INTEGRATION - the process by which members of immigrant groups and host societies come to resemble one another.
Education
Today in the United States, second generation immigrants from most ethnic groups either meet or exceed the schooling level of third generation native-born Americans. That means that between the first and second generation, children of immigrants are becoming more educated. Sometimes they're even more educated than U.S. natives. Even if they come in with lower education levels, the longer they stay in the U.S. the more likely their education levels are to mirror native-born levels. [4] |
Poverty
Although it’s true that immigrants are more likely to be poor than native-born Americans, immigrant poverty rates decrease over time. This is especially true for Hispanics. They tend to start out with the highest poverty rates of all immigrant ethnic groups. But those poverty rates decrease from the first to the second generation and continue to decrease over time reflecting a trend towards the average poverty rates for native-born Americans. [6] |
English Language Learning
Language is one of the more obvious indicators of cultural integration. And, even though there’s a stereotype that first generation immigrants don’t speak English, data shows us that this is far from true. It is true that there are many barriers to linguistic integration especially for the first generation, low skilled, poorly educated, residentially segregated, and undocumented. [9] But, as of 2015, 50.9% of all migrants 5 and up were English proficient and could speak English at least “very well.” [10] |
Health - it gets worseImmigrant health changes to look more like the native-born the longer an immigrant lives in the United States. When immigrants first get here they live longer, have very few chronic health problems, lower rates of obesity, and lower rates of depression and alcohol abuse. From generation to generation, immigrant health statistics converge with native-born statistics making them significantly less healthier overall—just like native-born Americans. [16] |
In fact, A lack of social acceptance can actually create barriers to integration.