Poll: How well do immigrants assimilate?
August 25th, 2008, 11:21 am · 4 Comments · posted by Erin Carlyle
The question of how well immigrants adapt to American culture often lies at the heart of the conversation and debate over immigration — especially illegal immigration.

Now a 10-year study of 3,000 children of immigrants in New York says that second-generation immigrants — in this case Dominicans, Russians, South Americans, Chinese, and West Indians — are assimilating so effectively that they are doing well not only compared to their parents, but also to native-born groups.

The study has been turned into a book, Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, by the professors at Harvard and the City University of New York. We thought you’d be interested in this study because the issue of assimilation has been very controversial when we’ve written about it before.


According to NPR, most of the people interviewed were children of immigrants who came here illegally 20 to 30 years ago. Most in the second generation, NPR reported, are fluent in English and working in the mainstream economy.

When they looked at economic and educational achievement, the researchers discovered that West Indians were doing better, in general, than African-Americans; Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans; and the Chinese and the Russians were doing as well as or better than native-born whites.

In case you missed it, I wrote last month about Leo Chavez, a UCI anthropologist, who conducted research focusing specifically on the assimilation of Latino immigrants in Orange County. Though his work was not comparing the educational and economic accomplishments of Latinos, his argument is basically similar: the children of immigrants assimilate.

Chavez claims that Latinos are like any other immigrant group – each subsequent generation adapts more and more to American culture.

For some reason, our story on Chavez’s research made a lot of you angry. Many of you said that he had an agenda. Many of you mistrusted his work and said he was biased.

A handful of you said you liked what he had to say.

What I’d like to know is, how do you feel about the results of this new study? Are you willing to believe that the children of these immigrants assimilate than you were to believe Chavez’s research?

Do you think second-generation immigrants assimilate?
Yes - there is no reason not to accept the study 3823% of all votes
No - the researchers have an agenda and can't be trusted 9860% of all votes
I don't know - I need more info 2817% of all votes
Total Votes: 164

Started: August 25, 2008
Related stories:

Listen to or read the NPR story on the new book: Inheriting the City
Are Latinos a Threat to the U.S.?
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