Who Are You Calling An Immigrant?

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Hispanic Little Leaguers march in New York City's Memorial Day Parade. Photo by Richard B. Levine/Newscom

One of the myths in the debate about Hispanics and immigration is that all Mexican-Americans and other Latinos are recent arrivals. (See FLYP’s Bienvenidos to the New America). The reality is different: Hispanics were living in what eventually became the United States before the American Revolution, and the 1930 Census reported that there were 1.3 million people of Mexican origin living in the country.

Of course, the numbers have grown dramatically, with the Hispanic population now approaching 50 million. And the evidence is that the growth will continue: the Census Bureau projects that by 2025 nearly 30 percent of American children will be of Hispanic ancestry.

Richard Fry, senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center, co-authored a recent study (PDF), about Latino children. His core conclusion was that the majority of the 16 million Hispanic children in the country are second generation, meaning they were born in the U.S., but their parents were not.

Not only does that automatically make them American citizens, but the fact is associated with significantly different socio-economic characteristics. Second-generation children are much more likely to be fluent in English, less likely to live in poverty, and tend to stay in school longer.

Fry told FLYP that “Hispanic kids are much less of an immigrant population and much more of a U.S.-born and U.S.-educated population.”

In other words: they are as American as apple pie—or, make that, as American as sopapilla.