Should We Worry About Immigrant Assimilation and Education?
Yes, they are important to our future!
Many of tomorrow's workers and business owners are the children
of today's immigrants. More than 40% of the growth of our labor
force in the late 1990s was due to immigrants, and since
immigration WILL continue, they are important to our future
growth.
A concern is certainly that many of today's Hispanic/Latino
immigrants are uneducated and unskilled: this could mean that
their children will not fit into our knowledge-based and
high-tech economy. Often when parents are uneducated, they have
lower expectations and don't encourage their children to stay in
high school and go on to college. These parents very often need
their children to work in the shops they own or contribute to
the household income with outside jobs. Many of their children
must drop out of high school to help the family survive
financially.
Twenty five percent of the children under the age of six in the
U.S. are children of immigrants, the majority in poor families.
If these children went to preschool, it would dramatically
change their lives, especially if there were also some services
available for their parents. If these parents could go to nearby
ESL classes and learn some tips on early child rearing, and be
shown how important it is for their children to get an
education, it would help tremendously in the children's later
public school years.
Children who get preschool education are much more likely to do
well in school and less likely to drop out or get into trouble.
This is true for immigrant children and any other children who
are living in poverty.
It would be wonderful if all parents could get some of this
training, but poor parents need it most, especially if they
don't speak English at home or if they don't have much education
themselves.
Blue-collar jobs are on the decline in many parts of the U.S.
Factories and textile mills are closing and moving to other
countries, shocking many people who were born here and have
worked in these factories for decades. Money is often spent to
re-educate these workers, yet many of them are unable to learn
the computers well enough for these high tech jobs because of
their age or their own education shortcomings.
Immigrants' children who have dropped out of school and have no
training in these high-tech positions will have the same
problem. Immigrants with limited skills will always work at
whatever job they can find; this probably means they will always
work at low paying jobs and never get out of poverty. If they
are forced to raise their own children in poverty, the cycle
continues.
Once they are fluent in English and learn U.S. laws, they have a
much greater chance of getting better jobs, although the wage
gap between them and people born here may still be quite wide.
Undocumented Hispanic teens who are in our public schools may
have lower educational aspirations and not try to finish high
school, even when their parents do not need their income. They
often feel discouraged because they don't think they can get a
college education, or if they do get one, that they won't be
eligible to work here.
Some states are allowing undocumented students who have attended
and graduated from their high schools to attend public state
colleges at in-state rates. If these teens have lived in that
state for years, have received a good education in those schools
and have graduated, why shouldn't they be allowed to continue
their education there without paying the higher non-resident
rates?
If they gradute from college, they should be able to apply for
citizenship and use their degree to get a high paying job in
this country. These workers will contribute to their community,
start businesses, buy houses and be wonderful Americans. The
money that was spent by the state to educate them to grade 12
will be repaid many times over.
We need skilled and highly trained workers, why would we want
these kids to stop their schooling and be forced to work in low
paying jobs the rest of their lives? That does not help any of
us.