Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008 - (Page 59)

tween legal and illegal immigrants. That’s because it relied on U.S. Census data, and the census doesn’t ask respondents for their legal status. In any case, whether an immigrant is legal or illegal only impacts one kind of assimilation: civic. Even without legal status, illegal immigrants can ﬁnd jobs, buy homes, learn English, and intermarry. But they’re not citizens, and so they can’t vote or join the military. The study found that “immigrants of the past quarter-century have assimilated more rapidly than their counterparts of a century ago.” And this despite the fact that, today, we have HISPANIC ENTERPRISE immigrants coming from a much more diverse cross-section of the globe. That means they come here with a much more distinct culture, and yet they’re still able to assimilate in record time. A lot of Americans probably won’t buy that. All they care about is what they see around them. They want to know why ATMs offer the option of banking in Spanish and why taco trucks dot the landscape. They think it all adds up to the fact that someone isn’t assimilating. It doesn’t. All it means is that there are a lot of people out there who see a market, and they’re eager to cater to it. America’s capacity to integrate new immigrants is as strong as ever. Even if immigrants refused to assimilate, they’d never get away with it. Assimilation happens, whether the immigrants like it or not. And that’s true even with the one population that has the lowest rate of assimilation: Mexican immigrants. During an interview, I asked Vigdor if Mexican immigrants aren’t traveling the same path as, say, Italian immigrants of old. “The answer is no,” he said. “There are many groups in the U.S. today that are making more rapid progress than the Italians of a hundred years ago, but Mexicans are not.” Although Mexicans have relatively normal rates of cultural assimilation, the study shows, they have low levels of civic and economic assimilation. Vigdor insisted that one thing preventing Mexicans from assimilating in those areas is that—as economic migrants— many of them expect to go home at some point, and so they feel less pressure to assimilate. He drew a contrast with political refugees, such as those who come from Cuba. “Once they get here,” he says, “they don’t have a strong expectation of going back. They’re coming here because they’re escaping persecution and if go back to their origin country they probably face a similar kind of persecution If you’re here for political reasons, you’re basically here for the long haul, * ASSIMILATION HAPPENS, WHETHER THE IMMIGRANTS LIKE IT OR NOT. and so it makes sense to try to ﬁt in as best you can.” That’s not necessarily the case for economic migrants, Vigdor says. “For economic migrants who come to the United States when they’re young—so they can go to school, or so they can work for a few years and make some money, and then they plan to move on—it’s less important to engage in civic assimilation, to, for instance, pursue citizenship if you don’t really plan to be a permanent resident of the United States.” That may be. But so what? Many Mexicans who come to the United States do come for economic reasons, and so they may tell themselves that their stay will be temporary. Besides, Mexicans are a notoriously proud people, and many don’t ﬁnd it easy to abandon Mexico. But eventually, reality sets in. And they wind up staying. Fifty years from now, they’ll ﬁnd themselves owning homes, paying taxes and integrated into the culture, with kids who work in air conditioned ofﬁces and grandkids who attend college. While they were waiting to go home, they will have made a home here. They will have assimilated into society. And they will have lived the American Dream. Whether they intend to or not. Ruben Navarrette, Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego UnionTribune, a nationally syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, and a regular contributor of commentary to CNN.com and USA TODAY. 59 June/July 2008 http://CNN.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008

Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008 Contents Briefcase: BIZBUZZ: Business Briefs Briefcase: Dynamic Trends Briefcase: Q&A Briefcase: Trendsetters BizLife: BizTech BizLife: Travel Feature: Target: Hispanics Cover Story: A Legend in His Own Time Feature: Top 25 Franchises Success & Motivation: The Talent Scout Education: Success by Degrees Finance & Investing: A Tough Sell Social Events: Emerge Dallas Politics & Government: The Accidental Americans Managing: Deconstructing Networking

Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008

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