No Mexican Stand Off
A new RAND Corp. study by economist James P. Smith finds that Hispanic immigrants, including Mexicans (the largest single Hispanic subgroup), move up the American economic ladder as quickly as other immigrant groups.
From RAND's summary:
The descendents of immigrants from Mexico and other Hispanic nations complete substantially more schooling and have higher incomes than the generation before, according an article by Smith published in the May edition of the American Economic Review, the most prestigious and widely read scientific journal in economics.
The advancement up the educational and economic ladder is similar to that seen among earlier generations of European immigrants and leaves third-generation Hispanic descendents only about 10 percent behind their white counterparts in relative incomes, Smith reported.
The generation-to-generation educational gains made by Hispanic men are greater than that seen among native-born white and African American men. However, by the third generation the educational gains appear to drop off as Hispanics begin to look much like the rest of the U.S. population, the RAND research found.
This is good news, of course, even if it confounds anti-immigration types on the one hand and those invested in seeing Hispanics as in continuing, dire need of special assistance on the other.
Smith says a good educational system has played a key role in upward mobility.
Read Glenn Garvin's great 1998 story on bilingual education for one way to improve Hispanic school performance.
And speaking of Garvin–currently the Miami Herald's TV critic–and immigrants, read these two other great pieces by him: "No Fruits, No Shirts, No Service: The real-world consequences of closed borders" and "Bringing the Border War Home: What will Americans pay to keep out immigrants?"
More Reason resources on immigration are here.