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decried the rise of multiculturalism in America and declared, “We’re losing sight of who we
are.”46
Tancredo takes a harder line than most, but he is not alone in believing that immigration
threatens American culture and identity. Never before in the history of the United States
has immigration been so dominated by a single region and, indeed, by a single country.
Some 58 percent of all immigrants who arrived between 2000 and 2005 were from Latin
America.47 An estimated 42 million ethnic Latinos live in America today, comprising about
14 percent of the U.S. population, and more than a third are younger than 18. The vast
majority of U.S. Latinos are of Mexican origin or descent.48 As of late 2005, 10.8 million
Mexican immigrants were living in the United States, comprising 31 percent of the
immigrant population and almost six times the combined total for China, Taiwan, and Hong
Kong. Moreover, Mexicans account for a clear majority of the illegal immigrant population.
These unprecedented levels, coupled with the fact that Latino immigrants have tended to
concentrate regionally (Mexicans in Southern California and Texas and Cubans in Miami, for
instance), have helped spark a national debate over whether today’s immigrants are
assimilating into American culture as well as the national economy.

Such concerns are fueled, to some extent, by the wage gap between Mexicans and natives
and between Mexicans and other immigrant groups. At $22,300, the average annual
income of Mexican immigrants is currently half that of native-born workers.49 While
immigrants are slightly more likely than natives to have an advanced degree, in 2005
about 30 percent of all immigrants aged 18 and over in the labor force—a group in which
Mexicans comprise a clear majority—did not have high school diplomas.50 Poverty rates
among Mexicans are therefore higher, and while noncitizen, first-generation immigrants do
not qualify for public assistance, their U.S.-born children do. Immigrants’ use of public
services has been a long-standing source of concern for nativists seeking more restrictive
immigration policies. California’s Proposition 187, although struck down soon after its
easy passage in a 1994 referendum, made “illegal immigrants ineligible for public social
services, public health care services (unless emergency under federal law), and public
school education at elementary, secondary, and post secondary levels.”51 Federal welfare
reform legislation that passed in 1996 authorized states to prevent legal immigrants who
arrived after the law’s date of enactment from receiving “means tested” public benefits—
such as food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program—for at least five
years. Furthermore, those immigrants who enter under the family unification provision of
immigration law are often barred from receiving means-tested benefits because the
sponsor’s income is transferred to the immigrant until he or she establishes a work history
of roughly 10 years, which often makes the immigrant’s income too high to qualify.52
Refugees are eligible for more public benefits after arriving than other immigrants and are
much more likely to use them. Studies by the Urban Institute and the Migration Policy
Institute have otherwise found that immigrants’ use of most public benefits has declined
significantly since the 1996 reforms and is substantially lower than that of U.S. citizens.53
Public education remains the exception to this broader trend and is central to the issue of
assimilation. The children of immigrants now account for 19.2 percent of the total school-
age population in the United States,54 and about a third of these children have parents
who lack high school educations.55 In California, 55 percent of all students are the
children of immigrants, and in Texas the figure is 25 percent.56 Especially in these states

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