The Immigrant Kids are Not All Right

National Journal

By Tanvi Misa

September 9, 2015

The Immigrant Kids are Not All Right

All l sum­mer, pres­id­en­tial hope­fuls have been step­ping over each oth­er to say ri­dicu­lous, de­mean­ingthings about im­mig­rants. As ig­nor­ant and in­ac­cur­ate as their per­cep­tions are, this type of treat­ment isn’t new. Im­mig­rants en­counter of­fens­ive judg­ments prob­ably every day. For their chil­dren, nav­ig­at­ing this en­vir­on­ment of in­sults, ste­reo­types, and low ex­pect­a­tions can have long-last­ing re­per­cus­sions.

A new re­port by the Mi­gra­tion Policy In­sti­tute ex­plores the psy­cho­lo­gic­al, so­cial, and aca­dem­ic scars such ill-treat­ment leaves on im­mig­rant kids. Here’s how the re­port sum­mar­izes its con­clu­sions:

From the ex­ist­ing re­search, it is clear that im­mig­rant chil­dren re­cog­nize dis­crim­in­a­tion from peers and teach­ers at least by middle child­hood (around age 8), and at the in­sti­tu­tion­al or so­ci­et­al level by ad­oles­cence. Dis­crim­in­a­tion af­fects the psy­cho­lo­gic­al well-be­ing of im­mig­rant chil­dren, their aca­dem­ic out­comes, and their so­cial re­la­tion­ships.

Stud­ies re­viewed by the re­port’s au­thor, Christina Spears Brown, present a grim pic­ture of life at school for chil­dren of im­mig­rants. Even in ele­ment­ary school, kids re­port be­ing in­sul­ted verbally, ex­cluded from group activ­it­ies, and be­ing threatened and phys­ic­ally hurt by class­mates be­cause of their lan­guage, eth­ni­city, or im­mig­rant status. The re­port quotes fourth-graders in Los Angeles, for ex­ample, who de­scribe fre­quent ra­cial name-call­ing.

“In P.E. class, a lot of kids called me a ‘bean­er,’” one young Mex­ic­an im­mig­rant told re­search­ers.

Adults don’t al­ways know any bet­ter. In school, teach­ers some­times add to the prob­lem. Im­mig­rant chil­dren re­port that their teach­ers of­ten grade and pun­ish them un­fairly, dis­cour­age them from join­ing ad­vanced-level classes, and don’t call on them to par­ti­cip­ate. Out­side school, too, kids no­tice that their fam­il­ies are of­ten treated dif­fer­ently from oth­er cus­tom­ers in stores or giv­en worse ser­vice at res­taur­ants.  

All this stays with them. Peer-to-peer dis­crim­in­a­tion can lead to de­press­ive symp­toms, high anxi­ety, low self-es­teem in kids, and make them more likely to en­gage in ag­gress­ive and de­lin­quent be­ha­vi­or. While im­mig­rant chil­dren are more likely to go to schools that aren’t very well-re­sourced—be­cause they’re more likely to live in poorer neigh­bor­hoods—low ex­pect­a­tions from teach­ers tend to dis­cour­age them from en­joy­ing school and suc­ceed­ing at school­work, and it makes them more likely to drop out.

Here’s the MPI re­port again:

Be­cause of the con­sist­ent links between dis­crim­in­a­tion and neg­at­ive aca­dem­ic out­comes, some have poin­ted to dis­crim­in­a­tion at school as an im­port­ant con­trib­ut­or to the well-doc­u­mented achieve­ment gap between im­mig­rants and their non­im­mig­rant peers.

Giv­en that chil­dren with im­mig­rant par­ents make up the fast­est-grow­ing seg­ment of the na­tion’s child pop­u­la­tion, per­haps it’s time to look out for them, in­stead of spew­ing pois­on­ous rhet­or­ic that en­cour­ages dis­crim­in­a­tion against them and their fam­il­ies.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com