Schrag: History Tells Us California’s Future Depends on the Children of Immigrants and Their Education

One of the most common arguments against large scale immigration, especially immigration from Mexico and Latin America, is the contention that the number of immigrants, legal and illegal, is simply too large to assimilate. The argument echoes similar American fears – about Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Jews and, of course, Asians – of a century ago.

All those "inferior races" coming here in the period between 1890 and 1920 were widely described as morally and intellectually unfit, they brought crime and disease, and they'd weaken the vigorous Nordic "germ-plasm" on which the nation was built and which made it great. (All those terms were common.)

There were even questions whether many of those immigrants at the turn of the last century were white at all. It took a federal appellate court (in 1909) to rule that Armenians were not "Asiatics" who were ineligible for citizenship, as the government claimed, but white.

Immigration opponents often complain that if it weren't for Mexicans and other immigrants, the schools wouldn't be as crowded as they are. That's obvious. But during the years when the baby boomers were growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, California's school enrollment relative to the state's population was far higher than it is now. In 1960, one of four Californians was enrolled in public school. Today it's less than one of six.

But the numbers nonetheless make it clear how much the state's future – its economy, its civic life, its political health – depends on those kids. There is no one else to replace the retiring boomers. If the children of immigrants and poor people generally aren't educated, the state's skill pool will rapidly deteriorate. Nearly all are U.S. citizens. They will be here either as productive taxpaying individuals or as wards of our social service programs.

It's clear from all demographic data that they are learning English and that their own children, more often than not, won't speak their grandparents' language at all.

But it's also clear that they have to learn our political language – not just the language of rights and protest, but the language of unity, civic engagement and constitutional democracy. Multiculturalism can supplement it – indeed it depends on our constitutional system – but it can't replace it. In the next decade, our immigration policy will depend a great deal on how well the schools Americanize immigrant children now.

That means that, however well meaning, the push to create separate programs for English learners – in effect to segregate them again – is a terrible idea. Among the things that make immigration opponents angriest is the belief that we maintain what they regard as an open door and then allow those who come through to remain an unassimilated alien lump.

Despite similar warnings from some of the nation's most respectable citizens 100 years ago, we assimilated our "hordes" of immigrants in 1900. We better try our damndest to do it again.

Peter Schrag is the former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. This article is published with his permission.