Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 4 | A Developing Identity Hispanics in The United States, page 3

On a great variety of matters, therefore, it seems that immigrant Spanish-speaking Latinos hold distinctive views, while the native-born English speakers hold views that are roughly similar to the American population as a whole. And this result is reflected in attitudes about more than just social issues. In that same 2002 survey, we asked about fatalism—a sense very common among the poor in Latin America that they are not in control of their own destinies. Among Latinos who speak only Spanish, 59 percent agreed with the statement, “It doesn’t do any good to plan for the future because you don’t have any control over it.” Among Latinos who speak only English, a scant 24 percent agreed with that statement. Bilingual Hispanics were in-between, at 31 percent. Only 17 percent of non-Latinos agreed that they have no control over their futures. On this very simple but very basic measure of how individuals see their fates, as on a great many other issues, the shift to English produces a remarkably clear shift in attitudes.

What I’ve concluded from looking at a variety of surveys is that exposure to American ways through the acquisition of English produces absorption of those ways. Certainly, not every aspect of the American experience gets adopted, but enough does to show that a significant process of assimilation is taking place: people change when they come to the United States and the change accelerates when a great big doorway into their hearts and minds is opened by language.

An Ongoing Process of Change
Language is something we know a lot about because it is a very tangible, testable marker and because there is a great deal of data on it from the Census, from big government household surveys that are carried out regularly, as well as the kinds of public opinion polls that we conduct at the Pew Hispanic Center. The data from all these sources is very consistent. For example, about three-quarters of foreign-born Latinos, the first generation, speaks only Spanish and the rest of the immigrants are bilingual to some extent. The second generation—the children of immigrants—are about evenly divided between English speakers and bilinguals, with almost none reaching adulthood speaking only Spanish. And, among Hispanics of longer tenure in the U.S.—those born here, of American-born parents—more than three-quarters speak only English and the rest are bilingual to some extent, though often their Spanish is weak. So we know for certain that a transition to English is taking place across generations with a lot of bilingualism along the way.

In addition to linguistic adaptations, the survey data I referenced before indicates that a process of change is underway in the Latino population as immigrants and their offspring adopt a variety of values typical of the American public at large. The language data tell us that this process moves along gradually, but steadily. The demographic data show that Latino population growth is constantly being fed by people coming in at the beginning of the process—recent immigrants and their children. Thus, even though a great deal of assimilation is taking place, it can seem that nothing is happening, that Latinos are not changing or even that they are resistant to change, because the Spanish-speaking population is constantly being refreshed by new arrivals. Indeed, for the past decade or so, immigrants early in the assimilation process have accounted for a majority of Hispanic adults, and so it will be for the foreseeable future. In my view, then, these realities reinforce the notion that Latinos are a people in transition, a people in the process of becoming something new.

Suppose then, that by some act of magic—because that’s what it would take—not one more Latino immigrant entered the United States. How would the American Hispanic population evolve as a segment of U.S. society if no more newcomers arrived?

One possibility is that differences would wash away and Latinos would become fluent in English, improve their economic status and simply become a lot like everyone else in a couple of generations. In this regard, some commentators have already heralded the glorious return of the melting pot. Give it time, they advise, and Latinos will simply be melded into the white mainstream just as the European immigrants were a century ago. Embracing this view wholeheartedly, however, requires believing two things: that today’s newcomers are basically the same as those of the past and that the United States has not changed in a hundred years. Both are debatable propositions. I would argue, as I indicated earlier, that the contemporary context offers much better clues as to the direction of Hispanic trajectories than the historical models.

Think back again to the 1970s, the time when the current wave of Latino immigration and population growth got underway. In retrospect, it is evident that the United States was then in the middle of an era of profound change. The old industrial manufacturing base of the American economy was withering away, to be replaced by the new service sector. A fundamental element of the nation’s social structure was being transformed as women gained new status in the home, at work and in the public arena. Finally, the growth of the Hispanic population also coincided with the maturing of the civil rights era.

All of these changes had their start before the Latino population began to grow, and Latinos were, at most, minor players in the initial phases of these transformations. They certainly did not play causal roles. But now, as we move through the first decades of the 21st century, the effects of those transformations are still being absorbed by the nation even as Hispanics become much more numerous. Latinos, then, are like the character who appears peripheral in the first act of a play and then takes center stage midway through the second. By virtue of their population size, however, the Latino population will be a protagonist with a major role to play in the third act, now unfolding.

Consider, for example, the changes wrought by the civil rights era. The main expansion of the Latino population occurred after the United States, in the middle of the 20th century, fundamentally reassessed the way it perceives people who are not part of the white majority and how it manages relations between those groups and the majority. That upheaval, and the new social structures it created, now condition the way in which newly arrived Latino immigrants and their children see themselves and are seen by others. In this regard, their experience is fundamentally different than that of the European immigrants who arrived in the U.S. and underwent an assimilation process prior to the civil rights era.

Next page: By law, the undocumented are prohibited from working, from receiving most public services and from ever seeking citizenship, yet they readily find employment, albeit in the lower reaches of the labor force, and are essentially free to live here as long as they like.

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