Let's Give the Children of Immigrants a Break and Take a Break from Mass Immigration

By Ira Mehlman, FAIR Media Director

A December 7, 2009, article in the Washington Post offers a troubling profile of the children of Latino immigrants in the United States. They are falling farther and farther behind educationally and economically.

"Second-generation Latinos have the highest high school dropout rate - one in seven - of any U.S.-born racial or ethnic group and the highest teen pregnancy rate. These Latinos also receive far fewer college degrees and make significantly less money than non-Hispanic whites and other second-generation immigrants," reports the Post.

The paper goes on to note that given the magnitude of immigration to this country in recent decades, the success or failure of the next generation is of vital importance to all Americans. "Whether they succeed will have consequences far beyond immigrant circles," states the article.

These are precisely the concerns that FAIR has expressed ever since the organization was founded in 1979. Making sure that the children and grandchildren of immigrants succeed in our society has been the stated objective of FAIR's calls for a time out from mass immigration.

While FAIR and others in the immigration reform movement are repeatedly accused of being "anti-immigrant," the reverse is true. Taking a break from the excessive levels of immigration we've witnessed over the past several decades would be the most pro-immigrant policy this country could implement.

We need to reduce the dropout rate among the children of Latino immigrants because doing so is good for everyone. But how do we address the needs of kids who are falling behind at the same time that we are adding millions more through our immigration policies? How do we boost the incomes of second generation Latinos when, as the so-called immigrant advocacy groups insist, we add millions of new workers to compete with them?

Assimilating immigrants and their children and grandchildren into the educational and economic mainstream has never been an easy or quick process. As the Post notes, "to be truly guaranteed a middle-class lifestyle, second-generation Latinos need at least a bachelor's degree - a feat that the last major wave of immigrants, from Eastern and Southern Europe, took three or four generations to achieve."

What has changed significantly since the experience of the last major wave of immigration is that a bachelor's degree has, in most cases, become a prerequisite to achieving middle class status. Earlier waves of immigrants and their descendants first achieved middle class status. Only once they got a firm foothold in the middle class did their kids and grandkids begin routinely earning college degrees.

The jobs that allowed previous waves of immigrants to achieve middle class status without a strong education are quickly disappearing. The age of the highly paid, unionized, assembly line worker in the United States is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Those workers have been replaced by highly sophisticated machines, or low-wage immigrant workers, or the jobs themselves have been outsourced.

Having acknowledged that the children of the largest group of immigrants to the United States are not faring well, the question is what do we do next? For the elitist media, the congressional leadership and the Obama administration the choices are limited to:

• Keep doing what we're doing.
• Vastly increase immigration levels and legalize millions of illegal aliens.
• Throw (borrowed) money at the problem.
• Appoint another commission to study it.
• All of the above.

Or, we could try something not on the above list of options: Reduce our immigration intake and get to work on the critical challenge of making sure that the children and grandchildren of recent immigrants have a chance to succeed in American society, because all of us have a stake in their success.