DMI Blog

Cristina Jimenez

Does marriage determine level of assimilation?

Lots has been said about assimilation and whether or not today’s immigrants are assimilating. A recent report published by the Manhattan Institute offers an inadequate approach to analyze the assimilation of the U.S. immigrant population. To discuss this further, I recently wrote an op-ed that was published by El Diario last Thursday. Here’s the published Spanish version.

The op-ed’s translation is following:

The complex debate on immigration has been full of myths about the assimilation of today’s immigrant population. They don’t want to learn English. They don’t want to learn American ways. Is it true? Are they assimilating, or aren’t they?

While some elements of this question are clear – for example, the vast majority of Latino immigrants believe that learning English is necessary to be successful in the U.S – a new study proposes to go deeper into the many measurements of assimilation. Unfortunately, however, Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States, the latest report from The Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy organization, tries so hard to make a science out of the American story that it winds up diminishing the achievements of immigrants.

The study uses information from the Census to determine how similar immigrants are to natives. According to the study, the more similar immigrants are to natives, the higher the index of assimilation. This index is based on three categories: socio-economic, including employment and education; cultural, including English proficiency and intermarriages; and civic, including rates of naturalization and service in the military. The study found that immigrants, unlike natives, are less likely to be unemployed. Clearly this is a positive finding. However, this study determines that this factor makes immigrants less similar to natives and therefore the assimilation index decreases. To make that clearer: because immigrants are more likely to be unemployed, they are less assimilated. What?

The study also found that unlike natives, immigrants are overrepresented at the low and high ends of the educational distribution. While this isn’t completely positive, it is absurd that the study by the Manhattan Institute determines that this finding identifies immigrants as less assimilated in general. Clearly this country will benefit from having more highly educated immigrants, no?

In the cultural category, the study includes some factors that are irrelevant, such as the likelihood of immigrants marrying other immigrants or natives. For example, the study found that in 2006, unlike the native born, immigrants are more likely to marry other immigrants, which decreases the assimilation index. In simpler words, if you marry an immigrant, you are less assimilated. Should my decision of who to marry determine how American or assimilated I am? I doubt it.

The problem is not the idea of analyzing the assimilation or progress of the immigrant community in this country, but the way the Manhattan Institute study chooses to measure that progress. This perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise from an organization whose Fellows regularly write about the danger of the conflict between African-Americans and Latino immigrants, the border jails reeling from immigrant gang rapists, and the Bell Curve theory that people of color are inherently less intelligent.

Perhaps a more effective approach to look at the progress of the immigrant population is the one offered by the Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, published by Harvard University. This study focuses on analyzing the progress of the children of immigrants in New York State and reveals that this population is doing better than their parents in education attainment and earnings. In addition, the study reveals that certain groups of children of immigrants outperform the native born in educational performance. This research demonstrates that diverse groups of immigrants are advancing and contributing in different levels of our society. But most importantly, unlike the Manhattan Institute’s study, this study focuses on analyzing the immigrant community’s experience and desire to reach the American dream without imposing an illogical numeric index.

Looking at assimilation through the lenses of the Manhattan Institute’s index creates the danger of minimizing the immigrant experience to an insignificant number. And in order to have an effective and serious immigration debate, we need a true and unbiased understanding of immigrants’ assimilation and progress in the U.S.

Cristina Jimenez: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 1:00 PM, Jun 17, 2008 in Immigration
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