gaithersblog.net

• Patricia M. Murret writes, Officer charged with DUI after crashing cruiser:
  

  According to a personal page attributed to a John Distel on Facebook, a social networking Web site, he is a 32-year-old officer who lives in Germantown. He lists his interests as: “Miller Lite, Baseball.”

  Under work information, he named his employer as Montgomery County and his position as “Po-Po” in Bethesda. On May 6, the day after Cinco de Mayo, he said he was recovering from a “tequila fix.”

• Patricia M. Murret writes, Montgomery sentenced to serve 5 years:
  

  A judge sentenced a Gaithersburg teen convicted of robbery and sexual assault of two women to serve five years in prison, while agreeing to postpone seven remaining trials for up to one year.

  Dion Montgomery, 18 of the unit block of Duvall Lane in Gaithersburg was indicted Sept. 13 on 20 counts including robbery with a dangerous weapon, attempt to commit robbery, second-degree assault, third- and fourth-degree sexual offense and indecent exposure, according to charging documents.

• Meghan Tierney writes, Man beaten, carjacked in pack robbery:
  

  A Germantown man was attacked and robbed early Sunday morning by a group of men who asked for a ride and then stole his car, police said.

• Patricia M. Murret writes, Man indicted in Quince Orchard murder:
  

  A grand jury indicted the Gaithersburg native accused of murdering Lindsay Marie Harvey, 25, in an April 13 robbery outside her home at the Grove Park Apartments in Gaithersburg.

  Shawn M. Henderson, 25, who once lived on Clopper Road, but recently lived in Landover, was indicted on first-degree murder, use of a handgun in commission of a crime of violence and robbery with a dangerous or deadly weapon, said Seth Zucker, spokesman for Montgomery County State’s Attorney John J. McCarthy.

• Erin Donaghue writes, Trial date set for North Potomac teen accused in father’s stabbing death:
  

  A North Potomac teen accused of stabbing his father to death in December has been scheduled for trial on Oct. 20.

  David Coleman Winters, 18, will first undergo an examination at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center to determine whether he is competent to stand trial and whether he was criminally responsible for the crime, according to court documents.

• Janel Davis writes, Council makes tentative decision not to cut salaries:
  

  County Council members decided tentatively Wednesday not to cut the pay of members of the county’s employee and schools unions, killing a recommendation to cut $40 million to save the county money to fund its fiscal 2009 budget.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Council likely to save community police officers:
  

  Amid the increasingly tense deliberations over the county budget, it appears the County Council will be able to restore funding for six community policing positions for the coming fiscal year.

• Janel Davis writes, Higher property and energy taxes on tap:
  

  With budget deliberations drawing to a close, the County Council is signaling preliminary moves toward increasing the property and energy taxes, measures that will have taxpayers digging deeper into their wallets to help balance the county’s budget and close a $297 million budget deficit.

• Margie Hyslop writes, County executive uninterested in Sunday liquor sales:
  

  Plans for Sunday liquor sales are not on the drawing board, despite the County Council’s recommendation last week that the Department of Liquor Control pursue a pilot program.

• Sebastian Montes writes, County seeks federal money to expand anti-gang initiatives:
  

  Montgomery County officials are seeking federal money for an upcounty center that would provide teens with after-school activities and keep them away from gangs, following the model of a successful project in the downcounty.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Prospects bleak for GHS upgrade:
  

  It is looking more and more like it may be too late for this year’s budget fight, but parents, alumni and students in the Gaithersburg schools cluster are not relenting in their fight for a new Gaithersburg High School.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Webb Tract neighbors sound off:
  

  Traffic. Noise. A column of smoke spewing from the fire department’s “burn building.” Neighbors to the Webb Tract painted a bleak picture last week in reaction to a county plan to build a new police and fire rescue training campus and schools food warehouse on the long-disputed property along Snouffer School Road.

• Patricia Murret writes, Gaithersburg budget talks begin without a hitch:
  

  City leaders saw smooth sailing as annual budget talks began Monday night — a welcome situation after last year’s negotiations spiraled into threats of a city shutdown.

• Patricia M. Murret writes, City officers noted for achievements:
  

  Cpl. John Leach of the Gaithersburg Police Department has been named the department’s 2007 Supervisor of the Year, a new award instituted this year by Chief John King.

