Death on the Border

More than a bit of dust has been kicked up along the Mexican border recently by fights over illegal immigration. On the heels of the gruesome deaths in Texas of 19 Mexicans in a botched smuggling attempt — they died of hypothermia, dehydration, and suffocation in a truck with about 80 others; the youngest dead was five years old — a Colorado Republican has ratcheted up his campaign against those without proper documentation. Rep. Thomas Tancredo attacked Mexico's practice of issuing identification cards, known as matriculas, for its citizens abroad by dummying up a poster-sized card for Mexico's president, Vicente Fox. Mr. Tancredo is upset that the Treasury Department recently decided that American banks can use the cards to allow otherwise undocumented Mexicans in this country to set up accounts. No one could mistake this for an argument over bank accounts.

Perhaps Mr. Tancredo and his friends in the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus would find a new study from the RAND Corp. enlightening. The study finds that Hispanic immigrants to America and their children move up the economic ladder as quickly as European immigrants did generations earlier. By bringing together data on Hispanic men from over the past 100 years, the study's author, economist James Smith, shows that by the third generation at America, Hispanic income is only about 16% less than that of native-born whites. Also, educational achievement increases at a rate similar to immigrants from European countries. This, published in the American Economic Review, is in contrast to research that has purported to show smaller gains. It also contrasts with a perception among those who favor tightening the border that immigrants from Mexico have taken longer to assimilate.

It's something to think about as the anti-immigration crowd tries to latch onto September 11 as an excuse to punish those coming from Mexico to seek a better life. There is even talk of Predator drones patrolling the Mexican border. Better to open up the borders wider to those who pass a background check, so that someday five year old strivers won't have to die in the back of a truck but be able to matriculate into the American dream.