So how's that working out?

Few May Find Way to Prosperity

Hispanics make up a third of the manual laborers in Texas. But census statistics show that even in construction trades, Hispanics account for less than a fifth of skilled labor, such as electricians...

Texas-born Hispanics have a higher high school dropout rate and a lower level of college attainment than those living in other states, Southwest Economy reported. The attrition rate among Hispanic high school students was 42 percent last year.

Why do you think that is?  I've said this for  years.  The only two limiting factors in this country (both of which are easily remedied) are education and ambition.  And you know what?  The article agrees with me:

Orrenius said that when statistical analysis is done to equalize education between Hispanics and Anglos, the wage gap dramatically decreases.

“It's not like it's racism, where people are paying Latinos a lot less than whites,” Orrenius said. “They're paid less because they have less education.”

I'm going to say here today what I told my husband when we were discussing the subject yesterday:  A large portion of the problem is well-meaning liberals.

Here is the thing.  You cannot thrive in the United States--not even in such a self-consciously Mexican city as San Antonio--unless you have a good grasp of English.  It is widely agreed that the best way to learn a foreign language is full-immersion.  Upper-class parents pay out the nose to send their little darlings to full-immersion French or Spanish courses.  The US Army's foreign language training is full-immersion.  The charter school David Robinson helped start offers at least one full-immersion kindergarten I can think of.

So why the hell do we put Spanish-speaking students in bilingual education programs?  Why do we segregate them?  (And since when did people who putatively care about minorities decide that separate really is equal?)  We have ample evidence that these programs lead to poorer outcomes for the students in question--far fewer of them graduate, far fewer of them perform even adequately on standardized testing.

Here's another thing, one actually covered in the article.  You've got boys dropping out of high school to go to work for the benefit of their families and girls dropping out of school to have babies.  These things do not lead to even a middle-class existence, but they are 100% acceptable in Mexican culture.

In general, American culture has moved beyond that.  Yeah, you still find people of other ethnicities who'll drop out to pay for their girlfriend's kids.  But the overall expectation is that they will graduate high school and move on to college.

Yet we are refusing to insist that these kids assimilate into American culture.  We have girls who are discouraged from going to college and having a career instead of getting married right away and having babies.  Why, in 2010, is that acceptable?

"Oh, that's just the way their culture is."  Well, it's not working for them.  Liberals have already created a permanent black underclass.  Are we really gonna let them do it with Mexicans too?