Is The American Dream Still Alive For Immigrants?

American Dream Still Alive and Well for Immigrants, Report Says

Economic assimilation remains strong, with greatest rewards for best educated


By Jeffrey Thomas
Staff Writer

Washington -- Immigrants to the United States continue to find a land of opportunity both for themselves and for their children, according to a new report.

“America offers dramatic mobility for immigrants,” said Ron Haskins, the author of Economic Mobility of Immigrants in the United States, during a teleconference July 25, 2007. “The great story of America is that it still offers a job to first-generation immigrants and better jobs to their children.” Haskins serves as a principal of the Economic Mobility Project, a collaborative effort involving individuals from four major U.S. think tanks, which recently issued the report. The Economic Mobility Project is an ongoing examination of the so-called American Dream, a concept that embraces social justice, social advancement and equality of opportunity.

Legal immigration to the United States has grown substantially in recent decades -- from 3.3 million per decade in the 1960s to 9.1 million in the 1990s, according to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The State Department reports that between 2000 and 2005, 3.7 million immigrants became citizens and the United States granted legal permanent residence to 5.8 million people.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States vary widely. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group, calculates an unauthorized population of 11.5 to 12 million as of March 2006, based on Census Bureau and other data. Haskins estimates that 500,000 undocumented or illegal workers arrive each year, most of them from Mexico.

Haskins did sound a note of caution: “Historically, the U.S. economy has successfully created opportunity and economic mobility for immigrant families, but the scale of recent immigration -- and especially of poorly educated immigrants -- could be cause for future concern.”

Educational attainment has a dramatic effect on the wages of both first-generation and second-generation immigrants, and therefore on economic mobility, the report shows.

There is not one typical immigrant, according to the report -- there are two. And an accurate portrait of new arrivals is complex: a much higher percentage of legal immigrants have advanced degrees than is true for the nonimmigrant population, but large numbers of immigrants -- particularly undocumented workers from Latin America -- have relatively low levels of education.

A recent study by the National Science Foundation found that, unlike less-educated immigrants, 67 percent of immigrant scientists and engineers cited family reasons or educational opportunities as their primary reason for coming to the United States, and only 21 percent cited job or economic opportunities. As of 2003, there were 3,352,000 U.S. scientists and engineers who were immigrants.

Historically, immigrant workers have on average earned more than nonimmigrant workers, as have the children of immigrants, the so-called “second generation.” In 2000, the most recent year for which statistics are available, second-generation immigrants continued to earn more than nonimmigrant workers, by 6.3 percent (versus 17.8 percent more in 1940 and 14.6 percent more in 1970).

First-generation immigrants, however, earned 20 percent less in 2000 than the typical nonimmigrant worker (versus 6 percent more in 1940 and 1.4 percent more in 1970), according to U.S. Census data, the source of all statistics for the report.

“The U.S. economy seems to be increasingly rewarding education,” said Stuart Butler, an expert on economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute.

High school graduates from Mexico working in the United States earn less than nonimmigrant workers, but they earn eight times as much as they would if they remained in Mexico, Haskins said. “The American economy provides a huge boost to the mobility of first-generation immigrants,” even those with less education, and even if they earn less than nonimmigrants, he added.

The report shows that the children of immigrants attain higher levels of education than their parents -- and indeed, are more likely to attain college degrees and advanced degrees than the children of nonimmigrants.

The report concludes, however, that the economic prospects of the second generation are very much tied to their educational attainments. “Economic assimilation appears to be working well,” Haskins says, but “the children of low-wage, poorly educated immigrants may well have an uphill climb to continue reaching economic parity with nonimmigrants.”

LINK: http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/July/200707261445221CJsamohT0.1857721.html