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May 13, 2008
Immigrant Assimilation — Good News or Bad News? Today’s Washington Post reports “Study Says Foreigners In U.S. Adapt Quickly.” The lead-in sentence is, “Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today [by the Manhattan Inst.].” If you read far enough down in the article to find out that this report raises red flags. “Vigdor [a Duke University professor and author of the study] also said his findings included cause for concern: most notably, the fact that the 2006 assimilation index of 28 is less than the previous low point of 42 in 1920. The difference indicates the substantial change in the composition of today's immigrants compared with earlier immigration waves.” [FAIR Comment: The dichotomy between this headline good news and the red flags sounds like the fact that any group that starts at a very low number does not have to move very far up the scale to be double or triple the starting point, i.e. you only have to add one to one to increase by 100 percent. And it sounds as if the assimilation scale created by the author starts most of today’s immigrants much lower on the scale than earlier immigrants.] Sen. Obama Courts Latinos with Driver’s Licenses According to the head of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), Illegal Alien Raid at Iowa Kosher Meat-Packer A raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents yesterday apprehended about 300 Temporary Workers Denied Transportation IDs "A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied |