Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew Hispanic Center, believes that a transition process is under way that will profoundly change the way Hispanic Americans think about themselves and their new home.
 | Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew Hispanic Center"The composition of the Hispanic population is undergoing a fundamental change." |
After the 2000 census there was much talk about parts of America becoming Hispanic. What do you think about these speculations?
There are now about 45 million Hispanics in the U.S. Accounting for 15 percent of the total population, Hispanics are the largest minority in the U.S. U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that since 2000, Latinos have accounted for 50 percent of population growth. As a result, the Latino share of the U.S. population will continue to increase and is likely to exceed 20 percent within the next two decades. Immigration has been a major contributor to the growth in the Latino population. However, the composition of the Hispanic population is undergoing a fundamental change. The children of Hispanic immigrants (the second generation), rather than immigrants themselves (the first generation), will be the principal source of population growth in the near future.
 | Picture Gallery (click the image to start)Demographic maps about minorities and population change in the United States based on the U.S. Census 2000 (Source: www.censusscope.org) |
How "American" are Hispanics living in the U.S.?
Group identity is still an open question. Will Hispanics shed national and ethnic identities in favor of seeing themselves as Americans? The link to a country of origin never fades entirely , but again there is a clear trend in which English-dominant Latinos are much more likely to identify themselves as American than Spanish-dominant Latinos. This process will again play out gradually over generations.
The transition from a foreign-born to a native-born population means that Hispanics will be ever more assimilated into the values, beliefs, and behaviors that characterize U.S. culture. The acquisition of English plays a central role in assimilation.
Our surveys reveal that while the first generation of Hispanics is mostly Spanish-dominant (about 70 percent), less than 10 percent of the second generation is Spanish-dominant. About 45 percent each of the second generation reports being English-dominant or bilingual. More than three-quarters of third generation Hispanics are English-dominant. Accompanying the transition to English dominance is a clear trend towards American beliefs and values across succeeding generations of Hispanics.
How does this process of transition look?
One example of assimilation is how Latino views on fatalism evolve across generations. The belief that it does not do any good to plan for the future because you do not have any control over your fate is common in Latin America. Within the U.S., about 60 percent of Spanish-dominant Latinos continue to hold this view, but that is true for only 24 percent of English-dominant Hispanics.
In contrast, 15 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 33 percent of non-Hispanic blacks express belief in fatalism. To take another example, only 10 percent of Spanish-dominant Latinos say they find abortion acceptable, compared with 36 percent of English-dominant Hispanics. That compares with 43 percent of whites and 28 percent of blacks who said they found abortion acceptable.
You said that Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the U.S., but your research shows that they have little political influence. Why?
The political influence of Hispanics is tempered by the fact that only 40 percent are eligible to vote (U.S. citizens age 18 and above). That compares with 76 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 65 percent of non-Hispanic blacks. It is also the case that Latinos who are eligible to vote are less likely to register and to cast a vote than whites or blacks.
Finally, there are demographic factors. A high percentage of new Hispanics in the population are either too young or not eligible because they are non-citizens. Thus, the political influence of Hispanics has not kept pace with the growth in their population.
Is that also true for business? The cliché is that Asians do good economically, while Hispanics lag behind.
The Asian and Hispanic workforces are majority foreign-born and their economic profile is strongly influenced by the characteristics of immigrants. Asians do well economically because immigrants from Asia are highly educated. Almost half of those workers are college graduates and most of them work in high-skill professional occupations.
In contrast, the vast majority of Hispanic immigrants have no more than a high school degree. That leaves them concentrated in relatively low-skill, blue-collar occupations. Another factor affecting the economic status of foreign-born Hispanics is that many are undocumented. The net result is that the earnings of Hispanics lag the earnings of Asians by a significant margin.
According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) Hispanics are the largest minority business community in the U.S. While Hispanics own more firms than other minorities their share in business ownership is well below their share in the workforce. Hispanic-owned businesses earned only 56 cents for every dollar earned by white-owned businesses in 2002.
Europe and the U.S. have had very different approaches to immigration, and there is much talk in countries like France and Germany that integration has failed. What could Europe learn from the American approach to migration?
This is an interesting question because usually it is posed the other way, i.e. what can America learn from Europe. America does have a well-deserved reputation as a “melting pot,” but that has been achieved by and large without government support. Whether the complex set of social circumstances that have made this possible is replicable elsewhere is open to question.
One difference between America and Europe that perhaps is worth highlighting is that in many European countries, immigrants and their children do not have a clear path to citizenship. Research shows that in America, there is a correlation between citizenship and improved economic outcomes. It is important to note that this relationship does not prove causality. In particular, it might be the case that those who are more likely to succeed are also more likely to seek citizenship. Subject to that caveat, it is also plausible that citizenship promotes integration.
editor: Thilo Kunzemann
publishing date: September 19, 2007
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