Earliest Trends

This past week the New York Times covered a study that has uncovered paradoxical trends in the birth outcomes and cognitive scores of babies born to Hispanic immigrant mothers.

Looking at national data, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that Hispanic immigrant mothers had more positive prenatal practices than native Hispanic and white mothers (e.g. significantly less reported substance use) and that their babies were born as healthy as white babies. In addition, babies born to these mothers had comparable cognitive scores for the first 15 months. However by the age of 2 cognitive scores had fallen, a decline that continued leaving a "significant gap even at age 3".

The authors speculate that differences in literacy practices and verbal interaction may contribute to this decline. With outcomes starting remarkably positive for the children of immigrant mothers, there is great potential for early intervention to sustain these outcomes.

Why do we need an Immigration Beat?

Media and research sectors have become increasingly focused on immigrant-heritage youth over the past few decades. However, in recent years the content and tone of the their respective dialogues has never been further apart.

In mass media, discussion of immigration and immigrants has largely become a discussion of illegal immigration and illegal immigrants. Border control, detainment and deportation are major themes and children of immigrants appear temporary, problematic and, many times, irrelevant when viewed through this lens

However, children of immigrants are the fastest growing segment of the American youth population. Considering that nearly a fourth of all children in the US are children of immigrants their relevance to the future political, social and economic climate of the US is hardly debatable. This has sparked researchers to propose and investigate several central questions:

• How are immigrant-heritage youth faring in US schools and communities?
  
• What are the factors that affect these outcomes and what are the best environments for these children to become successfully integrated and engaged?
  
• How do country of origin, immigrant generation, and level of acculturation factor into later outcomes?

Research around these themes has gained tremendous momentum with new articles and reports coming out monthly from universities, policy and research institutes across the country. But visibility has remained extremely low and more importantly impact on the public discussion negligible. This blog will be a sounding board for new findings, media perspectives on local and national scales, providing a new immigration beat.