Frank X. Moraga
By Frank X. Moraga / Amigos805
How many of you dear readers know that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. holding down blue-collar jobs is still below levels seen before the Great Recession? Guess we don’t need to overly militarize the border after all.
Or did you know that the majority of English-speaking Hispanics in the U.S. are bilingual? (Sorry. I still like Latinos better as a term).
Or, that adult Millennials today are more than twice as likely to be Hispanic as members of the Baby Boom and the Silent generations?
One way to get more details on these issues is to sign up for the “PewRearchCenter” Hispanic Trends e-newsletter at http://www.pewresearch.org/follow-us/ Go to the section that says Newsletters, click Biweekly newsletter, and/or New Report alerts, enter your email and click Sign up.
Pretty easy, but a very valuable tool if you want to stay up with all the trends affecting the Latino community.
Getting back to the latest report:
While the number of unauthorized immigrant workers in production and construction has fallen since 2007, those immigrant workers still make up the solid majority in low-skilled service, construction and production occupations, according to the center’s new estimates presented by Jeffry S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn.
Their report also found that the number of unauthorized immigrants in management or professional related jobs grew by 180,000.
Meanwhile, about six in ten U.S. adult Hispanics (62 percent) speak English or are bilingual, according to an analysis of the center’s 2013 National Survey of Latinos as presented by Jens Manuel Krogstad and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera.
Latino adults who are the children of immigrant parents are most likely to be bilingual.
“Widespread bilingualism has the potential to affect future generations of Latinos, a population that is among the fastest growing in the nation,” the center reported. “Our 2011 survey showed that Latino adults valued both the ability to speak English and to speak Spanish.”
Finally, the center found a large shift in U.S. society and culture in the past five decades, from the time the Silent generation (today, mostly in their 70s and 80s) was entering adulthood to the adulthood of today’s Millennials.
Millennials have become more detached from major institutions like political parties, religion, the military and marriage. At the same time, the racial and ethnic makeup of the country has changed, college attainment has spiked and women have greatly increased their participation in the nation’s workforce and their representation on college campuses, according to a report presented by Eileen Patten and Richard Fry.
The report found that Millennials are much more likely to be racial or ethnic minorities than members of the Silent generation. Fifty years ago, America was less racially diverse than it is today. Large-scale immigration from Asia and Latin America, the rise of racial intermarriage, and differences in fertility patterns across racial and ethnic groups have contributed to Millennials being more racially and ethnically diverse than prior generations, the center reported.
In 2014, fewer than six in ten Millennials (57 percent) were non-Hispanic whites, compared with more than three-quarters (78 percent) of Silents. The share who are Hispanic is nearly three times as large among Millennials as among Silents (21 vs. 8 percent), and the shares who are black, Asian or some other race (or races) have also increased.
Yes, plenty of information to ponder as Latinos make tough business, education, financial and political decisions in the years to come. But it’s better to be well-armed with the facts than to just pontificate about how things are or how things should be without any real data to back up your opinions and decisions.
— Frank X. Moraga is editor/publisher of Amigos805. He has served as business editor, director of diversity and general manager of a bilingual publication at the Ventura County Star, and as a reporter in the community editions of the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Daily News. You can reach him at frank@amigos805.com