• Patricia M. Murret and Sebastian Montes write, Fourth-grader earns title with big ideas and promises:
  

  He’s got a new black suit, new black shoes and a new title. Andy Sanchez, a fourth-grader at Gaithersburg Elementary School who did not speak English when he came to the United States seven years ago, is the city’s new “junior mayor.”

• Patricia M. Murret writes, Of Note Around Gaithersburg:

  • Six weeks into an active search for a new city manager, the city has seen its mailbox — and inbox — burgeoning with applications, but city leaders still want more.

  • The city adopted a new ordinance last week that bans solicitation in roadway medians.

  • The city is looking for residents to serve on its Ad Hoc Senior Advisory Committee to determine requirements for a new senior center in Gaithersburg and research recreation trends for active older adults.

  • City leaders recently deemed four city-owned parcels in Olde Towne “surplus” — opening the properties up for sale and redevelopment.

The Manhattan Institute just released a study on Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States (PDF available here). Quoting the Executive Summary:

This report introduces a quantitative index that measures the degree of similarity between native- and foreign-born adults in the United States. It is the ability to distinguish the latter group from the former that we mean when we use the term “assimilation.” The Index of Immigrant Assimilation relies on Census Bureau data available in some form since 1900 and as current as the year before last. The index reveals great diversity in the experiences of individual immigrant groups, which differ from each other almost as much as they differ from the native-born. They vary significantly in the extent to which their earnings have increased, their rate of learning the English language, and progress toward citizenship. Mexican immigrants, the largest group and the focus of most current immigration policy debates, have assimilated slowly, but their experience is not representative of the entire immigrant population.

Collective assimilation rates are lower than they were a century ago, although no lower than they have been in recent decades. And this is true despite the fact that recent immigrants have arrived less assimilated than their predecessors and in very large numbers. In addition to country of origin, the Index categorizes groups on the basis of date of arrival, age, and place of residence. Some groups have done far better or worse than the Index as a whole; Assimilation also varies considerably across metropolitan areas.

Here are some of the Index’s significant findings:

• The degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, although low by historical standards, has held steady since 1990. Assimilation declined during the 1980s, remained stable through the 1990s, and has actually increased slightly over the past few years.

Beyond presenting a snapshot of the degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, the assimilation index can be used to track the progress of immigrants who arrived in the United States at a common point in time. This simple extension shows that the relative stability of immigrant assimilation since 1990 masks two important and countervailing trends.

• Newly arrived immigrants of the early 21st century have assimilation index values lower than the newly arrived immigrants of the early 20th century. Growth in the immigrant population usually lowers the assimilation index because newly arrived immigrants drag down the average for the group as a whole. This phenomenon can be seen between 1900 and 1920 and again in the 1980s. The stability of the assimilation index since 1990 is therefore remarkable in light of the rapid growth of the immigrant population, which doubled between 1990 and 2006.
• Immigrants of the past quarter-century have assimilated more rapidly than their counterparts of a century ago, even though they are more distinct from the native population upon arrival. The increase in the rate of assimilation among recently arrived immigrants explains why the overall index has remained stable, even though the immigrant population has grown rapidly.
• Yet the current level of assimilation remains lower than it was at any point during the early 20th century wave of immigration.

This study is of course being written about extensively in the press, and of course is being spun in multiple directions.

In the Washington Post, N.C. Aizenman writes Study Says Foreigners In U.S. Adapt Quickly:

Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today.

Modern-day immigrants arrive with substantially lower levels of English ability and earning power than those who entered during the last great immigration wave at the turn of the 20th century. The gap between today’s foreign-born and native populations remains far wider than it was in the early 1900s and is particularly large in the case of Mexican immigrants, the report said.

The report found, however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.

In the New York Sun, Howard Husock, vice president for Policy Research at the Manhattan Institute, writes an article headlined The Assimilation Factor:

It is a mistake, though, to think that Americans are more worried about who has a green card than they are about immigrant assimilation, a less discussed matter. The idea that immigrants should, and can, become Americans has been a powerful one, a reflection of the fact that ours is a society based on values and laws, rather than a single faith and a common blood.

Lately, discussing immigrant assimilation has become less than acceptable in polite company out of a concern that assimilation imposes Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture on others. But the majority thinks that newcomers should learn English, which is endorsed by 87% of Americans in one Rasmussen survey, and become American citizens. This makes clear that, notwithstanding the affection for multiculturalism among elites, average Americans still believe in the melting pot.

