One of the main contenders is yet another form of powerful movement: immigration. But the threat is different than it was when the first migrants traveled across the border to seek work in the U.S, almost a century ago. Now, the demographic shift in California due to immigration is not a threat at all, but a fact. By 2030, more than half of the population of California will be immigrants and their children.Inbound immigration is slowing, and the “immigrant stock” in America is growing from within.

And yet, instead of recognizing the major shift and accepting it as a significant part of California’s future, long-outdated, irrelevant fears persist. Now, the anti-immigration movement has aimed its efforts at penalizing this growing majority of California’s population in the hope it will shrink.

The Los Angeles Times reports that activists are campaigning to cut welfare payments benefiting the children of immigrants born in the U.S.

The “big one” just got closer.

If these children, who are not only American citizens, but also, inevitably, hold the key to California’s future welfare, experience such a dramatic blow to their already-limited resource bank, the consequences for the entire state will be dire. Second generation immigrants carry the burden of success: they must climb the social ladder from bottom to top if they are to fill the void being left by a retiring baby-boom generation, as USC Professor Dowell Myers explains in his book “Immigrants and Boomers:”

Two of the most crucial questions in California are whether this future generation of workers will be able to replace the highly skilled baby boomers who are retiring and whether they will be able to carry the tax burdens required to support services for this large population of retirees.

In order to do so, the children of immigrants need to be socially upwardly mobile at an accelerated speed. Many must move from impoverished households and working class labor markets to professional and powerful careers. They must become the first generation in their families to not only excel at higher education, but even to complete high school. They must stride up the social ladder, because there is no time to tip-toe. The boomers are already retiring and California is in trouble.

But moving quickly requires more resources, not less. Rapid upward mobility depends on whether or not the children of immigrants are provided with social support, community connections, and the means to traverse bifurcated labor markets through educational opportunities. It also depends on whether or not they are able to maintain cultural bonds, such as language, in a process labeled “selective acculturation” by theorists Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, authors of “Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation.”

The children of monolingual Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles, for example, may have little or no chance of practicing English at home or getting help with their homework, resulting in complete reliance on a public school system that is, frankly, in disarray. And because resources continue to be cut, social upward mobility is slow, especially in inner-city markets. Despite the increasing dominance of the Latino population in Los Angeles, the children of immigrants are trapped in the same cycles of low-education and poverty as their parents. Drop-out rates are high and test scores are low. Despair and resignation is deeply entrenched. Cultural bonds are weak or isolated, and alternative options for integration and definition, such as gangs, are prevalent.

In fact, breaking free of the social glue that binds second generation immigrants to the lowest rungs of the labor market has arguably become more difficult now than when the immigrant population was small enough to be an exception, rather than a rule. The children of immigrants are surrounded by opportunities to leave school early and enter long-established, working class communities. Resources, the kind of which could potentially counter-balance the negative factors of assimilation, continue to wane.

Meanwhile, economic woes are causing a few Californians to point fingers at the immigrant stock. “The great demographic transition has been poorly received because the majority population resists accepting the decline of its dominant position,” writes Myers. Although the last 50 years has seen impressive levels of upward mobility for Latinos in America, including great strides into positions of power, an overwhelming number of second generation immigrants are trapped under a low glass ceiling. We can either raise the roof, or bring it down on them, and take cover as California falls apart.

This opinion editorial appeared on the Huffington Post.

The first of the Rodartes began arriving from Mexico in the 1930s, working in the agricultural industry during the peak season and returning to Mexico in winter. By the establishment of the Bracero Program in 1942, allowing Mexican nationals to temporarily work in the United States, the Rodarte roots were firmly grounded in Californian fields. But the 1960s brought an end to legal farm working for Mexican immigrants, and the next generation of Rodartes traversed miles of dry desert to cross the border for work. Mr Rodarte, the father of the Delano Rodartes, was one of those who made such a journey. He and his wife traveled back and forth from their ranch in Mexico, picking fruit in the fields of California to earn a humble living. The couple had their first child, then a second, and a third. Even when Mrs Rodarte was in the later stages of pregnancy, she recalls, she continued to work 12-hour shifts out in the fields, where temperatures often peaked above 100 degrees.

Marisol Rodarte, the middle child of seven siblings, was a self-described “anchor child.” Her mother crossed the border seven months pregnant and, three months later, Marisol became the first Rodarte to be born on American soil. Immigration laws at the time allowed the entire family to become legalized residents after Marisol’s birth, and the family took up residence in a small apartment in Glendale, Los Angeles, which they shared with other families. Delta Duran Rodarte remembers there being at least 20 people inside the cramped space. But soon enough, the Rodarte parents had saved enough money to afford a home: they chose to move into California’s farm belt, to the small town of Earlimart, where work was available and the cost of living was cheap. The children say that they were just glad to have a yard to play in.

