Seeker Blog

I loved the WSJ headline for this op-ed by Jason L. Riley, author of the recent “Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders“. Here’s an excerpt on the common mistake called “Peter Pan” by demographers:

The media offers up a steady diet of data about current immigration from Mexico, and much of it consists of “averages” regarding English-language skills, income, home-ownership rates, education and so forth. But while digesting these figures, it’s important to keep in mind that Latino immigration is ongoing. These averages are snapshots of a moving stream and therefore of little use in measuring assimilation. To properly gauge assimilation, we need to find out how immigrants in the U.S. are faring over time. Only longitudinal studies that track individuals can provide that information.

Just looking at averages can give you a very distorted view of who’s learning English or dropping out of school or climbing out of poverty. How so? Because overall statistics that average in large numbers of newcomers can obscure the progress made by pre-existing immigrants.

Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, calls it the “Peter Pan Fallacy.” “Many of us assume, unwittingly, that immigrants are like Peter Pan,” says Mr. Myers, “forever frozen in their status as newcomers, never aging, never advancing economically, and never assimilating.” In this naïve view, he says, “the mounting numbers of foreign-born residents imply that our nation is becoming dominated by growing numbers of people who perpetually resemble newcomers.”

The reality, however, is that the longitudinal studies show real socio-economic progress by Latinos. Progress is slower in some areas, such as the education level of adult immigrants, and faster in others, such as income and homeownership rates. But there is no doubt that both assimilation and upward mobility are occurring over time.

And on multiculturalists and assimilation:

If American culture is under assault today, it’s not from immigrants who aren’t assimilating but from liberal elites who reject the concept of assimilation. For multiculturalists, and particularly those in the academy, assimilation is a dirty word. A values-neutral belief system is embraced by some to avoid having to judge one culture as superior or inferior to another. Others reject the assimilationist paradigm outright on the grounds that the U.S. hasn’t always lived up to its ideals. America slaughtered Indians and enslaved blacks, goes the argument, and this wicked history means we have no right to impose a value system on others.

Keep the immigrants. Deport the Columbia faculty.