Immigrant groups on the way up: The census offers a look at the economic and educational fortunes of recent immigrants. Most indicators show progress.

Three decades after the first big wave of refugees flooded into Minnesota, the state's major immigrant groups are following different paths, the U.S. Census Bureau reports today.

The Hmong, among the first to arrive, are beginning to make rapid progress. Poverty is plunging, welfare assistance is a small fraction of what it was and income is rising.

But age-old cultural norms still hold many back: There's a significant gap between rates of education of boys and girls, with more boys graduating from high school. Many Hmong young people still marry young and have large families.

Africans, the most recent to arrive and most poverty-stricken, are on the march, the government finds. Rather than settling into factory jobs, they are swarming into institutions of higher education, promising an economic surge in the years to come.

Of the 25,000 Africans in Minnesota schools, fully half are pursuing college or graduate degrees, making their numbers in that area vastly higher than those of any other immigrant group.

The experience of the one group offers hope for the other in the years to come, said one leading expert on immigration.

"The poverty of recent African immigrants reflects the fact that many entered as refugees fleeing war-torn countries and came with almost nothing," said Katherine Fennelly of the University of Minnesota. "However, the Hmong represent a dramatic success story that demonstrates the possibility of upward mobility in the U.S., even for people who came with low levels of schooling and literacy three decades ago."

At the same time, a surge in immigrants from Asian nations such as India is bringing Minnesota some of the nation's most highly educated and affluent immigrant groups. Thanks in part to them, an immigrant in Minnesota is more likely to have an advanced degree than whites in one of the nation's most-educated states.

More than ever, experts agree, the overall averages for groups whom Minnesotans have long thought of as "black" or "Asian" are less meaningful because there is so much diversity within those groups.

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'Time for a better life'

Hmong leaders said they were not surprised that the community has made such strides, though the speed of change surprised them.