Latino Immigrants Integrating Better Than Past, Not As Well As Others

It’s a double-edged sword, but good news overall – and it flies in the face of the nay-saying, anti-immigrant, nativist lot.

According to a report by the Migration Policy Institute, immigrants overall are doing “reasonably well” in integrating into American life, although Latino immigrants in particular are lagging a bit behind other immigrant groups.

According to a Reuters report:

The study found that first- and second-generation Latinos are more residentially segregated than Asians, and not as integrated socially and economically as compared to non-Hispanic whites.

Latino citizens also were found to have relatively low voter registration numbers and voting rates, according to the report.

But we knew that already.

When you take other factors into account the story changes.

The immigrant narrative is different when you measure “language proficiency, socioeconomic attainment, …where they live and social interaction with host communities.”

In fact, the report says there is evidence that today’s immigrants are learning English faster than the last wave of people entering the U.S. at the start of the 20th century.

It’s important to remember for all the times we hear the whine about how “my grandparents came here from the old country and leaned to speak English.” Today’s Latino immigrant will be someone’s grandparent in a couple of generations.

And here’s something else, maybe even more important than the rest of the findings in the MPI study:

The report says the steady progress was attained with sparse government assistance, fueled by a strong labor market and the availability of high-quality education.

The only thing that could hamper immigrant integration, at this point, is a the stagnant economy and no progress on the immigration policy front.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda