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TRANSFORMATIONS: IMMIGRATION, FAMILY LIFE, AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION AMONG LATINO ADOLESCENTS by Carola Suarez-Orozco and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. 266 pp. $45.00; $16.95 (paper).
CALIFORNIA'S IMMIGRANT CHILDREN: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL POLICY edited by Ruben G. Rumbaut and Wayne A. Cornelius. San Diego: University of California Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1995. 272 pp. $21. 95.
Today, immigrant children are creating challenging problems for many U.S. public schools. Challenging because educators now, more than ever in this country's history, face a growing and highly diverse group of children. In the 1980s, for example, California's immigrant student population rose by 150 percent; the state is currently home to one-third of this country's 20 million immigrants (Rumbaut & Cornelius, 1995). During a recent three-year period in New York City, the public schools enrolled approximately 120,000 immigrant children from 167 different countries (Ungar, 1995). These shifts inevitably raise structural, curricular, administrative, and social issues regarding the integration of America's newer arrivals into the public school system.
In contrast to the earlier part of this century, when immigrants were predominately from Europe, those who migrated to this country after World War II have been mostly from the developing nations of Asia and Latin America. A combination of structural changes in the U.S. economy and tumultuous world events has resulted in people traveling from far and diverse corners of the globe to seek refuge, opportunities, and a better way of life in the United States. Even the patterns of migration across U.S. borders has shifted. In the 1950s, for example, more immigrants came from Canada than from Mexico, whereas during the 1980s, immigrants from Mexico outnumbered those from Canada by a factor of ten (Heer, 1996). The sheer number of immigrants, together with the shift in their demographic profile, has evoked much debate and public controversy. Many in the United States believe that immigrants are draining the country of its social resources, such as health care, housing, employment, and education.
In the realm of public education, a microcosm of society at large, anti-immigrant sentiment runs especially high. In November 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, also known as the "Save Our State" initiative. Voters in that state, claiming that they faced economic hardship as a result...