Report shows immigrants tend to be in stable families

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: Courier Post

A new report out this week from the Pew Hispanic Center confirms what many observers already suspected about the U.S. illegal immigrant population: It is made up increasingly of intact families and their American-born children. Nearly half of illegal immigrant households consist of two-parent families with children, and 73 percent of these children were born here and are U.S. citizens.

Hard-line immigration restrictionists will, no doubt, find more cause for alarm in these numbers. But they should represent hope to the rest of us. One of the chief social problems afflicting this country is the breakdown in the traditional family. But among immigrants, the two-parent household is alive and well.

Only 21 percent of native households are made up of two parents living with their own children. Among the illegal population, 47 percent of households consist of a mother, a father and their children.

Age accounts for the major difference in household composition between the native and foreign-born populations: Immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, tend to be younger, while the native population includes large numbers of older Americans whose children have already left home. But the greater concern for some opponents of immigration -- legal and illegal -- is the fear that these newcomers will never fully adapt, won't learn English, will remain poor and uneducated, and transform the United States into a replica of Mexico or some other Latin American country. The same fears led Americans of the mid-19th century to fear German and Irish immigrants, and in the early 20th century to fear Italians, Jews, Poles, and others from Eastern and Southern Europe.



Read more: http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20090420/COLUMNISTS19/904200309/1005/OPINION

[WriteDown]

1. Sometimes...

6 or 8 fathers and 6 or 8 mothers with their children. I seriously wish occupancy laws would be enforced.

[AlphaCentauri]

2. wish housing rent and price would be affordable for every poor family

[ShareTheWoods]

5. Ten Years After

the depression, they just may be affordable.

[imdjh]

6. That's rather at odds with the situation

The more immigration you have to the most densely populated areas, then the higher the rents and the more high density households you have. This is hardly confined to those considered officially poor, it's just that when you have three or four guys or girls sharing a one bedroom apartment so they can afford Pilates, pot, and Polo one isn't terribly concerned.

If we aren't going to deport the illegals or even make a sincere effort to curb the flow into the country, then we should at least figure out a way to steer them away from the coastal states where the pressures they generate feed the destructive forces which seek to feed on them as well as generating animosity towards them by natives.

[enlightenment]

3. Good grief.

Let's haul out that old saw and play it for awhile.

The breakdown of the nuclear (traditional, mom at home) family is the root cause of all our problems.

Thank goodness that all those illegal immigrants and their traditional family units are here to SAVE us from the pernicious effects of alternative family units.

[NorthernSpy]

8. Well, it IS a problem.

Most kids won't grow up in a stable household with both of their natural parents. I fail to see what's so great about that.

[ShareTheWoods]

4. What happened to sending the money back home to the family?

Hell, in these times it getting likely illegal immigrants will need to migrate to another country (Canada, Mexico) to earn
enough money to send back to their anchor families in the USA. Recursive illegal immigration?

I was not here for the mid 19th Century, but did America have 20-40 million of its immigrants come here illegally
in a short time span from Italy, Germany, Poland and Ireland?

[imdjh]

7. At the height of the great immigrations, it was a fraction of this figure

But we have to consider that the figure you choose, be it 6 million illegals or 30 million illegals isn't a single year breach of the border. More to the point, past immigrations are not relevant. It's like saying, "I should be able to build houses in the Everglades! Flagler and FIsher did it too!"

[MADem]

9. Legal immigrant families are similar, I should think.

In my family's immigrant history, we have intact parental units, with a pile of kids, and cousins, and uncles, and aunts, and all sorts, living in a too-small household. In the old days, though, everyone would clear out during the day to go work, and they'd only be home for the evening meal and then to bed (whereever they could find a spot) and then, up and at 'em the next day. They'd socialize on the weekend, maybe take in a film, and do a big meal.

When you live in something other than your native land, you tend to stick together. I dunno why people find that surprising, that people find strength in those who are family and who are like themselves...!