Barack Obama has done the country a service by trying to launch a serious discussion about the complexities of race, even in the midst of an electoral season that puts a premium on sound bites rather than sound analysis. We hope that such a tone can be brought to another topic that has been getting short and shallow shrift: immigration.
After staking a sincere position on the issue last year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain was driven to retreat from comprehensive reform. Meanwhile, Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton have steered clear of the issue for fear of being divisive. Such neglect -- like the notion that we can sweep racial resentments under the rug -- actually supports continued division in our society.
For lack of a dialogue, wrongheaded facts fester in the public imagination, namely that immigration is accelerating, that prosperity is threatened and that assimilation is stalled. One fact that is a surprise to many people is that the annual flow of immigrants -- legal and illegal combined -- ended its surge in 2000 and has been in decline since. Projections by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Social Security Administration and the Pew Hispanic Center all concur: The rate of new immigrants per 1,000 current residents will stabilize or drop further over the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, a study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants often complement local labor and actually prop up real wages for most native-born Californians. Any wage-depressing effects on particular low-skilled populations, many economists contend, could be more effectively addressed through direct wage support than through restrictionist measures.
And how many know that the majority of Latino immigrants in California become homeowners after 20 years in this country, climbing from poverty and buying into the American dream? Indeed, our analysis of Los Angeles using the most recent American Community Survey from the Census Bureau indicates that long-term immigrants are more likely to own homes than U.S.-born residents; that the percentage who speak English "well" or "very well" rises dramatically with time in the country; and that immigrants' children are as fluent in English as native Californians.
Why the perception then that assimilation is stalled? To some degree, it's a "Peter Pan" fallacy, the notion that immigrants are eternally newcomers. In parts of the nation that have only recently received immigrants, newcomers do dominate. But in California, about 70% of the foreign-born have been here more than 10 years.
