Immigration Facts

As Congress considers methods and approaches to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States and the thousands more coming across the border annually, these facts from Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity from a recent Wall Street Journal article should be noted:

. . .the children of Hispanic immigrants are graduating from high school. The high school completion rate for young, U.S.-born Hispanics is 86%, only slightly lower than the 92% of non-Hispanic whites. Hispanic immigrant children who do enroll in school after they come here are as likely as American-born Hispanics to earn a high school diploma (although half of Mexican immigrants 15-17 years-old do not enroll in school).

Hispanics are more likely than either whites or blacks to continue their education at two-year institutions; in 2000 they represented 14% of all students enrolled in two-year institutions. Only 12% of U.S.-born Hispanics earn four-year degrees compared with 26% of non-Hispanic whites. Nonetheless, the economic returns on education are substantial for Hispanics.

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English proficiency is, of course, essential if Hispanics are to fully assimilate into the mainstream, and one issue many Americans have expressed great concern over. But despite anxiety that Hispanics aren't learning English and will soon insist that the U.S. become bilingual, the evidence suggests otherwise. . .But if Hispanic immigrants have been slow to learn English, their American-born progeny have quickly adapted. English is the preferred language of virtually all U.S.-born Hispanics; according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center, indeed, 78% of third-generation Hispanics cannot speak Spanish at all. Even in Southern California, an area with the largest population of Spanish speakers in the nation, 96% of third-generation Mexican Americans prefer to speak English at home, according to a recent study by sociologists Ruben Rumbaut, Douglas Massey and Frank Bean.