Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born • Hacker News Board

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#231

Post by tartoran » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #216

tartoran wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you an immigrant yourself or a child of immigrant parents? Yes, because immigrants on average have it harder they also work harder. Usually their children reap more benefits but the children's children flake out. Not sure how much of a trend this is but I've noticed this...

I'm a Russian-American immigrant, yes, a legal one. We had our kid when we were already mostly out of the woods financially though.

Eastern European fellow here. I came to the states about 20 years ago and the kid came about 2 years ago. Ive had it rough for a while as my dad passed and had to step in to help the family. Stress was something I wish I didn’t have to go through like that. The hardship made the ship sail better though, I understand why the first gen immig are more succesfull: they have to push themselves to the max

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#232

Post by toasterlovin » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #224

toasterlovin wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> historically Mexicans have been in the US forever As recently as 1940, Hispanics made up only 1.5% of the US. Population. As of 2010, they made up 16.3% of the U.S. population (about 50 million people). As a point of reference, Canada has a population of about 37 million people and the UK has a population of 63 million people. So we have imported roughly an entire Canada/UK's worth of people from Latin America. As…

Wait until you hear about how much the population of white people increased in the 17th century.

I guess what I meant to say is: population movements of this scale occurring without violence and genocide.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#233

Post by BurningFrog » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

screye wrote: post #16

rayiner wrote: post #12

It's particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race... . If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probab…

I think this might have to do with the type of Asian-Americans that immigrate to the US. (esp. this generation) [Strike out] Asians mostly use high-skilled visas / education based visas as a door to enter the nation. Almost by definition, this beings in the subset of Asians who grew up in a culture of education and hard work. [\Strike out] I think, the cultural boon/curse of living vicariously through your child also…

> Asians mostly use high-skilled visas / education based visas as a door to enter the nation

I'd like to see some numbers on that.

Lot's of Asians have come as refugees over the years, and also as family connections.

Yeah, the ones I meet at my Silicon Valley job are highly educated and often on that kind of visa, but that's of course a big selection bias trap...

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#234

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 2:51 AM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #146

acephal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black SWE here, grew up on the west side of Chicago, I don't think most white people understand how bad the literacy situation is. I could read competently before I even got to school and I went to grammar school in the 90s. First day of first grade, I found out no one could competently read a sentence. In fact, whole school (which has closed) was on this remedial education program called Advanced Directives or somet…

This. Systemic racism ... aaaand ... loser gangster culture. Would love to see the numbers on whether it's easier to become a chartered accountant or a rap artist. I'm seeing the other side of this, recently (disadvantaged white people). It's astonishing the loser mentalities and habits that many disadvantaged children learn from their early caregivers and peer group. As middle to upper middle class people, we often…

[deleted]

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#235

Post by skissane » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #221

skissane wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and living in a household with lower overall stress (since there are more people to bear the burden) is probably healthy. Some people have a lot of conflict with their parents and/or parents-in-law. But, since they live in different residences and only see them once every few weeks, it is manageable. If they were under the same roof, the stress might be a lot worse.

I don't know how relevant that is. Some people will always get divorced and while there are ways to address that (and, multi-generational houses that lower the stress of child rearing may reduce it) I think we can treat them as independent and still see benefits in multi-generational household. Instead of having either one parent or the other and placing the full responsibility on that single person, a multi-generati…

I don't understand what divorce has to do with my comment? I was talking about people who don't get along with their own parents and/or with their spouse's parents. Neither has any necessary connection to the topic of divorce. Plenty of people remain married despite the fact that they have a poor relationship with their own parents or with their spouse's parents.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#236

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #146

acephal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black SWE here, grew up on the west side of Chicago, I don't think most white people understand how bad the literacy situation is. I could read competently before I even got to school and I went to grammar school in the 90s. First day of first grade, I found out no one could competently read a sentence. In fact, whole school (which has closed) was on this remedial education program called Advanced Directives or somet…

This. Systemic racism ... aaaand ... loser gangster culture. Would love to see the numbers on whether it's easier to become a chartered accountant or a rap artist. I'm seeing the other side of this, recently (disadvantaged white people). It's astonishing the loser mentalities and habits that many disadvantaged children learn from their early caregivers and peer group. As middle to upper middle class people, we often…

[deleted]

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#237

Post by atomi » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 3:40 AM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #223

babesh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a significant percentage have. The US is 16.7% Hispanic. That is over 50 million people. The population of Mexico is a little over 120 million. I would bet that if there were no barriers to immigration then you would see a significantly higher Hispanic population in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hispanic_and...

