The Melting Pot Is Still Melting

“The good news is that the American melting pot still seems to work. The latest data show big gains since the mid-1990s for immigrants on the key measures of economic performance — education, poverty, homeownership, and unemployment. In some cases, immigrants have shown bigger improvements than native-born Americans. “America has done extremely well in assimilating immigrants,” says David Card, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

True, questions remain about the assimilation of illegal immigrants, many of whom are unskilled. Creating a class of “temporary workers” who have to go home after a few years — as President George W. Bush again advocated in a speech on Nov. 28 — might exacerbate the problem by lessening the incentive for immigrants to learn English and become “more American.”…”

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