Study: More Hispanic Immigrants Graduate

WASHINGTON (AP) April 20, 2004 - Many more Hispanic immigrants are completing high school and earning college degrees, but the education gap with native-born Americans remains wide, a Hispanic research group reported Wednesday.

Education levels also vary by the country from which a Hispanic immigrant came, according to the report by the Pew Hispanic Center. Those from Mexico and Central American countries like El Salvador and Honduras were less likely to finish high school than new arrivals from South America and the Caribbean.

The gap with U.S.-born residents persists in part because many Hispanic families cannot afford rising college costs, experts said. In other families, kids may not attend school regularly to work, while undocumented students find it hard to get financial aid.

Meanwhile, disparities may exist between sub-groups simply because of how far one has to travel to the United States, said one of the report's authors, B. Lindsay Lowell. For instance, undocumented immigrants from Mexico tend to be less educated and don't have to travel far to get to the United States.

However, those from South America typically have to pay more money to travel to the country, so they would be more likely to be more educated, or at least come from families where the cost of travel -- and an education -- is not as much of a hindrance.

The center's analysis of Census Bureau data between 1970 and 2000 found the share of Hispanic immigrants over 25 who graduated from high school increased from 28 percent to 59 percent, while for U.S.-born residents it grew from 53 percent to 87 percent.

Those immigrants who attended at least two years of college or a two-year degree doubled from 9 percent to 18 percent, while for U.S.-born citizens it increased from 17 percent to 35 percent,

Even with the disparities, "the education profile of the adult Hispanic immigrant population has improved significantly over the past 30 years,'' said the Pew center's director, Roberto Suro.

"In the coming decades, the educational composition of the Hispanic foreign-born population will begin to look more like that of the American native-born population,'' wrote Suro and co-author B. Lindsay Lowell.

Jim Ferg-Cadima, a legislative analyst with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the report was overly optimistic. He said it did not account for factors that may limit Hispanic advances, including college costs or private financial aid sources, which tend to give more merit to applicants who are citizens.

Plus, forecasts are difficult to make because "this country's treatment of immigrants is always in flux,'' he said.

Data from the 2000 census showed the Hispanic population more than doubled during the 1990s to 35.3 million, rivaling blacks as the nation's largest minority group. Many Hispanics from Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Central America, arrived in the past decade to take plentiful, low-skilled, low-paying jobs in factories, meatpacking plants and on farms.

The influx has strained many urban and rural schools struggling to teach new immigrants with little or no grasp of English. Some critics have called for more limits on immigration to ease the burden on schools and to reduce the number of Hispanic dropouts in the work force.

Government estimates place the illegal immigrant population between 8 million and 9 million, with nearly half from Mexico. About two-thirds of all undocumented immigrants have not finished high school, the report said.

Suro said he was optimistic disparities would narrow as younger foreign-born residents who tend to have more education displace in the population older residents who are less educated. In addition, more immigrant families are getting their education in the United States, where schools tend to be better than in Latin American countries.

"For the immediate and foreseeable future, substantial benefits can be reaped from programs that aim to bolster the education of immigrant youth and provide adults with language and skills training,'' the report said.

Krista Kafer, an education policy analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said more improvement could be made by using English immersion techniques rather than bilingual education in teaching students with little or no grasp of the language.

"It doesn't seem as insurmountable task in closing that achievement gap,'' she said.