"The Hispanic Challenge? What we know about Latino Immigration," a conference held at the Mexican Institute of the Migration Policy Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Division of United States Studies, March 29, 2004. Proceedings at www.migrationinformation.org. It is definitely worth reading the whole report.
Before addressing the proceedings, a word about the Migration Policy Institute. According to its own description, it is an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide. (It) provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international level. It aims to meet the rising demand for pragmatic and thoughtful responses to the challenges and opportunities that large-scale migration, whether voluntary or involuntary, present to communities and institutions in an increasingly integrated world." Its four pillars are 1. Migration management; 2. Refugee protection and Humanitarian Response; 3. North American Borders and Migration Agenda; 4. Immigrant settlement and Integration. Much of its work is from an international, not from a United States perspective.
Abbreviated information about the participants:
Elizabeth Greico, data manager fr the Migration Policy Institute's Migration Information Source. Has a background with the U.S. Census Bureau and has done many analyses based on demographic data.
David Gutiérrez is Associate Professor of History at the University of California -- San Diego. Among his interests are Chicano and Mexican immigration history, comparative ethnic politics, and the history of U.S. citizenship and civil rights. He is a Chicano and a fifth generation Californian.
Michael Jones-Correa is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell specializing in immigration and immigrant politics and ethnic and racial politics in the U.S.
Jesus Silva-Herzog Márquez is professor at the Law School of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónoma de México (ITAM). He was previously a Mexican Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in a joint program with the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. He was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University and appears regularly in the popular press in México.
Demetrios G. Papademetriou is President and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute. He was previously at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was Director for Immigration Policy and Research at the U.S. Department of Labor and Chair of the Secretary of Labor's Immigration Policy Task Force.
Andrew Selee organized this conference and is Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. He spent several years in Mexico working with development and migration programs.
Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar is Associate Professor of Education and Sociology at the Rosier School of Education of the University of Southern California. Previously he was Associate Director of USC's Center for American Studies and Ethnicities. He is a specialist on the role of race and ethnicity in public education, working class racial minority youth development (focus on Latinos in the U.S.) and urban education.
Philippa Strum is director of the Division of U.S. Studies at the Wilson Center and Breuklundian Professor Emerita at City University of New York.
Roberto Suro is the Director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based think tank which is supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The mission of the center is "to improve understanding of the diverse Hispanic population in the United States, to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the nation, and disseminate research to policymakers and the media." He has extensive experience in print journalism.
As you might guess from the backgrounds of the participants, this conference essentially rebutted Huntington's arguments. Their first and very big concern is that "it would be unfortunate to permit serious discussion about Latino immigration to focus on one article that relies on highly questionable scholarship" to the detriment of the more important issues. This of course is a common problem today in this country: the agenda is often set in a skewed fashion.
Below is a summary of the remarks.
Dr. Strum in her introduction to the conference outlines the larger questions raised by immigration, Latino or other:
- "What is the probable impact on this nation of a very large number of immigrants from nations with cultures that are markedly different and with different kinds of governmental systems?"
- "Should those immigrants be embraced as potential producers of enhanced diversity and excitement and wealth, or should they be regarded as highly problematic?"
- "If they are to be incorporated into the American polity and economy, what public policies would aid the process?"
She addresses historical context:
- "The current discussion has existed...since the country was founded."
- "Every wave of immigrants to this country, once fully acclimated and integrated... has tended to be suspicious of the next wave of immigrants."
- "The American history of racial categorization extends to immigrants." 1790, only free wand white were citizens. 1882-1934 series of law making it impossible for Asians to be citizens. 1924 and 1952 quota systems limited immigrants not perceived as truly "white."
Huntington's fear of Hispanic immigrants threatening "the American Dream" echoes Thomas Jefferson himself.
Demetrios Papademetrious, in his comments, "Focusing the Immigration Discussion," questions why Foreign Policy even published Huntington's article. He addresses the long history of immigration to this country and the fact that the diverse America, not the Anglo-Protestant America is what already exists.
In "Known Knowns and Unknown Unknowns" (quoting Donald Rumsfeld), Roberto Suro addresses issues instead of simply rebutting Huntington:
- Migration flows: Knowns include "the push/pull model and working of networks...." including the push/pull of family networks and clans and the pull of "labor markets and other attractions." Patterns have changed over the last decade including move away from temporary migration, changes in departure points so that more come from urban areas, and destinations shifting from traditional areas to the southeast and upper Midwest.
- Maturation of the process after thirty years. We don't know all the effects of this. It is a "well-developed and in some cases a multi-generational movement...."
- Know the money flows.
- Do not know impact on interrelationship between sending and receiving communities nor importance of cash going back.
- Don't understand completely the emergence of fully transnational communities.
- Don't fully understand the "impact of ongoing migration on American labor markets and the way the impact changes with U.S. business cycles." The current business cycle doesn't fit past patterns.
- We do know that in the current cycle, there "is an extraordinary change in the way the poor are demonized. Twenty or so years ago the poor were demonized by the image of the "Welfare Queen"-- someone who took money but did not work.... Today [the image is of] poor people who work too hard....the workaholic Mexican.
- Adoption of language is very rapid. "Fear of the loss of English seems so statistically invalid that it is hardly worth discussing."
