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| David Hul of Lowell, Mass., expects to do better than his parents, who came to the US as Thai refugees. Nicole Hill |
American dream falters
Second generation immigrants' financial progress slows.
from the August 10, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
The American economy remains an escalator, carrying many children of immigrants to a better life, Pew found. Second-generation immigrants do much better than their parents, on average. They do so well, in fact, that they surpass the earnings of those whose families have lived in the US much longer. Second-generation immigrants make 6.3 percent more than nonimmigrant workers, according to data compiled by Pew.
Often this jump for the children is due to parental initiative and hard labor. David Hul's mother and father, for instance, fled Cambodia's cruel Khmer Rouge regime during the era of the Vietnam War. They came to the US in 1981, eventually settling in Lowell, Mass.
Lack of English meant that Mr. Hul's father – an engineer – had to work long hours to eventually reach an employment level commensurate with his skills. Meanwhile, the senior Huls ran a convenience store on the side.
Hul, a Boston-based marketing manager for a technology firm, says he has not had to worry about making a living as much as his parents did. He says he's confident he will eventually be more financially successful than they were.
But he knows his parents' drive helped him to his current economic position.
The nationality diversity of immigrants – both illegal and legal – today is far different from in decades past. In the 1960s, Europe and Canada accounted for half the newcomers to the US. Now, they make up less than 20 percent.
Meanwhile, the percentage of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia has jumped from about 50 percent in the 1960s to nearly 75 percent.
The educational mix of immigrants has remained relatively constant. The proportion of those with advanced degrees, at 12 percent, and those with a high school degree or less, at 52 percent, is about the same today as it was before 1970, according to Pew. .
However, the educational differences between immigrants from different regions of the world is "stark," in Pew's terminology. Half of Asian immigrants have at least a bachelor's degree. Half of Latin American immigrants haven't finished high school.
Not surprisingly, education plays a large role in the lives of many immigrants who have done well.
Kent Lee is a senior research scientist at a medical device technology firm in Minneapolis. His father, who immigrated to the US from Taiwan in 1954, was the first person in his family to attend college. His mother came to the US in 1972 as a graduate student.
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