Throughout the semester we read multiple books/ articles describing the assimilation outcomes of different groups. One group in particular that struck me was the Mexican immigrant group that David E. López and Ricardo D. Stanton- Salazar talk about in “Mexican Americans: A Second Generation at Risk.” Given that I come from a Mexican immigrant family and I am a second-generation child of immigrant, I could connect with the analyses López and Stanton- Salazar presented.

During their Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) “88 percent [of the Mexican immigrant interviewees] agreed that there is racial discrimination” upon their group, including job discrimination (2001: 74). My father is a first generation Mexican immigrant who immigrated to this country at the age of 21. Upon arriving he said he “immediately sensed discrimination because of his thick Mexican accent and lack of English. It was extremely difficult to find a job.” It took him two months to find a job. And even then he constantly bounced from job to job, mostly doing physical manual labor. The first months he was forced to live in a small apartment with 5 other people because rent was too expensive for him alone. However he did not give up. He knew that if one day he wanted to establish a family here he “had to work hard even if it killed him” and that one day he would “accomplish the American dream of having a stable job and buying a home where he would raise his children.” No doubt, 8 years later he was able to buy his first home where my brothers and I were raised in. Five years ago he was able to get his legal visa. In addition, after taking English classes he is able to almost- fluently speak English. However, he still has that Spanish accent, something he likes because it reminds him that despite being an immigrant he has achieved a lot in this country.

Having gone through these hardships, he does not want us to go through the same. In “The Bumpy Road of Assimilation: Gender, Phenotype, and Historical Era,” Jessica M. Vasquez talks about how first generation immigrant parents are “reluctant to pass on any information that pre- dated their arrival in the U.S. to their children,” perhaps as a “defense mechanism to shield their offspring from knowing the hardships they endured” (725-6). This is not the case in my situation. On the contrary, my father constantly “repeatedly [tells] tales of hardship and sacrifice, including [his] own lack of educational opportunities” to my brothers and I to relentlessly motivate us to do well in school (López and Stanton- Salazar 2001: 79). Because everyone has a right to a K- 12 education, he expected us to graduate from high school, furthermore, in addition he also expects us to attend college- even if it is a 2- year community college.

Through all this, even though they left Mexico at a young age because of lack of advancement opportunities, my parents make sure that my brothers and I do not lose our Mexican ethnic identity. By sending us to visit Mexico once in a while, having/attending Quinceñeras (Sweet 15), cooking Mexican food, and ensuring we talk Spanish at home, my parents have emphasized the importance of keeping in touch with our Mexican origin, thus we identify as Mexican- Americans.

Bibliography

Lòpez, David E. and Ricardo D. Stanton- Salazar. 2001. “Mexican American: A Second Generation at Risk.” Pp. 57-90 in Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America. Ed. Rubén G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Vasquez, Jessica M. 2011. “The Bumpy Road of Assimilation: Gender, Phenotype, and Historical Era.” Sociological Spectrum, 31: 718-748.