The Latino Immigrant
Recently my wife, two daughters and I were invited to a home coming party for a middle-aged Latino friend, Angel, who had been away in the Philippines for several months on special military assignment for the United States Air force. The house was packed and we were definitely the non-Latino minority because every grandmother, grandfather, mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, in-law, cousin, niece, nephew and friend was in attendance to welcome Angel home. It was an interesting mix. My demographic instincts took over.
The older first generation folks who were born in Puerto Rico spoke English but with a definite Spanish accent. When they spoke among themselves they seemed to favor speaking Spanish. The second generation, Angel’s counterparts, spoke perfect English with a slight hint of a Spanish accent. The remaining third and forth generation young adults, teens and young children chattered away in English and so I’m told know little or no Spanish. There was of course a young anomaly or two who was a recent arrival who spoke Spanish. I was impressed with how quickly these Latino immigrants assimilate. My German ancestors who came to the States in 1840 took one hundred years to break away from the old culture, but these Latinos seem to have done it in a single twenty year generation. Amazing.
Demography aside, the food was wonderful, indigenous dishes I can’t pronounce but could certainly eat. Desert was cake and ice cream so Angel summoned the entire group into the dinning room for the ceremonious cutting of a huge sheet cake. Then a wonderful thing happened that I would never have expected. The entire family spontaneously sang (belted out) the Star Spangled Banner.
Pew Research just completed an interesting study called:
Latino Children: A Majority are U.S.- Born Offspring of Immigrants. By Richard Fry and Jeffrey S. Passel
Here are a few of the interesting findings that shed light on this dynamic group. Latinos now make up 22% of all kids under the age of eighteen in the United States, up from 9% in 1980. A whopping 52% of the Nation’s 16 million Latino kids are considered second generation, meaning that they are the native born offspring of at least one foreign born parent. The Latino immigration from Mexico, Central and South America began in earnest around 1980 and has only recently tapered off.
About 11% of Latino kids are themselves first generation meaning that they were born outside of the United States and about 37% are third generation meaning that they are U.S. born of U.S. born parents.
Projections by the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that by 2025 nearly three in ten children in the United States will be of Latino ancestry. While on the surface this number might alarm some people it actually is very healthy from a demographic stand point. As immigrants go Latinos bring a lot to the table. They assimilate very quickly, are hard working, have strong family ties and are culturally very compatible with main stream America. It would be difficult to design a better immigrant.
In 2007 there were 4,317,000 babies born in the United States, a record year. Twenty-five percent of those babies were Latino, precipitated by four-teen percent of the U.S. overall population. The United States is the only Western culture and industrialized nation in the world with above replacement level fertility (2.2), thanks to the Latino contribution. This means that unlike Asia or the European Union the United States will have a viable labor force for decades to come.
Kenneth W. Gronbach
5 Comments
Reader Comments (5)
While I can't speak for Mr. Gronbach, I don't read "Assimilate Quickly" to be pejorative. In fact I see it as an arguement against the anti-immigrant camps. Many anti-immigrations groups rally around the fact that most immigrants don't learn English. These facts disupute that claim.
Setting culture aside, the ability to speak English in this country is correlated with better wages and fuller employment.
This idicates to me that the Latin "Assimilation" is a good thing since our new immigrants will be able to contribute to our society, both at work, and culturally.
While my family may have come over prior to the reveloution I recognize that our greatness is due to 300 years of immigration. While many have forgotton their parents and grandparents we really came into our own asking for the world's tired, poor, and huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
While European nations do have issues with balkanization and slow assimilation of immigrant communities, there is substantial evidence of the process of assimilation happening there, even though some resist the process. Even adherance to Islam (extreme or otherwise) is showing signs of weakening but this gets obscured when current first generation immigrants are compaired with current second generations instead of compairing second generation immigrants with their parents. Even North African second generation immigrants who give very conservative answers on oppinion surveys say that their parents were much more conservative and religious than they are.
Assimilation is natural, occurs at different rates under different conditions and adds to both immigrant and host societies.