Assimilation Crisis

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.

By Rich Lowry

John McCain and Barack Obama both gave speeches at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Washington, 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 U.S. with low levels of education and income, living in ethnic enclaves and clinging to its original culture; then, its children improve their socioeconomic 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 a book-length study called Generations of Exclusion based on extensive survey data of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio beginning in 1965, 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 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. Thereafter, progress gets slower and sometimes reverses.

Consider education. After big initial gains, according to Torres and Ortiz, “Mexican-American schooling remained fairly flat in succeeding generations.â€