Many Hispanics didn't immigrate to the US. Their ancestors were already there when the US conquered California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado from Mexico.

For generations Hispanics were migrating to the states you mentioned. They colonized first. See Pobladores https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Pobladores

Another group of people came along and decided that was enough of that. The land belongs to them now and put up a border after what Ulysses S. Grant called "the most unjust war" ever waged. Please correct me here if I'm wrong.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#238

Post by perl4ever » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

toraobo wrote: post #178

acephal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black SWE here, grew up on the west side of Chicago, I don't think most white people understand how bad the literacy situation is. I could read competently before I even got to school and I went to grammar school in the 90s. First day of first grade, I found out no one could competently read a sentence. In fact, whole school (which has closed) was on this remedial education program called Advanced Directives or somet…

> First day of first grade, I found out no one could competently read a sentence. Isn't the standard expectation that children enter first-grade completely illiterate? I remember learning how to read and write letters one per lesson in first grade. I'd guess that maybe 5% are taught to read by parents?

I think schools even discourage parents teaching their kids to read, even in wealthy suburban, college oriented districts. But some do anyway, and it could be more than 5% especially if you only count those that end up being strong readers.

A theory my parents had was that the limiting factor in teaching a child to read is not the mental capacity, but their eyesight - supposedly it's normal to start out relatively farsighted and unable to focus on small print close up. So they started me and my sister on words printed in very large letters and gradually reduced them.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#239

Post by danans » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #209

kaitai wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely worth thinking about, and in particular to put it into today's political context, Nigerian-Americans have the most PhDs per capita of any immigrant or native-born group -- and yet Nigeria was just put under travel restrictions. Having friends & colleagues from both American Black and African and Black Caribbean backgrounds has given me a tiny glimpse into some of the difference in background and tr…

I was with you until the last point. The resources are not artificially limited. The US spends almost a trillion tax dollars each year on education. We’re at over 4.1% of GDP spent on education (excluding private money), well above Germany, Spain or Italy (about 3.6%), about the same as the UK (4.2%), and not too far below France (4.6%). https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/public-spending-on-educati... Those are the fi…

> I think we absolutely need to spend money to address disparities in the experience of African American kids in this country. I think the wrong way to do that is to funnel more money into disproportionately white teachers and school administrators. Direct cash payments to inner city families I think would go a lot further.

We should do both, while sourcing more black teachers and administrators for schools from within those communities. The reality is that the history of impoverishment has set of cycles of negligence and trauma in these communities that money alone can't fix, though it can help change the direction.

Treatment from within the community is needed. Practically, the school is where that happens for the children. It would be great if the families would be able to afford to pay for their own treatment like more well off people do, but realistically, the direct payments would primarily be used pay for basics, like food and the roof over their heads.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#240

Post by tasuki » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 9:01 AM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #137

danans wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is simultaneously the case that those African immigrants benefit from intact family and community structures, just like other immigrant groups. For example, they have people in their community they can trust to care for their children, or to offer them job opportunities at businesses that serve their communities specific cultural needs, like a Nigerian grocery. Trust networks are extremely valuable, and they under…

History echoes and echoes and echoes. Redlining is still huge in its effects on generational wealth: housing is the single largest mechanism for wealth transfer in American families, and systematically and intentionally excluding black Americans has resulted in billions in dollars of vanished wealth. Go back in history and look at the Freedman's Bank: established during Reconstruction for freed slaves, it was placed…

> [...] So much money. And immigrant families, because they're coming here now, have not faced the same systematic impacts.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying immigrant families are in a better financial situation than the discriminated-against blacks, because they weren't discriminated against in the same way? Many immigrant families bring very little with them and have to start from scratch.