Immigrant success in America and its implications

In Streets of Gold, Amreica’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success, economists Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan consider the economic trajectory of immigrants to the United States over time. Based on their review of tax filings, census records, and other data, they found that recent immigrant families have climbed the economic ladder at a similar pace to that of immigrant families from the Ellis Island era of the early 20th century.

They found that, as in the past, children of immigrants are more upwardly mobile than children of the native born. “The American dream is just as real for immigrants from Asia and Latin America now as it was for immigrants from Italy and Russia 100 years ago,” they concluded.

In light of this research, David Leonhardt of the New York Times asks: “Which groups need affirmative action?” Consulting the work of race-hustler and fabulist Nikole Hannah-Jones, Leonhardt answers that only black Americans need it. Hispanics and Asians don’t.

My conclusions are rather different. In my view, the findings of Streets of Gold suggest that no group needs affirmative action. They also tell me that native-born Americans, whether black or white, should stop whining and focus on doing the things needed to take advantage of the opportunities our great nation affords them.

Why are immigrant families from Asia and Latin America making good on the American Dream? Not because they arrive here prosperous. A great many arrive here poor and, of course, deficient in language skills and an understanding of how things work in their new country.

Not because they face no discrimination. As Leonhardt acknowledges, “many immigrants did, and do, experience discrimination.” In addition to common forms of discrimination, Asians have been systematically discriminated against by America’s colleges and universities. This discrimination is the product of the “affirmative action” Leonhardt argues for.

Immigrant families from Asian and Latin America succeed, nonetheless. In my view, they do so because typically they have solid family structures and, relatedly, because they figure out what behaviors will enable them to succeed and tend engage in these behaviors, often single-mindedly. (Abramitzky and Boustan focus on the “location decisions” immigrants make.) Unlike many blacks, immigrants don’t reject these behaviors because they are “white” or, to identify the core reason for the rejection, because they are difficult.

I contend, therefore, that no group in contemporary America needs affirmative action to succeed. If immigrant families, by engaging in right kinds of behavior, can overcome the significant disadvantages they face, any native group should also be able to do so.

What arguments does Leonhardt marshal against my contention? He says blacks have it worse in America than other groups. Yes, but why? If it’s because of their behaviors, then they what they really need is not affirmative action — which they have been receiving for more than 50 years, yet are still struggling. What they need is to change their behaviors.

Leonhardt cites figures saying that life expectancy for blacks is about five years lower than for whites (seven years lower than for Hispanics and more than 10 years lower than for Asians). But he doesn’t show (or even say) that a significant portion of these gaps is due to discrimination. Nor does he try to show that affirmative action — which, again, has been around for more than 50 years — will reduce the gaps.

In the end, Leonhardt is left to rely on the fact that the oppression of blacks in America lasted for centuries. But what does Leonhardt suppose life was like for the ancestors of people who have recently immigrated to America from, say, Laos, El Salvador, or Somalia? Or for the ancestors of Jews who immigrated here in the early 1900s from Russia or the poorest reaches of the Austria-Hungary Empire? In a great many cases, these immigrants came to America to escape from centuries of grinding oppression.

The second conclusion I draw from Streets of Gold is that native-born Americans should abandon the woe-is-me attitude that seems to have become so common. This holds for both blacks and whites — but in my view, especially for whites who have even less excuse than blacks for adopting the attitude.

It seems to be an article of faith in MAGA world that, due to large-scale unfairness in the system, white Americans can’t get ahead any longer and that young whites are condemned to live less well than their parents. Streets of Gold presents strong evidence that these beliefs are wrong. White Americans aren’t marching in place or falling behind because the system is stacked against them. The success of immigrants tells me that to the extent white Americans are marching in place or falling behind, it’s because of their behaviors.

I see it argued that the fentanyl crisis is the result of hopelessness in communities throughout America whose young people have concluded that, with the deck stacked against them by our “elites,” they can’t get ahead. This is essentially the same as the excuse that blacks become addicted to drugs or resort to crime because the deck is stacked against them.

As I see it, the experience of immigrants undercuts this dodge of personal responsibility.

But what of the argument that some measure of despair among young native-born Americans is justified by the very fact of mass immigration — that is, by the competition for jobs that immigrants present? The authors of Streets of Gold contend that immigration does not harm the labor market prospects of Americans. I’m quite skeptical of this claim, and it is hotly disputed.

But while competition from immigrants is probably a valid grievance for native-born Americans in various sectors of the economy, I don’t think it justifies the overall pessimism about their economic prospects I hear expressed. I assume that the mass immigration of the Ellis Island era had the same kind of effect on labor markets as the current wave (whatever that effect is, precisely). Native-born Americans from that era were still able to get ahead.

I believe native-born Americans still are, if they avoid despair and behave more like the legal immigrants against whom, to some extent, they compete.