Immigrant Success: Two Ways to Achieve the American Dream?

Immigrant integration into the US can manifest itself in many ways, including the possibility of improving one's socio-economic status or, to put it more directly, to achieve what is popularly known as the American Dream.

There may be as many ways to achieve the American Dream as there are individuals seeking to obtain it. However, in evaluating the success or failure in achieving it is incorrect to focus attention only on the individual level - that is, by ONLY taking into account one's qualities, work ethic, talents, etc. Scholars, and common sense, also suggest that one must ALSO take into consideration other factors including the legal/institutional opportunities or barriers that a given person faces. This observation is relevant because over the course of US history, national (as well as state and local level) immigration policies have treated social groups differently. For example, the country's first law dealing with naturalization, the Naturalization Law of 1790, specified that only free "white" immigrants would be permitted to become naturalized citizens. The definition of "white" varied over time but the restriction was not eliminated until the passage of the Walter-McCarran Act of 1952 - 160 years later.

Having stated this, it is interesting to find that academic experts on immigration such as Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut have argued that there are two ways to "make it" in America. One way to achieve it is by pursuing higher education and following what the authors call the salaried professional/managerial route. The second way is to enter the private sector and follow the independent entrepreneurial route. Obviously, an implication of such an observation is that immigrants should be encouraged to pursue higher education and become professionals and independent business owners.

How relevant is this interpretation to the various immigrant groups?

How have Mexican immigrants performed in these two scenarios?

How would proposed reforms, such as the DREAM Act, improve results?

What other reforms or changes are necessary to create greater opportunities to immigrants who arrived as adults and perhaps even professional degrees, but cannot access the labor market in their respective professions?

In subsequent entries we hope to explore in depth these and other matters.

Sources:
Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
Ronald Takaki, From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press, 1994).