Hispanic Immigrants Differ From Those At Ellis Island
Hispanic Immigrants Differ From Those At Ellis Island
37 CommentsBy MICHAEL BARONE
Posted 09/22/2014
As Clark notes, there was a lot of upward mobility among these groups — most spectacularly among Jews, but also among Italians, Poles and other minorities who exceeded national income averages by the 1950s. It was matched during these years also by the cumulative but slower upward mobility of Irish Catholics who arrived between the 1840s and 1890s.
The Ellis Islanders, blocked from upward mobility at home, brought to America advantages of genetic endowment and cultural tradition — nature and nurture — which enabled them to move upward unusually rapidly.
Asian immigrants seem to be moving upward similarly today. But not the group that the Census Bureau calls Hispanics.
In my 2001 book, "The New Americans," I predicted that Hispanics would move upward, much as Italians had a century before. That was overoptimistic. There has been little or no upward mobility among third- and fourth-generation Hispanics.
Why the difference? One reason is that current Hispanic immigrants seem to be characterized by economic need rather than second-class status. Immigrants from Mexico and illegal immigrants (mostly from Mexico) are particularly downscale.
The second reason is that the America that welcomes them is no longer a nation with equal citizenship for all, but a nation that shunts them into a special supposedly privileged but also stigmatized minority group.
Anomalously, racial quotas and preferences benefit those never discriminated against in the U.S.
Some preferences have hurt more than helped. Steering mortgages to non-creditworthy Hispanics produced foreclosures and personal tragedies — and a financial crisis.
As author Michael Gonzalez notes, Hispanic advancement has been minimal in California with its high welfare spending and taxes. Hispanics have done better in low-welfare, low-tax, high-economic-growth Texas.
There's an obvious lesson here for immigration policy. Immigration can promote social mobility, but not always.
The U.S. got high-skill immigrants in the Ellis Island period largely by happenstance. Today, Canada and Australia profit from upward mobility because their immigration laws admit only those with high skills. If we want similar results, we should follow their lead.
• Barone is senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, where this article first appeared.
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