Could Tom Tancredo Have Been… Wrong?

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…