Could Tom Tancredo Have Been... Wrong?
David Weigel | May 13, 2008, 9:55am
The Washington Post reports on a new study revealing the quicker and quicker adaptation of immigrants to American norms.
In general, the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the more characteristics of native citizens he or she tends to take on, said Jacob L. Vigdor, a professor at Duke University and author of the study. During periods of intense immigration, such as from 1870 to 1920, or during the immigration wave that began in the 1970s, new arrivals tend to drag down the average assimilation index of the foreign-born population as a whole.
The report found, however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.
"This is something unprecedented in U.S. history," Vigdor said. "It shows that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong."
What left-wing, Soros-and-la-Raza-funded "think tank" belched this out, anyway?
The study, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute...
Oh. Well.
Obviously, a large school of restrictionists believe in restriction as a means of assimiliation. This is an old Peter Brimelow hobby horse: The immigration waves before the 1920s were so successful because the "time out" between then and the 1965 Immigration Act stopped flooding cities with new arrivals who would have retarded the assimiliation of the old arrivals. But if assimiliation is quickening without a strategic pause...
Carter | May 13, 2008, 5:28pm | #
Here are some more highlights:
"The assimilation index is low overall, and has been at a steady low level since 1990. This 16-year period is unique, however, in that it coupled a rapid increase in the immigrant population with virtually no change in the composite assimilation index or its components. Over the past few years, in fact, there has been some evidence of an upward trend in assimilation. Rapid growth of the immigrant population, which would tend to depress the assimilation index on its own, was offset by stronger upward trends in assimilation for immigrants remaining in the United States. These strong upward trends are most obvious along economic and civic dimensions. Cultural assimilation shows less evidence of increasing strongly as immigrants spend more time in this country, except among cohorts arriving within the past decade."
That doesn't sound so good. Neither does this:
"Vietnamese immigrants, taken as a whole, are well on track to be considered successful. Mexican immigrants, by contrast, display much more worrisome patterns." Or this:
"children of Mexican immigrants have had below-average assimilation-index values for the entire period since 1980."
Or this:
"young immigrants born outside of Mexico are less likely to be incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized than natives in the same age group. Among those aged 12–24, the rate in the immigrant population is 1.0%, while in the native-born population it is 1.4%. Thus, the assimilation index treats institutionalization as a distinctively native characteristic. Mexican immigrants, however, have an institutionalization rate of 1.8%."
Or this conclusion:
"As seen in this brief analysis, immigrants born in Mexico and most immigrants groups born elsewhere prove to be on a separate trajectory."
