Friday 22 January 2016

The Great Immigration Assimilation Scare

Do immigrants assimilate? Generally, yes, confirms Alex Nowraseth in this guest post

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, two of the smartest conservative thinkers today, have spilt much ink worrying over immigrant assimilation.  Salam is more pessimistic, choosing titles like “The Melting Pot is Broken” and “Republicans Need a New Approach to Immigration” (with the descriptive url: “Immigration-New-Culture-War”) while relying on a handful of academic papers for support.  Douthat presents a more nuanced, Burkean think-piece reacting to assimilation’s supposed decline, relying more on Salam for evidence. 

Their worries fly against recent evidence that immigrant assimilation is proceeding quickly in the United States.  There’s never been a greater quantity of expert and timely quantitative research that shows immigrants are still assimilating.

The first piece of research is the National Academy of Science’s 2015 book titled The Integration of Immigrants into American SocietyAt 520 pages, it’s a thorough, brilliant summation of the relevant academic literature on immigrant assimilation that ties the different strands of research into a coherent story.  Bottom line:  Assimilation is never perfect and always takes time, but it’s going very well. 

One portion of the National Academy of Science’s book finds that much assimilation occurs through a process called ethnic attrition, which is caused by immigrant inter-marriage with natives either of the same or different ethnic groups.  Assimilation is also quickened with second or third generation Americans marry those from other, longer-settled ethnic or racial groups.  The children of these intermarriages are much less likely to identify ethnically with their more recent immigrant ancestors and, due to spousal self-selection, to be more economically and educationally integrated as well.  Ethnic attrition is one reason why the much-hyped decline of the white majority is greatly exaggerated

imageIn an earlier piece, Salam focuses on ethnic attrition but exaggerated the degree to which it declined by confusing stocks of ethnics in the United States with the flow of new immigrants.  He also emphasises the decrease in immigrant inter-marriage caused by the 1990-2000 influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants.  That decrease is less dire than he reports.  According to another 2007 paper, 32 percent of U.S.-born Mexican-American men married outside of their race or ethnicity while 33 percent of women did (I write about this in more detail here).  That’s close to the 1990 rate of intermarriage reported for all Hispanics in the study Salam favored.  The “problem” disappeared.  

The second set of research is a July 2015 book entitled Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2015 that analyses immigrant and second generation integration on 27 measurable indicators across the OECD and EU countries.  This report finds more problems with immigrant assimilation in Europe, especially for those from outside of the EU, but the findings for the United States are quite positive.

The third work by University of Washington economist Jacob Vigdor offers a historical perspective.  He compares modern immigrant civic and cultural assimilation to that of immigrants form the early 20th century (an earlier draft of his book chapter is here, the published version is available in this collection).  For those of us who think early 20th century immigrants from Italy, Russia, Poland, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere assimilated successfully, Vigdor’s conclusion is reassuring:

While there are reasons to think of contemporary migration from Spanish-speaking nations as distinct from earlier waves of immigration, evidence does not support the notion that this wave of migration poses a true threat to the institutions that withstood those earlier waves.  Basic indicators of assimilation, from naturalization to English ability, are if anything stronger now than they were a century ago [emphasis added].

American identity in the United States (similar to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) is not based on nationality or race nearly as much as it is in the old nation states of Europe, likely explaining some of the better assimilation and integration outcomes here.       

Besides ignoring the huge and positive new research on immigrant assimilation, there are a few other issues with Douthat’s piece.

Douthat switches back and forth between Europe and the United States when discussing assimilation, giving the impression that the challenges are similar.  Treating assimilation in Europe and the United States as similar adds confusion, not clarity.  Cherry-picking outcomes from Europe to support skepticism about assimilation in the United States misleads.  Assimilation is a vitally important outcome for immigrants and their descendants but Europe and the United States have vastly different experiences. 

Douthat also argues that immigrant cultural differences can persist just like the various regional cultures have done so in the United States.  That idea, used most memorably in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, is called the Doctrine of First Effective Settlement (DFES).  Under that theory, the creation and persistence of regional cultural differences requires the near-total displacement of the local population by a foreign one, as happened in the early settlement of the United States. 

However, DFES actually gives reasons to be optimistic about immigrant assimilation because Douthat misses a few crucial details when he briefly mentioned it.  First, as Fischer and others have noted, waves of immigrants have continuously assimilated into the settled regional American cultures since the initial settlement – that is the point of DFES.  The first effective settlements set the regional cultures going forward and new immigrants assimilate into those cultures. 

Second, DFES predicts that today’s immigrants will assimilate into America’s regional cultures (unless almost all Americans quickly die and are replaced by immigrants).  The American regional cultures that immigrants are settling into are already set so they won’t be able to create persistent new regional cultures here.  America’s history with DFES is not a reason to worry about immigrant assimilation today and should supply comfort to those worried about it.

Immigrants and their children are assimilating well into American society.  We shouldn’t let assimilation issues in Europe overwhelm the vast empirical evidence that it’s proceeding as it always has in the New World.


Alex Nowrasteh is the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. His popular publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, and elsewhere.
His academic publications have appeared in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Fletcher Security Review, and Public Choice. Alex has appeared on Fox News, Bloomberg, and numerous television and radio stations across the United States. He is the coauthor, with Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, of the booklet Open Immigration: Yea and Nay (Encounter Broadsides, 2014).
He is a native of Southern California and received a BA in economics from George Mason University and a Master of Science in economic history from the London School of Economics.

