In The Statesman Journal, Ruth Liao writes:
Teen pregnancy rates in the Mid-Valley are rising at an alarming rate, at a time when Oregon’s statewide average is declining. It’s difficult to determine why teen pregnancy rates are high (my emphasis). But Marion County’s teen pregnancy rate has been persistently greater than the state average; since 2003, Marion County’s teen pregnancy rate has been on an upward trend.
Actually, it is not very difficult to determine the reason for this trend. Anybody can see, watching the accompanying video, that most of these teen mothers are Hispanic.
According to Marion County’s official website, 80% of Marion County’s population growth is Hispanic. That same article also mentions that Hispanics do poorly in school and therefore earn less money than their white counterparts. It is a fact that Hispanics (specifically Mestizo Hispanics) have an overall negative impact on society. So it should be no surprise that large numbers of Hispanics would cause teen pregnancy rates to increase.
Using a government source, I composed a crude map showing the incidence of teen pregnancy in Oregon counties. Unfortunately, the latest data they had was from 1998:
Now let us compare a similar map showing the Hispanic share of the population:
… and to one showing average per-capita incomes:
The top two are a pretty good match even though there are obviously other factors that contribute to teen pregnancy and there is a ten year disparity between the maps. Population compositions may easily have shifted. But there is certainly a correlation.The standard leftist answer to the above is that poor people naturally suffer from social pathologies more than their more affluent compatriots. Since Hispanics are disproportionately poor, they also tend to have more teen pregnancies. According to the leftist theory, the lower map should match up, pretty closely, to the top map. As a matter of fact, there appears to be no correlation, whatsoever, between the upper and lower maps. The greatest correlation is between the upper and the middle maps.
As one may expect, the Statesman Journal has been censuring comments that point out the obvious. Those of us who are not burdened by political correctness may freely discuss the matter and draw our own conclusions – while those still mired in the dark ages wring their hands and struggle with “difficulties” while trying to comprehend their world.
The left will always make arguments like: “The same problems with crime and poverty were prevalent among the Irish and Italian immigrants of the 19th century. The Italians and Irish were Caucasians, so the problem is cultural not racial.”
Fine! Whether these problems are racial or cultural these leftists unintentionally make a perfect argument against immigration. All these problems almost always exist with each new wave of immigrants. The only way to stop these problems is to stop immigration.
Good comment, portland realist.
That article by Lawrence Auster attacking 3rd world immigration (linked to by JAY on a previous entry) is a must read for anyone who wants to debate a lefty on this issue.
As y’all may have noticed, I’ve amended the original post. I decided it would have much more impact if I included an income map as well – to show how vacuous the leftist argument is.
***“The same problems with crime and poverty were prevalent among the Irish and Italian immigrants of the 19th century. The Italians and Irish were Caucasians, so the problem is cultural not racial.”***
Jason Richwine has an excellent article on this:
“They’re not just like the Irish — or the Italians or the Poles, for that matter. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants after 1965 represents a unique assimilation challenge for the United States. Many optimistic observers have assumed — incorrectly, it turns out — that Hispanic immigrants will follow the same economic trajectory European immigrants did in the early part of the last century. Many of those Europeans came to America with no money and few skills, but their status steadily improved. Their children outperformed them, and their children’s children were often indistinguishable from the “founding stock.” The speed of economic assimilation varied somewhat by ethnic group, but three generations were typically enough to turn “ethnics” into plain old Americans.
This would be the preferred outcome for the tens of millions of Hispanic Americans, who are significantly poorer and less educated on average than native whites. When immigration skeptics question the wisdom of importing so many unskilled people into our nation at one time, the most common response cites the remarkable progress of Europeans a century ago. “People used to say the Irish or the Poles would always be poor, but look at them today!” For Hispanics, we are led to believe, the same thing will happen.
But that claim isn’t true. Though about three-quarters of Hispanics living in the U.S. today are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, a significant number have roots here going back many generations. We have several ways to measure their intergenerational progress, and the results leave little room for optimism about their prospects for assimilation…
Though continuing research on the barriers to Hispanic assimilation will be valuable, the reality is that no intervention in the foreseeable future will change the very slow and perhaps nonexistent assimilation process into a fast and effective one.
The consequences of a large ethno-cultural group’s lagging behind the majority in education and income are significant. In strictly economic terms, perpetually poor immigrants and their descendants will be a major strain on social spending and infrastructure. Health care, public education, welfare payments, the criminal justice system, and programs for affordable housing will all require more tax dollars. When pro-immigration conservatives declare that these government programs should be scaled back or eliminated entirely, I am sympathetic. But a large public sector is a reality that cannot be wished away — we will not be abolishing Medicaid or public schools anytime soon. Immigration policy needs to take that reality into account.”
The Congealing Pot
What the lefties also fail to mention is that those European immigrants did not bear a hostility towards the U.S, were not seeking a reconquista, and were interested in assimilation.
Don’t get me wrong. Many Hispanics do assimilate.
But I think it’s silly to compare them to earlier European immigrants.
Here is all the latest data on Hispanics in Oregon.
http://pewhispanic.org/states/?stateid=OR
Thanks Bay Area Guy.
I would like to add that classifications like “Hispanic” are very broad generalizations. I’m quite sure the only way the government has any idea who is a Hispanic is when a person identifies as such. There are plenty of Hispanics who have blond hair and blue eyes for example.
So it is a little easier for a person to figure out if he or she is black, Hispanic is much more vague. In fact, my wife has had a hard time deciding exactly how she should answer the census questions. Her father was the son of Mexican immigrants, her mother white. Her father was killed in prison when she was two years old by the Mexican mafia, for the crime of protecting a white man from the Mexicans. I guess he was a “race traitor.”
She was raised by her mother who met and married a white redneck type and only ever knew her white “country” family. She feels “white” really. So I tell her to check the “white, non Hispanic” box.
BTW, If I.Q. can predict income, then I will follow that prediction in reverse and tell you she clears the median Portland household income by $8,000. So her I.Q. is 8K higher than half of Portland! LOL!
True, “Hispanic” is not a racial category. But, in the U.S., the vast majority of people who consider themselves of this category are Mestizo – mixed native American and white. The majority of Hispanics in the U.S. are of Mexican origin (at least in Oregon) and the vast majority of Mexicans are Mestizo. So there is an indirect racial aspect to the term.
I do not disagree with you my friend!
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