- We know that good knowledge of English "is the single strongest predictor of where a Latino will fall on [the] continuum of opinion" that marks degree of assimilation. The less English spoken, the more conservative on social issues, more trusting of government, more fatalistic about their own lives are Hispanics. The more English spoken, the more within broad parameters of American public opinion the opinions of Hispanics fall.
- "The process [of the incorporation of immigrants] is now taking place in an extremely pluralistic society....one in which many but not all group boundaries are permeable and changeable. We simply do not have a model for change in this context."
In her comments, "The Foreign-Born from Mexico in the United States: 1960-2000" Elizabeth Greico presents statistical documentation of what has happened during this forty-year period. In conclusion, she says:
"In summary, the foreign-born population is growing rapidly and is likely to continue to do so....Mexican immigration is the primary driver of growth in the foreign-born population as a whole as well as in the Hispanic foreign-born. This growth and its impact can be understood only in the proper demographic context. Both the foreign-born and the foreign-born from Mexico are still relatively small portions of the total population, but what occurs at the national level is often radically different than what occurs at the local level. While it is important to recognize the small size of the the Mexican immigrant population relative to the total population of the United States, it is equally important to realize that the foreign-born from Mexico are geographically concentrated, posing challenges--and opportunities--at the regional, state and local levels. Concentrations in traditional immigrant states such as California and Texas are likely to continue, but there is some evidence to suggest that a greater proportion of Mexican immigrants are going to new centers of growth in states such as North Carolina, Georgia and California."
David Gutiérrez, in "The Search for Relevant Public Policies" regards Huntington's scholarship as "rather shoddy" but addresses areas in which he is "in at least conceptual agreement" with Huntington. The first is the concern over "the continuing high volume of immigration from Spanish-speaking countries; the second, the large number of people who are already here." Gutiérrez emphasizes the importance of "decoupling" these two matters while he agrees both are true. Where starts having trouble is with "the trajectory of causation implicit in the analysis." Huntington of course has as his own peculiar frame of reference his perception of the identity of the U.S. being "A country with a single national language and a core Anglo-protestant culture." He also sees the only opposition to this a monolithic Hispanic threat.
Gutiérrez points out that Huntington has a "wish list" of what he wants immigrants to do to conform to his vision of the U.S.: Learn English, commit themselves to becoming better educated, adopt American political values and institutions and limit the number of children they produce." Gutiérrez sees this list coming from an unhistorical perspective and even more, from a perspective of not understanding at all what this country needs to do to engender what it wishes. He points out the opposition to activities of the country to make it easier for people to adjust. And he says, "If we are truly committed to encouraging people to embrace American political institutions and what Professor Huntington describes as American political and cultural values, does it make sense to lambaste them as a social problem, rather than to praise their work ethic, their family values, and their historical and ongoing contributions to the construction and maintenance of the society?
Gutiérrez addresses Huntington's concerns about the prospect of "separatist politics, or of a Chicano Quebec...." To prevent this, he says, "doesn't it make sense to be more embracing of their concerns within the context of a democratic tradition?"
Gutiérrez points out that Professor Huntington ignores "the transnational or global context, particularly the economic context, in which migration flows occur. He does not discuss U.S: economic policies abroad. He does not discuss in great detail the kind of push mechanism tat NAFTA has provided over the short term [or] the impact of U.S. military policy on destabilizing populations, which leads those populations to escape oppression or to seek economic opportunity.
Gutiérrez points to concerns over "the unintended consequences of globalization that can be seen in South America or Chiapas or Oaxaca, about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs, about the deepening crises in Social Security and Medicare, and about the erosion of the positions of both the American middle class and the large and increasingly disenfranchised working class" as issues which "fit hand in glove with the explosion of the Latino population."
Michael Jones-Correa discusses trans-nationalism and dual loyalties. He says that these issues are really not unique to Hispanics. Critical points he makes are that in fact ties from the country of origin do not seem to interfere with the desire to strengthen identification with the United States.
Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar addresses the questions of "the integration of Latino students," at least in California. He says that evidence indicates that "the academic development of English Language Learners is best served when they are able to mobilize their own linguistic and cultural resources, [but] the public's demand to assimilate immigrants as quickly as possible have one the day."
His studies have indicated that when children are not forced to give up their language of origin, they do learn English quite rapidly and, while they still speak "a substantial amount of Spanish in the home" they become quite fluent and prefer English in the wider world. Furthermore, Latino students with a "high rate of bilingualism" do significantly better academically and, according to studies, "were more likely to exhibit greater social capital, defined in terms of supportive relations with school personnel and adults int he community."
Finally, there are "consequences of rapid one-way cultural assimilation among Latino youth" as seen in a growing body of research. It leads to marginalization from the extended family and from the "core immigrant community" with consequences of "a greater number of stressful event experiences, parent-adolescent conflicts, engagement in more negative health behaviors during pregnancy, and less insulation from inner-city street life. Rapidly acculturating U.S.-born children are less confined to the family and adult ethnic institutions and less subject to parental monitoring and control; thus,k they are more likely to adopt the attitudes and cultural styles of native-born disaffected youth....A growing body of research in education...clearly shows that after the elementary grades the public schools are not very effective in the social integration of large numbers of Latino youth."
There are interesting comments in the discussion following these presentations which enhance and expand some of the points made, but you can go to the site to read this part.