A Business Case Why Investing in Washington, D.C. Area Hispanic High School Students is a Smart Business Investment
The Washington metropolitan area has, over the past decade, become one of the top immigrant destinations in the country, drawing the majority of its newcomers from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Greater Washington ranks as the 6th largest metropolitan area of immigrant settlement, with over 800,000 foreign-born people living in the region. 1 In 1998, one person in six in the region was foreign-born, a striking contrast to 1970, when one out of every twenty-two residents was foreign-born (U.S. Census Bureau). With Hispanics graduating from high school in numbers that will keep increasing for years, the head of a higher education group that released a report on the trend says colleges need to step up efforts to accommodate the nation's largest minority. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projects that Hispanics will account for 21% of the country's public high school graduates in 2008, up from 17% in 2002. The commission found that nearly 5 million Hispanics were enrolled in the country's public elementary and high schools in 1993-94. And by the 2007-08 school year, it projects that Latino public school enrollment will be about 9 million. (U.S. Today, January 29, 2004). The Class of 2003 is the last group of graduating seniors in Montgomery County public schools to be majority white, according to enrollment projections the superintendent will present to the Board of Education in October 2003. Thirty-five years ago, the school system was 94 percent white; two decades ago, white students made up about 75 percent of the enrollment. Since then, racial diversity has bloomed in the county. (Washington Post October 14, 2003) Most Latino families do not know there is financial aid available for college, leaving them greatly underrepresented in higher education, according to a nationwide survey released in March 2004 "There is a lot of misinformation or under-information in the Latino community," said Louis DeSipio, a research scholar for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, which conducted the survey. "Latino households are more likely than other households to have no college exposure. There is an assumption that it is an almost impossible goal to achieve. It adds an extra barrier." (San Francisco Chronicle, April, 1, 2004). In 1998, the Washington metropolitan area was the 5th most common destination for legal immigrants to the U.S. Only New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami were more popular. Between 1990 and 1998, nearly 250,000 immigrants from 193 countries and territories chose to live in the metropolitan area. (U.S. Census Bureau). Washington's recent immigrants are highly diverse- there is not a dominant country (or countries) of origin among the newcomers to the region. The largest single immigrant groupfrom El Salvador- comprises only 10.5 percent of the region's newcomers. (U.S. Census Bureau). Washington's immigrants are not clustered into ethnically homogeneous residential enclaves, but instead are dispersed throughout the region. Of the top ten immigrant zip codes, four each are located in Maryland and Virginia, and two are in the District of Columbia. (U.S. Census Bureau). In the 1990s, 87 percent of immigrants to the region chose to live in the suburbs. Almost half (46 percent) of new immigrants located in communities outside the Capital Beltway. Less than 13 percent moved to the District. (U.S. Census Bureau).
One in six children in the United States is Hispanic, and by 2020 the number is expected to be almost one in four. Hispanics outnumber any other demographic group in the country's largest school districts, and their enrollment is booming in American suburbs too.
Latinos climb the economic and educational ladder across generations as quickly as European immigrants, according to a groundbreaking assimilation study released today. The findings by the Rand Corp., a non-profit think tank, contradict popular perceptions and many previous studies that show a wider assimilation gap between immigrants from Latin America and Europe. Mark Roberge's office at San Francisco State University looks out on shiny new loftlike dorms, but his students aren't living the dorm life. They are living with their parents and working two jobs. Roberge, 39, is an assistant professor of English specializing in Generation 1.5. These are kids who don't have a first language. Born abroad, they speak their native language at home, and know just enough English to get by the public school system, the community college system and into State through a back door (San Francisco Chronicle, December 14, 2003)