But the most striking finding is much less positive. The current overall assimilation level for all immigrant groups combined, measured on a scale of zero to 100, is, at 28, lower now than it was during the great immigration wave of the early 20th century, when it never went below 32. What’s more, the immigrant group that is by far the largest is also the least assimilated. On the zero-to-100 scale, Mexicans — 11 million emigrated to America between 1980 and 2006 — score only 13.

In Newsday, Olivia Winslow writes Study finds Salvadorans among least assimilated:

Salvadorans, according to the report’s assimilation index, score just above Mexicans and behind other groups.

To the Rev. Allan Ramirez, pastor of the Brookville Reformed Church and an immigrant advocate, it’s easy to see why. He said many Central Americans and Mexicans come here “at the entry level. They come in as dishwashers, they come in as landscapers … They are unlike the economic elite, who come in with bank accounts in Switzerland and Miami,” holding U.S. visas. So it takes the working poor “longer to get into the mainstream.”

Patrick Young, program director of the Central American Refugee Center in Brentwood, said about 80 percent of Salvadorans are in the United States legally, most speak English and most have been here for more than 15 years. Many, he said, had progressed from being day laborers to small business owners.

Young was skeptical of the report’s focus, calling it “pseudoscience” that amounts to which immigrant group “we love more.”

Gaithersburg is, of course, also a popular destination for Salvadorans.

Eunice Moscoso of Cox News Service writes via Deseret News, Slowdown found in assimilation of immigrants:

“The nation’s capacity to integrate new immigrants is strong,” said Jacob Vigdor, an associate professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University.

But the progress “is not present for all groups and in particular, it’s not present among some of the Latin American immigrants that are at the heart of the immigration debate these days,” he added.

Vigdor said there could be many reasons why Mexicans have lower rates of assimilation, including that they are closer to their home country, they have more chances to speak Spanish, and they mostly come for economic reasons as opposed to immigrants who are fleeing dangerous regimes and fear going back. For example, Vietnamese immigrants had a strong incentive to accept the United States as their homeland, he said.

In addition, many Mexican immigrants are in the United States illegally and therefore are unable to meet many of the criteria for assimilation.

Haya El Nasser writes in USA Today, Study: Some immigrants assimilate faster:

Some immigrants, such as Canadians, fit in well culturally but not in civic involvement because they don’t seek U.S. citizenship, Vigdor’s report says. Mexicans assimilate better culturally than Vietnamese but rank lower economically.

Mexicans have the lowest civic assimilation of any immigrant group, the report says.

“The long-term question is how do the children and grandchildren of immigrants do?” says Jeffrey Passel, demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “Those are the groups who really do the integrating.”

Passel says 30% of all immigrants are in the USA illegally.

That may be the long-term question, but I guess that one would also want to know about the immediate impact on existing communities with large, persistent new-immigrant populations, especially those which are slow to assimilate. With this dip in the assimilation index approaching the two-decade mark, the fact that the grandchildren of immigrants might be better-assimilated is little help in staving off long-term effects.

An unsigned post in the Free Exchange blog on the Economist’s website mentions this study in passing,

That the pull factor of economic conditions is key has important implications for the prospects of the immigrant population. A new study from the Manhattan Institute has found that today’s immigrants are assimilating—in economic, cultural, and civic terms—much faster than did previous immigrant cohorts.

But more interesting in that post is a reference to another article:

Writing a VoxEU, Drew Keeling explains that during past immigration episodes, it was widely assumed that physical barriers (such as the cost of travel) were the only things holding back an unstoppable flood of migrants from Europe. But this assessment may be false. As Mr Keeling notes, trans-Atlantic passenger volume had far more to do with economic conditions in America than with the price of a boat ticket.

Quoting Keeling:

My findings suggest that the uncertainties and hazards of working in distant foreign lands were probably greater deterrents to mass migration than travel costs were in the past or legal barriers are now. From the deserts of Arizona to the coastline of Spain, risks and business cycles are still important factors influencing international migration nowadays. They may therefore turn out to be even more important in shaping migration levels than border controls, which are often problematic, hotly debated, and difficult to enforce.

One might wonder about the historical level of risk associated with immigration, legal or otherwise, to, say, Montgomery County.