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Hispanics Are Like Everyone Else Who Comes to America

Hispanics Are Like Everyone Else Who Comes to America

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Veteran TV news anchor Tom Brokaw recently caused a stir when he admonished Hispanic-Americans to “work harder on assimilation” and to “make sure all their kids are speaking English.” Brokaw backpedaled after the uproar, but many will view his apology as forced. His comments have the unfortunate effect of perpetuating the myth that Hispanics aren’t assimilating into American society, especially among those who are already primed to believe that immigration is a problem.

Just for starters, data convincingly show that Hispanics have adopted English at very rapid rates. A 2016 Pew survey found Spanish is the dominant language for just 19 percent of Hispanics aged 18 to 25; the rest are either bilingual, or speak English only. The 2000 census revealed that young second-generation Hispanics spoke English at about the same rate as young second-generation European immigrants.

Furthermore, the number of Hispanic people who speak English has risen since 2000:

Hispanics Are Like Everyone Else Who Comes to America

The percent who speak only English is rising as well -- among Hispanics aged 5 to 17, it was about 37 percent in 2014.

Language is important, because it facilitates the creation of personal relationships. Mutual communication helps form the all-important business networks by which people find jobs, start businesses, get customers for their businesses and learn about a huge array of economic opportunities. In her book “Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class,” sociologist Jody Agius Vallejo illustrates how mentorships, gifted programs, business associations and other types of personal contact are helping Mexican-Americans -- the largest single group of Hispanic-Americans, and the one that started out with the most economic disadvantages -- escape poverty.

That advance is visible in the economic statistics: Hispanic household median income has climbed in recent years, and stood at 74 percent of white households in 2017. A 2018 study by economists Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie Jones and Sonya Porter confirms that this is no statistical illusion, and that Hispanic mobility is higher even than the median numbers would suggest. A Hispanic-American whose parents are at the 25th percentile of the income distribution, they calculate, will on average reach the 43rd percentile -- a rate of mobility almost equal to that of whites and U.S.-born Asian-Americans.

For a long time that mobility was obscured by the continuous arrival of new, low-earning immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. But in recent years, Hispanic immigration has fallen dramatically. In the case of Mexico, that immigration has even gone into reverse:

Hispanics Are Like Everyone Else Who Comes to America

Together with Chetty et al.’s data, this implies that Hispanic-Americans will continue to close the income gap with their white peers in the years to come.

The end of large-scale Hispanic immigration will speed assimilation in other ways. In his book “Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity,” Stanford University sociologist Tomas Jimenez argues that continual waves of Mexican migration are responsible for reinforcing the ethnic boundaries between Mexican-Americans and other American groups. A similar effect may hold for other Hispanic-Americans.

Yet as immigration slows, those boundaries are blurring. A recent Pew survey finds that among people of Hispanic ancestry aged 18 to 35, 14 percent don’t even identify as Hispanic. For those of the fourth generation or more, that number rises to 56 percent. University of California sociologist Gabriel Rossman notes that it’s very difficult for product and service brands to target U.S.-born Latinos because their cultural tastes are extremely similar to those of other Americans. Tufts University political scientist Deborah Schildkraut found that feelings of American identity, and notions of what it means to be an American, among Hispanic-Americans and other groups are almost identical.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Hispanics simply change while other Americans stay the same. In his 2017 book “The Other Side of Assimilation: How Immigrants Are Changing American Life,” Jimenez recounts how more established American groups change their culture and broaden their horizons based on their personal relationships with more recently arrived immigrant groups. Assimilation isn't slavish conformity to white norms, but a two-way process where the U.S. is changed by each new group that arrives.

Perhaps the ultimate act of assimilation is intermarriage. This is proceeding at a dizzying pace:

Hispanics Are Like Everyone Else Who Comes to America

Of Hispanic-Americans aged 18 to 35 of the third generation or more, 58 percent are married to someone who isn’t Hispanic.

Brokaw, interestingly, seems to think this intermarriage is what’s making some people upset:

Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, ‘Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies’…That’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on[.]

He may well be right. Those who are most upset about the wave of Hispanic immigrants that has changed American demographics during the past four decades probably don't want more assimilation with the newcomers; they’re afraid of it. But as the generations pass, and as the integration of Hispanic-Americans with the rest of the country proceeds, that attitude will dwindle into an unpleasant memory -- just as it has with legions of immigrants in the past.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

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