Immigrant Integration in the Latino Metropolis

The Migration Policy Institute has issued a report Los Angeles on the Leading Edge: Immigrant Integration Indicators and Their Policy Implications, which details the need for development and implementation of coordinated integration strategies and policies that will benefit immigrants and the broader U.S. society alike. “Despite the transformative nature of immigrant demographic trends in recent decades, the integration of immigrants remains an afterthought in policy discussions and could be considered one of the most overlooked issues in American governance,” said one of the report’s authors, MPI Vice President Michael Fix.

As the largest immigrant metropolis in the nation, with more than one-third of its 9.9 million residents comprised of immigrants, Los Angeles County stands at the leading edge of national immigration trends because of demography, geography and history — and thus can serve as a policy laboratory for other U.S. communities. While the immigrant population grew dramatically from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, the story today is Los Angeles’ transition from city of immigrants to one dominated by their American children, with over half of students in the Los Angeles schools the U.S.-born children of immigrants (known as the second generation.).

KJ