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January 14, 2005
 Prepare
The Dueling Pistols!
By
Joe Guzzardi
Were it not for the fact that
settling disputes at twenty paces
fell out of favor two centuries ago, I would—to
preserve the honor of immigration reform groups and also
of my
Italian immigrant ancestors—challenge New York
Times education columnist
Samuel G. Freedman to meet me at dawn.
In his January 5th column
“Dominicans Take Their Place As an American Success
Story.” Freedman—who is also a professor at the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and
the 1997 recipient of the
Society of Professional Journalists outstanding
journalism educator award—slimed Americans who favor a
thoughtful immigration policy. And he took a pretty good
shot at
Italian-Americans.
Presumably, Freedman set out to
write a straightforward column about the achievements of
17
Hostos Community College graduates. As reported by
Freedman, the group—which gathered for a pre-Christmas
reunion with former teachers—was largely
Dominican.
Freedman wrote that one former
student, the son of barber with only a second grade
education, is now a corporate auditor.
Another who knew only a few words of
English ten years ago is currently the director of
testing for
York College in Queens.
But then, after heaping praise on
these Dominicans, Freedman fell into an emotional spasm.
He wrote:
“In the 39 years since the
US reopened its door to large-scale immigration, it has
become sadly routine to hear and read criticism of these
arrivals from
Asia,
Africa, the
Caribbean basin, and
Latin America as somehow more clannish, less devoted
to America and the
English language than their European forebears in the
period from roughly
1850-1920. Any cursory look at the
nativist lobby’s publications and Web sites would
lead one to believe that post-1965 immigrants, especially
Hispanic ones, present nothing less than a threat to the
republic.”
And:
“…Dominicans may be the
modern day equivalent of the
Italians…the upward mobility through public education
and small business ownership follows the same
trajectory.”
Of course, Freedman is absurdly
wrong to suggest that the tiny handful of, as he puts it,
“unheralded successes of Dominican immigrants in
higher education…” is a clear signal that Dominicans
are taking their place among the “legendary ladder of
upward mobility for
earlier waves of newcomers.”
Imagine if I wrote that 15
convicted Dominican drug dealers doing hard time at
Riker’s Island represent an
accurate sampling of that country’s total
population.
I can tell stories of individual
successes among my Latino ESL students too. But that
doesn’t alter my opinion that, overall, the influx is a
disaster for America.
And amazingly, buried at the very
end of Freedman’s article is this devastating refutation
of his entire thesis:
“Between 1980 and 2000, even as Dominican
immigrants became more likely to earn a high school
diploma, the share of American-born Dominicans whose
formal education ended with a high school diploma dropped
markedly—from about one-third to one-fifth…Those numbers
tell a chastening story about what happens when the
immigrant drive doesn't lift a family into the middle
class and the next generation adopts the most
self-destructive attitudes of poor, urban America, about
how doing well in school is just for chumps.”
In other words, Dominicans overall are becoming a new
underclass.
Maybe a New York
Times editor who didn’t go to
Columbia Journalism School made Freedman put this in.
It just hasn’t affected his raging imigration
enthusiasm.
Freedman does cite a new study “Against
All Odds: Students in Higher Education in New York”,
by
Ramona Hernandez, Director of
the Dominican Studies Institute at City College of
New York and herself a Dominican. [Not available online].
According to Freedman’s optimistic
analysis of Hernandez’s statistics, American-born
Dominicans 25 or older with “some college” doubled
from 1980 to 2000 to 35%. Among Dominican natives now
living in New York, 17% have “some college.”
But check the tortured math.
According to my calculations, Hernandez’s figures
translate to 65% American-born Dominicans and 83% of
U.S.-resident Dominican natives
without any college education.
What “upward mobility” awaits
those under-educated Dominicans?
Even more interesting is how
Freedman never mentions Hernandez’s earlier study
released in October 2003,
“Dominicans in the US: A Socioeconomic Profile, 2000.”
Among the sobering facts then
detailed by Hernandez:
- The mean annual per capita
household income for Dominicans in 1999 was $11,
065—half the average national per capita income and
significantly less than the average per capital income
of African-American families and slightly less than
other Hispanic households.
- The poverty rate of Dominicans in
New York—32%—is the highest of any major ethnic or
racial groups. Many of those living in poverty were
female-headed families. (A Center for Immigration
Studies 2000
report found that the national percentage of
Dominicans in
poverty is more than 60%).
- The unemployment rate for
Dominican men and women “greatly exceeded” the
national unemployment.
- The Dominican labor force is
“very young and mostly unskilled.” Accordingly,
“the average earnings of Dominican men and women are
substantially lower than those of other workers in the
nation.”
- Nationwide, the overall Dominican
educational attainment is “among the lowest” of
any ethnicity. Only 50% of Dominicans over 25 have
completed high school.
After reading Hernandez’s report
only one conclusion can be reached: Dominicans in America
are, on the whole, doing poorly.
The Dominican “American Success
Story” touted by Freedman’s simply doesn’t exist
Yet the numbers of Dominicans who
entered the U.S doubled between 1990 and 2000 from
520,000 to 1 million. Add to that the 400,000 Dominicans
that were born in U.S.
Arguments to control immigration
from the Dominican Republic—and other countries with
similar economic profiles—are entirely logical and
appropriate.
A final point: To suggest that
Dominicans are “the modern day equivalent of the
Italians” is really a stretch—even for a professional
immigration enthusiast.
I must remind Freedman that my
Italian ancestors came to New York legally.
They were legally employed at
every job they ever held.
None received one thin dime in
government support.
And Italian immigration was
cut off in the 1920s—something I never heard my
relatives complain about (or even mention, by the way).
That cut-off, and the fact that
pre-welfare state immigrants who failed in the workplace
went home, helped all the 1880-1920 Great Wave
immigrants assimilate.
Which is why we need another cut-off
now.
It would behoove Freedman to take
more than a “cursory” look at
immigration reform websites and try to learn
something.
A tall order. But suggest it to
Freedman anyway:
sgfreedman@nytimes.com or
feedback@samuelfreedman.com
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English at the Lodi
Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column
since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM. |
