Immigrant Parents: A Case Study

Words: 918
Pages: 4

Some students’ immigrant parents are well-educated and technically trained in high-demand fields while others are working class, manual laborers (Baum & Flores, 2011). Those fortunate enough to be in the first group tend to excel in postsecondary education while those in the second group often face daunting barriers (Baum & Flores, 2011). Outcomes for students from immigrant families are complex and are determined in large part by country of origin (Baum & Flores, 2011). An immigrant’s educational level upon entry in the United States factors heavily into their children’s ability to access and succeed in higher education (Baum & Flores, 2011). Even students from more disadvantaged immigrant backgrounds make gains in educational level but …show more content…
citizens to have a father with a bachelor’s degree. What the averages do not show, however is the reality is that between 50 and 80 percent of immigrant fathers “from Africa, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Pakistan/Bangladesh and Iran were college graduates” while “only 4 to 10 percent of fathers from Mexico, the Caribbean, Laos, and Cambodia” (Baum & Flores, 2011, p. 173) held baccalaureate degrees. According to Baum & Flores (2011), 26 percent of children of immigrants come from families where neither parent had a high school diploma or its equivalent, compared to only 8 percent of children of U.S.-born parents. For children of Mexican-born immigrants, nearly half lived in homes where no parent had a high school diploma or its equivalent. In contrast, “immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, other Pacific nations and Europe are more likely than native-born individuals to be college graduates” (Baum & Flores, 2011, p. 175). Those from Central America, the Spanish Caribbean, Mexico, Cambodia and Laos complete a much lower level of …show more content…
Those who arrive immigrate prior to the age of thirteen usually fare as well as those born in the U.S. One likely reason for this is that those who arrive early tend to have an easier time with English language acquisition and acculturating to American society (Baum & Flores, 2011). Those who immigrate during their teen years tend to attain education at the lowest levels. As of 2005, just over a quarter of those who immigrate between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four enrolled in college, compared to 42 percent of those who arrived prior to the age of thirteen (Baum & Flores, 2011) According to the 2009 U.S. Census, immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico who arrive before the age of 13, 30 percent hold a bachelor’s degree but that number drops to 20 percent for those who arrive between the ages of twelve and eighteen (Baum & Flores,