Washington, D.C.—The Center for American Progress today released a first-of-its-kind study that projects today’s immigrants’ integration patterns through the year 2030. The report, “Assimilation Tomorrow: How America’s Immigrants Will Integrate by 2030,” is authored by Dowell Myers, professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California, and John Pitkin, senior research associate in the USC Population Dynamics Research Group. Myers’s report finds that at astonishingly high levels, immigrants are projected to learn English, buy homes, acquire citizenship, and attain solid economic footing in the United States.
The authors of “Assimilation Tomorrow” track the cohort of immigrants that arrived during the 1990s, a decade of robust levels of immigration. Among the most important findings, the authors illustrate that while only 25.5 percent of immigrants from the cohort owned their own homes in 2000, by 2030 70.3 percent are projected to own their own homes, on par or slightly higher than the homeownership rate among the native-born.
Groundbreaking Study Projects Immigrant Integration Patterns to 2030
As Myers commented at a recent Center for American Progress event, “This is the American Dream … and that achievement is something you don’t hear about very often, because it doesn’t support an agenda held by restrictionists.”
Rather than hinder the economy, immigrants will increasingly become the future homebuyers of America, helping to jump-start our housing market.
Hispanic immigrants as well are projected to make great strides. Contrary to the assertions of some who argue that Hispanic immigrants are not assimilating and will not assimilate to American life, the authors find that these newcomers follow the same upward trajectory as immigrants overall, albeit from a lower starting point. Homeownership, for example, jumps from 21 percent of the Hispanic immigrant population in 2000 to 67 percent in 2030.
Another indicator of interest from a political standpoint are immigrants’ naturalization rates that similarly rise from 13 percent to a substantial 70.6 percent by 2030.
These remarkable achievements are based on long-term settlement and deep roots in America. CAP Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy Angela Kelley notes, “This research is a must-read for any policymaker who is concerned that America’s newcomers aren’t becoming new Americans and for politicians who think the immigrant community can be ignored.”
