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But this perspective proved unsatisfactory because it left the disadvantaged situation of African Americans unexplained. Partly as a result, the 1960s civil rights movement ignited an intellectual backlash that stressed racial disadvantage and the persistence of racial and ethnic discrimination as factors affecting the labor market outcomes of minorities. Immigration scholars argued that groups that are also racial and ethnic minorities face sufficient discrimination and institutional barriers to employment and other opportunities that their assimilation remains blocked. Neither of these two competing perspectives seems fully to depict the experiences of new Latino immigrants. This shortcoming is particularly evident for Mexican immigrants, who come mostly from a mixed racial/ethnic background encompassing centuries of melding (mestizaje) of white and indigenous groups. Models reflecting a bipolar black/white racial context and emphasizing the kinds of racial discrimination experienced by blacks may be less relevant to the historical and contemporary experiences of Mexicans. Moreover, neither assimilation nor racial/ethnic disadvantage models account for the effects of continuing migration that bolsters Mexican neighborhoods and institutions. New immigrants also increase the number of potential coethnic spouses and thus decrease the likelihood of ethnically mixed marriages—an important factor in traditional assimilation. Yet even as poor Mexican neighborhoods are gaining population from new arrivals, the third and later generations generally are moving out into suburbs with a much larger white presence. In the Los Angeles area, for instance, middleclass people of Mexican origin are not maintaining insular neighborhoods; they are integrating, especially with whites. But this slow integration seldom makes headlines and may easily be overlooked. The process of reconciling the relative importance of race/ethnicity with other factors that may delay economic mobility seems likely to continue to dominate debates about the extent of assimilation. Research by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute suggests that it is the high and rising cost of college more than lack of interest or the presence of discrimination that slows the educational advancement of Mexican Americans.55 A key question then becomes whether better governmental policies on providing language training and defraying the expenses of higher education are needed to speed the economic mobility of the Mexican immigrant group and shorten a four- or five-generation process to only two or three. While policies that help to improve the quality of primary education (grades one through eight) are important for reducing dropout rates and fostering high school completion, they will not by themselves raise educational levels enough. Many already adequately prepared Mexican-origin high school graduates cannot afford to attend college. Thus, policies that reduce the cost of college for low- and middle-income groups are necessary to close education gaps. Increased access to loans, or even to lowcost loans, may not be sufficient, simply because loans have to be repaid, thus substantially neutralizing through the process of long-term debt amortization F. D. BEAN, S. K. BROWN, AND J. BACHMEIER 270 much of the earnings premium accompanying the completion of a college degree. Direct grants-in-aid are required. NOTES 1. Rosemary Jenks, “The USA Patriot Act of 2001,” Center for Immigration Studies, 2001, www.cis.org/articles/2001/black1501.html. 2. Doris Meissner, “After the Attacks: Protecting Borders and Liberties,” Policy Brief 8 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001). 3. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). 4. Frank D. Bean, Susan K. Brown, and Rubén G. Rumbaut, “Mexican Immigrant Political and Economic Incorporation,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 2 (June 2006): 309–313. 5. Frank D. Bean and Gillian Stevens, America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003). 6. See Frank D. Bean, Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Bryan R. Roberts, and Sidney Weintraub, At the Crossroads: Mexico and U.S. Immigration Policy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); Jorge G. Castaneda, The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the U.S. (New York: New Press, 1995); Jorge G. Castaneda, Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrant (New York: New Press, 2007); Carlos Fuentes, A New Time for Mexico (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996). 7. Robert A. Pastor, “The Future of NAFTA,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 4 (2008): 84–98. 8. Office of Immigration Statistics, 2006 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Office of Immigration Statistics, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, September 2007). 9. Charlene Barshefsky, James T. Hill, and Shannon K. O’Neil, U.S...

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