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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

While you cannot ignore facts does the data relate to cultures that are effectively more likely to assimilate because they do not suffer from a collective political force that is their first loyalty as a group rather than a personal belief system that does not extend to seeking to take group control? If this view has some legs does that make the current problems in Europe less able to fit within the conclusions drawn by this research.

3:16

Peter Cresswell said...

I think Alex addresses that in discussing the book that uses EU and OECD measures--and has he indicates, for "America" you can read "New World."

So, for instance:

"Douthat switches back and forth between Europe and the United States when discussing assimilation, giving the impression that the challenges are similar. Treating assimilation in Europe and the [US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand] as similar adds confusion, not clarity. Cherry-picking outcomes from Europe to support skepticism about assimilation in the [US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand] misleads. Assimilation is a vitally important outcome for immigrants and their descendants but Europe and the [US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand] have vastly different experiences. "

Barry said...

The sooner you accept that Muslim immigrants DO NOT assimilate (especially in large numbers), the sooner you will be taken seriously.

Peter Cresswell said...

Yes, sorry to keep looking at facts and evidence and the like instead of just accepting your bald assertions. I guess I still have some way to go.

Richard Wiig said...

https://youtu.be/uGfP8CyJAhg

Richard Wiig said...

Islam is hostile to the whole concept of integration. It is a system of ideas that teaches its followers that they should strive until the world belongs to Allah, not to Infidels. To say otherwise after having looked into Islam would be akin to saying that Nazism is compatible with liberty. It isn't, and neither is Islam.

Barry said...

Cognitive dissonance is bliss... as long as the hordes of Muslim immigrants are still on the other side of the world.

MarkT said...

"Islam is hostile to the whole concept of integration". Agreed. Just as Christianity was hostile to any integration with enlightenment values until relatively recently in history. But if those that call themselves Muslum are integrating nonetheless (in most but not all cases), doesn't that mean it's Islam that's losing and being weakened by immigration?

Barry said...

Maybe they are integrating in your theoretical world Mark, but in the real world Muslim immigration, and the incidence of sexual assaults & radical Islamic terrorism is in direct correlation.

This isn't rocket science but it sure seems as hard to grasp for some people.

Peter Cresswell said...

You still don't know what evidence looks like, do you Barry.

Barry said...

I previously provided evidence that at least 4/5 sex attacks in Scandinavia are committed by Muslims, which you ignored. Turns out police in Germany & Sweden have the same mindset:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/swedish-police-take-flak-for-covering-up-refugee-sexual-
assaults/

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/its-not-only-germany-that-covers-up-mass-sex-attacks-by-migrant-men-swedens-record-is-shameful/

Are you going to take on board the content of those articles or ignore them? I suppose you will ignore them, since that makes you morally superior?

Peter Cresswell said...

No, Barry, you didn't provide evidence that "at least 4/5 sex attacks in Scandinavia are committed by Muslims." You linked to an article *claiming* a correlation between a rise in sex attacks in Scandinavia and a rise in Muslim immigration -- which as it happens was at the exact same time the Swedish stats department changed the way it measured sex attacks.
Making them appear to rise.
Encouraging the more fetid end of the internet to post incorrect 'memes' about 'Sweden being the rape capital of Europe' and such like.
Which is not supported by the evidence.
Which I posted...

So: Repeating the same error doesn't make it right, no matter how often you make it.

Barry said...

If there is no issue with Muslim migrants why have police in Germany in Sweden both been caught covering up the ethnicity of sex offenders?

Don't forget there is plenty of evidence of trouble elsewhere in Europe.

https://muslimstatistics.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/denmark-muslim-men-most-likely-to-be-criminals-report/

http://10news.dk/?p=320

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB6zMIrIx-g

This one again since you didn't read it last time:

https://muslimstatistics.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/sweden-77-6-percent-of-all-rapes-in-the-country-committed-by-muslim-males-making-up-2-percent-of-population/

Like I already explained, these stories come from the 'more fetid' end of the internet because the mainstream media are too gutless to confront politically incorrect issues.

If the statistics I presented are incorrect where are the actual figures for Muslim rape in Europe? You can't present them, because the correct ones are very un-pc. Get your head out of your ass.

Richard Wiig said...

Mark, Christian law and doctrine wasn't hostile to integration with enlightenment values. Many Christians were hostile, for sure, but acceptance of enlightenment values came from within Christianity itself. It is wrong to assume that Islam is the same. For instance, "render unto Caesar" which provides a basis for Christian acceptance of separation of Church and State doesn't exist in Islam. In Islam, the world belongs to Allah, end of story. There is no basis within Islam for a devout Muslim to accept separation of Church and State. That is just one example of the many differences that makes Islam unable to integrate. When you say a Muslim has integrated, what is really happening is that he has become less observant of Islam. There is a difference. Unlike you though, I do not see increased integration. I see a growing conflict. In light of things such as the beheading of Lee Rigby, and Fort Hood, how can you seriously claim that there is an integration taking place?

Check out this British town, and tell me how it is an integrated British town.

https://youtu.be/fA6XcyXsxXU