Immigrants to the US from India increasingly assimilate into their new country, particularly in the economic sector, a newly released study shows. But while Indians match or exceed most other immigrant groups in financial integration, culturally and civically, their assimilation lags behind most everyone, especially Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino immigrants. These results, while ultimately encouraging, do little to put to bed the notion that Indians in America are socially homogeneous and fiercely attached to their heritage.
Still, in the midst of Middle America's immigration anxiety, the research couldn't be more expedient and timely. Indeed, some hateful chain e-mails 1 | 2 | 3 | making their way around the States place the bulk of the country's economic woes and crime on these groups, claiming they drain American resources without contributing themselves, little more than freeloaders. Many of these circulated notes opine on the ethics of earlier immigrants, who formed the so called immigrant wave of the early 1900's; supposedly, those immigrants, largely European, faced greater hurdles but still managed to quickly adapt to the 'American Way'.
However, this new study, sponsored by, of all groups, a conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute, shows that over the past 25 years immigrants have been assimilating to US life at a decidedly faster rate than did yesteryear's new arrivals. Not only that, they land up with markedly lower levels of English ability and earning power than their forbearers.
The research denotes three types of assimilation -- economic, cultural, and civic -- and uses US census data to measure both first-generation immigrants and US citizens. Immigrant groups were rated on a 100-point index; the higher the number, the more that group resembled native-born Americans.
Economic factors include earnings and rates of homeownership; civic factors include rates of US citizenship and service in the military; and cultural factors include English ability and degree of intermarriage with US citizens.
Indians scored an impressive 96 on the economic component of the index, but a lowly 39 and 40 on the cultural and civic components, respectively. This reflects the common wisdom that Indians, through computer science, medicine, engineering, hospitality, and other industries, make rapid economic strides once reaching America.
Conversely, it follows that Indians' reliance on native languages like Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati and a reluctance to marry outside of caste or region, let alone country, would explain the low cultural assimilation score.
Compared to some other Asian immigrants such as Filipino (Economic: 100 Cultural: 72 Civic: 65), Vietnamese (Economic: 99 Cultural: 53 Civic: 72), and Korean (Economic: 100 Cultural: 64 Civic: 55), Indians are clearly less likely to integrate. One possible explanation for this is that Indians form a larger group, and therefore, have less compulsion to drift outside and fully assimilate.
But there are other groups, such as immigrants from El Salvador (Economic: 71 Cultural: 55 Civic: 29) and Mexico (Economic: 66 Cultural: 51 Civic: 22), that achieve far less integration than even Indians, most likely due to illegal immigration, which the study asserts can stunt assimilation.
Perhaps most comparable to India is China (Economic: 90 Cultural: 40 Civic: 47), a similarly large group with similarly rich heritage.
The Washington Post quoted Jacob L Vigdor, professor at Duke University and author of the study, as saying that the trend 'is something unprecedented in US history. It shows that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong.'
Vigdor went on to point out that one possible explanation for the trend is the 1990's economic boom, which saw the creation of countless jobs, and thus opportunities, which accelerated at least the economic component of integration. Another is that today's immigrants are comparatively less assimilated when they arrive, and thus, have many more rungs of the assimilation ladder to climb.
