The wrong kind of assimilation

Hispanic youth adopts worst aspects of American society:

As Hispanic teens shed the language of their native countries and immerse themselves in American culture, they become dramatically more sexually active, a new study shows.

A review of 7,300 Arizona teenagers' behavior, which should translate well to other states that border Mexico, including Texas, found that 31 percent of Hispanic teens who speak primarily English have had sex, more than twice the percentage of those who speak primarily Spanish, 14 percent.

The key question — why? — remains unanswered.

"I wish I knew," said the study's lead author, Dr. Mary Adam, a pediatrics researcher at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine. "This is certainly something we are continuing to explore."

The study, published in this month's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, adds evidence to the so-called healthy immigrant paradox, that Hispanics coming to the United States are healthier than second- and third-generation U.S. residents from the same countries.

Various research has found that less-Americanized Hispanic children have healthier diets, better immunization rates, fewer suicide attempts, and decreased use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs than more Americanized adolescents.

Heather Mac Donald has previously written on this issue:

Hispanic youths, whether recent arrivals or birthright American citizens, are developing an underclass culture. (By "Hispanic" here, I mean the population originating in Latin America—above all, in Mexico—as distinct from America's much smaller Puerto Rican and Dominican communities of Caribbean descent, which have themselves long shown elevated crime and welfare rates.) Hispanic
school dropout rates and teen birthrates are now the highest in the nation. Gang crime is exploding nationally—rising 50 percent from 1999 to 2002—driven by the march of Hispanic immigration east and north across the country. Most worrisome, underclass indicators like crime and single parenthood do not improve over successive generations of Hispanics—they worsen.

Debate has recently heated up over whether Mexican immigration—unique in its scale and in other important ways—will defeat the American tradition of assimilation. The rise of underclass behavior among the progeny of Mexicans and other Central Americans must be part of that debate. There may be assimilation going on, but a significant portion of it is assimilation downward to the worst elements of American
life.

And with Bush's immigration policies things are likely to get worse.