel meant effectively cutting many ties with the Old Country and committing oneself to making it in the New Land, whatever difficulties might arise (and plenty did). Mexico, however, is right next door. Moving back and forth, even for unauthorized immigrants and even with enhanced border enforcement, is easier than back in the day. Improved and cheaper communications make it easier to stay in touch with relatives and friends in Mexico than it was for Italian or Irish immigrants in the 1890s.

Culture clash

California was Mexican before it was annexed by the United States. Therefore, it has a deeply rooted Latino culture that makes it easier for immigrants to enter a Mexican-American subculture, in which it is possible to get by (though hardly at an optimal level) without having to learn English. Yes, there were Italian, German, Irish and Polish neighborhoods in Eastern cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where the language of the Old Country was common, but none quite so large and self-contained as some Hispanic enclaves in California.

Now, American culture, especially pop culture, is powerful and powerfully attractive to many people around the world. The French actually have government bureaus devoted to countering the dire effects of global Americanization. When the Register started hiring more Vietnamese-Americans in the 1980s, I was fascinated to overhear conversations in the cafeteria that sounded like the babblings of a bunch of Valley Girls. The pattern for Mexicans is similar to those of earlier waves of European immigrants: The first generation tends to cling to the old language and the old ways, while second and third generations become increasingly English-proficient (many third-generation immigrants never learn Spanish) and Americanized.

Mexifornia in our future?

If large numbers of new immigrants keep arriving, however, this process of assimilation could be slowed or even reversed. It is not entirely unwarranted to be concerned about the Mexicanization of California. In the process of being assimilated, every wave of immigrants has also changed America. Germans had beer-drinking picnics on Sundays, which shocked many earlier arrivals but eventually became as American as pizza or tacos.

The sheer numbers of Mexicans, if they keep arriving, could have a disparate impact. At 14 percent of the population (for native-born and foreign-born Hispanics combined) they are unlikely to overwhelm the country. But they could make it a more different place than many native-born Americans may find comfortable.

Finally, there's a question of whether the United States, as a culture, still believes in or even understands what made America so unique and such a magnet for immigrants (and the controversy that accompanied them) from the earliest days of our history.

The myth of the 'melting pot'

The "melting pot," in which immigrants shed their old ways and loyalties to become 100 percent Americans, was always more aspiration than reality. Almost every immigrant group has faced discrimination, scorn and hardship before assimilating, and many Americans prefer to hang on to customs and attitudes from the Old Country even after several generations.

But at the turn of the previous century the U.S. was celebrating a long period of growth that had made it a world industrial power, self-consciously proud of itself as a society and eager to "Americanize" new arrivals. American history (sometimes sanitized to be sure) was taught with pride as a story of the determination of heroes to be free. The government schools immersed new arrivals in English in a sometimes merciless, sink-or-swim fashion. Most people swam.

Those immigrants who had self-consciously cut their emotional ties to the Old Country were celebrated and encouraged. The founders, who had created a government based on the Declaration's belief that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," were generally revered. To be an American was to be an individual and an individualist, self-consciously free of tribal, ethnic and parochial ties that had for so long held mankind bound in useless hostility and prejudice.

Today our reigning intellectuals have made a fetish of showing that the founders had feet of clay, in part because they see the structure of limited government they created (and which turns out to be the key to building a free country with endless opportunities) as old-fashioned and not suited to imposing progressive outcomes.

Modern 'multiculturalism'

The modern cult of "multiculturalism" urges new arrivals to demand that the dominant culture accommodate itself to whatever customs and attitudes the latest newcomers bring and not to accommodate themselves to mainstream American culture – despite the fact that most immigrants would rather become more American (whatever that means). This encouragement by self-styled progressives of what amounts to a reversion to tribalism – convenient to certain politicians who see governance as grabbing favors for their constituencies rather than providing a framework of freedom in which each person has the chance to succeed on his or her own merits and hard work – may end up Balkanizing the United States. It could become a place where racial, ethnic or religious ties prevail over both individualistic aspirations and identification with and participation in the larger society – whether the flow of immigrants increases or slows to a trickle.

The United States, almost uniquely among nations, was built on ideas rather than race, ethnicity or even location. The ideas of the Declaration, about unalienable rights, personal freedom, and the limited government established by the Constitution, to be safeguarded by divided state-national sovereignty (federalism) and the executive-legislative-judicial division of power, created a nation freer than any that went before it and therefore more capable of providing opportunity for all who were willing to work hard.

I don't think our public schools – creatures of the modern megastate rather than the Old Republic – understand or teach those ideas well any more. They're more likely to encourage an entitlement mentality. Without those ideas America is just a place, living off the accumulated capital of the time when it was a freer country that understood the nature of freedom and cherished its freedom.

If America is just a place and not a set of ideas and aspirations that new immigrants can understand and pledge their loyalty to, it will have a harder time absorbing this wave of immigrants than was the case in the past. The situation is not hopeless. Despite the worst efforts of our best intellectuals Americans still love freedom (however poorly they may understand it) and act most often as individuals rather than as members of tribes. But the old America that cherished freedom because it understood it may be fading.

AND your point is???

Let's dispose of a few myths first. The fact that U.S. unemployment is at about 4.8 percent, and the economy continues to grow suggests that illegal immigration is in little danger of taking many jobs from Americans who want them

I still argue that point because not all people out of work qualify for unemployment and once your benefits are gone you are no longer counted as part of the un-employed. Not to mention under-employed. I feel that number is way low as well as how many illegals are here.