In 2004, the late Harvard political science professor Sam Huntington made the argument that recent immigrants, particularly Hispanics, weren’t assimilating well into American society. He worried that the descendants of present-day immigrants wouldn’t follow the same upwardly mobile trajectory as the descendants of earlier arrivals from Europe. Fears like these often stoke anti-immigrant sentiments, especially during a time when the percentage of immigrants approaches 14 percent of the U.S. population, according to the most recent data. But a new study indicates that the majority of present-day immigrants and their children may be making real progress toward achieving their American dreams.
The key appears to be education because higher educational attainment is associated with economic success, social status, better health, family stability, and life opportunities. Generally speaking, the more years in school and the more degrees earned, the better.
Two economists from the University of Colorado and the University of Texas at Austin studied data from a monthly survey conducted by the Census Department and the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2003 through 2016 and found that U.S. immigrants are actually relatively well-educated. In a working paper distributed this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, they documented that most immigrant groups either arrived with high levels of education or their U.S. born children quickly met or exceeded the schooling level of the typical American. A big exception to this pattern are immigrants from Mexico, who number more than 11.5 million and are the largest foreign-born population in the U.S.
Read more at The Hechinger Report: http://hechingerreport.org/most-immigrants-outpace-americans-when-it-comes-to-education-with-one-big-exception/