Marisol helps her mother serve dinner, explaining that she learned to cook from observing as a child. Although her parents were gone before 4am every day, Marisol says that her mother would leave burritos, tacos and banana milkshakes ready for breakfast. At night, her mother and father would come home hot and tired, and spend 45 minutes in the shower cooling down before preparing for bed and another long day.

In the summer, the elder sisters too worked in the fields. They dealt with the heat and accepted the long hours, but, as Delta explains, it was the level of disrespect from superiors that was hardest to stomach. Delta says that is was then and there she decided to steer clear of a life in farm working. The oldest sister, Leticia, says that she told the field manager one day that she would never be coming back. He told her, she recalls, that “everyone says that,” and that she would, indeed, return, “as they all do.” But neither Leticia, nor any of her six siblings, followed their parents’ footsteps into the fields. Instead, they finished high school, continued on to junior colleges and four-year universities, and pursued professional careers in education and health care.

Both Marisol and Delta are teachers at local high schools in Delano, and interact daily with the children of farm workers experiencing some of the same struggles that defined their own past. As Delta points out, unlike the children of immigrants in the city, the children of Delano’s farm working community have little to distract them from the traditional cultural values that have been partially preserved over the past 70 years. As Marisol explained, the Rodartes were raised with the belief that family comes first, and every individual has an obligation to better the community. However, trying to teach the merits of humble beginnings to their children, Delta says, will be difficult. Delta admits that she wants to give them everything she never had, and at the same time instill the principle that there is no shame in having nothing.

Mrs Rodarte says that the hard work was worth it; After five generations of field toil, long hours, low wages and maltreatment, now, her and Mr Rodarte own a beautiful, large house at the wealthier end of Delano, beside the fields. Above the king-sized leather couches and marble coffee table in the second living room hangs Marisol’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. There was a time, Delta reminds her sisters as they sit together on the couch, when they would gather dry cow manure to use as kindling at the ranch in Mexico. There was a time when they owned just one pair of shoes, for school. There was a time when their father, a monolingual Mexican, encouraged his daughters to practice English at home by trying to form a few phrases himself.

Marisol sends me home with a bag of freshly plucked grapes from the day’s harvest, the rest of the enchiladas, sliced watermelon and papaya, and a cup of Hibiscus tea, full to the brim.

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Compared to the state of California, which has expanded steadily, Delano’s population spiked suddenly and dramatically in the 1990s.

This population boom was fueled by an influx of immigrants from Mexico in the 1990s. Since Delano’s economy is based almost solely around the agricultural industry, undocumented workers could find seasonal jobs in the fields. Many followed the cycle of crops, moving from one side of the country to the other throughout the year. But others began to settle down, expanding the farm working culture that had already been slowly established since the first immigrants began arriving in the 1930s. Inevitably, as newly settled farm working immigrants started cultivating families, the community began to expand internally. Pre-schools were built to accommodate the growing number of children, then elementary schools, middle schools, and finally, in the mid-2000s, high schools.

Delano is plagued by poverty, unemployment and an on-going turf war between two of California’s largest Latino rival gangs, the Nortenos and the Surenos. Half of the population over the age of 25 are high school drop-outs. And yet, the children of immigrants are making marked improvements in terms of education levels in recent years. Second generation immigrants are attending brand new high schools, have few social distractions and are surrounded by a community that supports and embraces their heritage.

Delano’s dropout rates have been steadily decreasing, while California’s dropout rates have been slowly increasing. In 2000, Delano’s dropout rates fell below the state average for the first time.

Delano Joint Union High School District has increased its Academic Performance Index (API) by 227 points (34 percent) since 1999.

“The problems of young people like Jesselyn are sometimes called failures of assimilation. But they can also be seen as assimilation to the wrong things: crime, drugs and self-fulfilling prophecies of racial defeat.”

It is a rising theory that “Americanization” or “assimilation” to the negative aspects of American culture plays its part in impeding social upward mobility for second generation immigrants. Becoming “American,” then, becomes the opposite of what many immigrants envisioned for their children: a detrimental rather than beneficial force.

The New York Times story would suggest that these children - the first generation in their families “growing up American” - are waylaid by their peers, who offer quick-fix alternatives in the struggle to fit in. They join gangs and embrace negative racial stereotypes as a means of empowerment. Their aspirations are stunted because traditional perceptions of what it is to be “American” do not include speaking Spanish, listening to Latin ska or having brown skin.

