NY Times columnist David Brooks asks: Are new immigrants wrecking the social fabric of the United States? Or is it the other way around? Is America corrupting them instead?
Back in 2010, researchers from Brown University have noticed that first generation immigrant children generally outperform second and third generation immigrant children, despite having the largest linguistic and cultural barriers. They call this "Immigrant Paradox":
“These are very unusual findings,” said Garcia Coll, the Robinson and Barstow Professor of Education, Psychology and Pediatrics at Brown. “In a time where immigrants are seen as detriments to our society and not making contributions, what this research is telling us is that the first generations come in with amazing energy and amazing capabilities of surmounting lack of education in parents, poverty, and language differences. The tragedy is that as some kids acculturate and become American, they start doing worse.”
Now, a new research from the University of Florida found further support for the Immigrant Paradox: the second and third generations also tend to get into more trouble. Mildred Maldonado-Molina, et al. looked at the pattern of DUI arrests and found that first-generation immigrants have the lowest rate of DUI arrests, as well as marijuana and alcohol use. Second generation US-born Hispanic youth has higher rates of those three things, and third generation even worse.
Interesting, huh? What do you think the reason for immigrants' children and grandchildren doing progressively "worse" in those metrics?
The first generation is very aware of where they came from, and what they must do to succeed.
The second generation still hears the daily stories from their parents, but are now living in relative luxury and can relax a bit.
The third generation knows no other life, and have no idea of the suffering their ancestors went through to give them what they now take for granted. They hear the stories from their grandparents with skepticism.
TLDR: "Kids these days, they just don't know what they got. Now get off my lawn."
In saying that, the article doesn't seem to talk much about acculturative stress. These children are not simply 'becoming American'. They are dealing with the psychological stress of incorporating two identities into one child, the identity expected at home, and the identity expected at school (or the more "Americanized" identity).
For 2nd and 3rd generation children, they are now legally Americans (as they were born in the States) but are still struggling with being bi-cultural. Quite literally, bi-cultural children must learn twice as much as their established counter parts. Often that includes two languages and two sets of expected social time tables (education, marriage, children, ect). Of course, two sets is the simplest scenario. Then, these children must learn (all on their own) how to balance the two.
While building awareness about these children's struggles is important (as many were either transported as infants/toddlers or born here) we must be sensitive to their experiences as uniquely defined by their bi-cultural status.
-Usually by/after 3g, they've pissed it away because they're not visionaries anymore, they're Useless Aristocrats who know how to do Nothing but spend money.
Most immigrants who come here legally enjoy life here and make a go of it. Their children end up spoiled, period. Their grandchildren, even more so. What is so surprising about that?
As to WHY they are spoiled, well, put it down to how upwardly mobile immigrants can be here and stop bashing America.
You won't find many countries in the world where people can come, work hard and so quikly carve out a decent life for their family.
Jealous? Get over it. That's life.
But don't try to make us feel ashamed of the freedom we have to move up.
Habituation. We habituate and slacken on our morals and habits when the environment is so.