Children of immigrants reshaping America

Children of immigrants grasp the ring
While “some kids have problems” with the duality, Cuadros said, others thrive, mirroring the experience of second-generation children elsewhere.

“By and large, despite their diversity of class and national origins, members of the new second generation in South Florida and Southern California are doing well: performing better academically than their native-parentage peers, graduating from high school and going on to college (where many are still enrolled), speaking accentless English, working hard at their first jobs, taking steps toward independent entrepreneurship, and beginning to form families of their own,” they write in “Immigrant America: A New Portrait.”

Across the board, the second generation is seizing that opportunity:

• In the Ivy League, 41 percent of all black freshmen are from African and Caribbean families, who make up only 13 percent of the overall black population, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania found.
• Among second-generation Hispanics, education is a priority, according to a nationwide study by the Public Policy Institute of California. Only 10 percent of second-generation adults have not graduated from high school, it found, compared with 38 percent of their first-generation parents. That is better than the population as whole, according to the U.S. Education Department, which said 14 percent of all American adults do not have high school diplomas.
• While Hispanic immigrants as a whole vote less often than the overall population, the proportion of voters among second-generation Hispanics is rising rapidly, according to a 10-year study of immigrant achievement in California by researchers at the University of Southern California. By 2030, “all other things being equal, the overall share who are active voters would be expected to be substantially above the current level,” indicating a sharp increase in the “influence of the Latino population in the political process,” the researchers predicted.

‘Increasingly ... the mainstream’
In “Inheriting the City,” Philip Kasinits of CUNY and three colleagues argue that children of recent immigrants have a unique opportunity to blend traditional and “Americanized” ways, “keeping some elements and discarding others as they go along.”

“This biculturalism in no way prevents their joining the ‘mainstream,’” they found. “Indeed, in their cultural, economic, and social activities, the children of immigrants increasingly are the mainstream.”

Portes — himself an immigrant from Cuba — acknowledged that “some people may lament” America’s evolution into a blended society. But the success of the second generation could kick-start America's flagging influence in an ever-globalizing world, he said in an interview with NBC News .

“There is no nation that more reflects the globe, the population of the world, than the United States,” he said. “I think it is a source of strength and cultural vigor.”

At Dumbarton Middle School, Principal Nancy Fink said all parents, native and immigrant, should welcome the transformation.

Referring to columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s contention that a globalized society flattens economic and cultural differences, Fink said: “Parents are very aware that their children will be living in a flat world. So the more experiences they have with children who are different than them, the better.”

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