But somehow all of this feels familiar… The struggle to redefine what it means to be “American” in an age of rainbow citizenry; the allure of gangs for those cast adrift by white America; the embracing of negative racial stereotypes in a counter-intuitive attempt to defeat them. This isn’t a cycle exclusive to the children of Mexicans, Indians, Haitians, Cubans, Filipinos or the Chinese. It isn’t a problem pertaining only to recent arrivals. The African-American population of the United States has been struggling against cycles of social rejection since the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade. And consistently, in inner-city schools like the Los Angeles Unified School District, African-Americans have a higher drop-out rate and lower test scores than any other race. Although Latino students usually aren’t far behind, there is little reason to suggest that recent immigrants and the children of immigrants are more susceptible to the ills of Americanization than any other group of teenagers.

There is something else, however, that pertains particularly - although, yet again, not exclusively - to the children of recent immigrants. Their experience of America differs greatly from that of their parents. Their worries are less immediate and, arguably, less severe. They will not be carried away in the night by the “migra.” Rarely do they have to work 13-hour shifts in the fields, factories or standing on the corner at Home Depot, where their rights are diminished by a lack of legal power and voice. They do not have the impediments of monolingualism in a non-native country.

In cities like Delano, California - the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and the birthplace of the immigrant farm worker’s movement in the 1960s - the struggles of recent immigrants sit side-by-side the opportunities of the second generation. Here, many children are fueled to succeed because of the existence of a motivational force that is a very tangible in their daily lives. They see their parents, tired and baked from plucking grapes all day in the hot sun, forced each day to work harder and faster in order to keep up with the mounting pressure from thrifty labor contractors, coming home each night only to spend time cooling off and preparing for another day. It is precisely because of their parents’ struggles that these children aim high, obligated to excel and reach back. Some of their parents hiked through desert wasteland to expand the horizons for the next generation. They left loved ones and familiarity for alienation and toil. Now, the burden of success rests heavily on the shoulders of their children.

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“It’s amazing to me that people of color come into politics, come into positions of power, and they do so without ever mentioning race once…even though that’s the elephant in the room,” said Jose Lara. At the risk of being “pigeonholed,” both President Barack Obama and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ran political campaigns without addressing the issue at the base of America’s internal battle, according to Lara. “By not talking about it, you’re allowing it to continue,” said Lara.

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Jose Lara on Al Jazeera’s “Fault Lines.”

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On the back of the door is the pencil face of a man with dark eyebrows curved into a frown. He stares into the room, an accusatory finger pointed straight ahead, and asks, “who are you calling an immigrant, pilgrim?”

Lara walks past an exhibit of student projects on “Chicano History” and takes a seat. On the wall behind him is a poster advertising “The Mexican Revolution of 1910″ with clay-colored drawings of imposingly mustached men. For the kids in his class, Lara explains, having a sense of cultural pride is the fulcrum upon which aspiration and resignation are tilted.

Listen to Jose Lara:

Despite the presence of many successful Latino figureheads in Los Angeles, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Lara says that his students still suffer from doubts about their own potential because of their race. “Some of my brightest students have doubts that they can really achieve and really make it,” said Lara. “We have to instill self-pride in these children. Because like it or not, we’re going to be here. Regardless of your politics on immigration, we’re all going to have to share this space.”

Although immigration policy has a tangible effect on many of his students’ everyday lives, it is the wider issue of race and cultural dissonance that permeates all corners of the city.

“There is a sense here in Los Angeles that even if there is a small Latino middle class that is alive and well, still the majority of the working poor are people of color,” said Lara. “There are micro-aggressions of racism in our society that still exist today.”

Drop-out rates continue to be higher among Latino and African-American students, and according to Lara, until those figures even out, the potential for achievement will remain uneven in LA’s schools, jobs and wider economic structure. Additionally, recent events at state and district level, Lara says, will only widen the racial and economic divide. The LAUSD, which serves the majority of Latino students in Los Angeles, is being hit hard by dwindling resources. At the Santee Education Complex in South Central, where Lara teaches, more than 50 teachers received termination notices and 6 are being displaced.

“Next year, we’re going to have 113 teachers where we used to have 170,” said Lara. “We have the same amount of students we have to serve. That means there’s going to be less after school programs. [...] In my social studies class, I’m going to have to use every single chair and I might have to use some desks as chairs because that’s how many students are going to be inside my classroom.” The result of these upcoming changes to the city’s public school system, according to Lara, will mean more chaos in the lives of these already underprivileged and often neglected students.

“When you cut the schools you’re telling the children that they’re not important,” said Lara. “And what happens to a child that does not see themselves in the text book? What happens to a child when you have a society that tells them ‘your education isn’t important’? What happens to that child? I know exactly what happens to that child. They drop out of school. They turn to gangs. They turn to drugs.”

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