Immigration Not Top Social Issue For Hispanics; Study Finds Education More Important Amongst Latinos

When you think of the Hispanic and Latino community in the United States, one of the first social issues that pops into mind is immigration reform. And while it may be a pressing issue that gets a great deal of media coverage, the Pew Research Center has found in a recent survey the most pressing issue in the Hispanic community is education, followed by jobs and the economy and healthcare.

That's not to say immigration reform isn't important to the Latino community -- one-third of the Hispanic population that was surveyed said immigration was an "extremely important" issue and last year, seven out of ten Latinos said Congress needed to pass new immigration legislation. But of the immigrant population -- which is the largest growing in the United States -- other social issues are deemed more important.

The concern amongst the Latino community just might be valid: According to a report recently released by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, African American students are seeing the most racial segregation now than they have in past decades. This pattern is also seen in the Hispanic/Latino community, where more than half of Hispanic/Latino students are attending schools that have a majority Hispanic/Latino student population. The report -- titled "Brown at 60" -- has found that Latinos are now significantly more segregated than blacks in suburban America; California is the state in which Latino students are most segregated; and Latino students tend to be in schools with a substantial majority of poor children.

Co-author of the study and co-director of the Civil Rights Project, Gary Orfield, believes the "fundamental cause of separate-and-unequal schooling" is a direct impact of housing segregation. And this segregation may result in lower education quality for Hispanic/Latino students.

"These are the schools that tend to have fewer resources, tend to have teachers with less experience, tend to have people who are teaching outside their area of specialty, and it also denies the opportunities, the contacts and the networking that occur when you're with people from different socio-economic backgrounds," said Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Racial Justice Program, to the Associated Press.

Recently, a new study from the Center for American Progress has found that almost half the student population in the American public school system are nonwhite with 23 percent being Hispanic/Latino, 16 percent African-American, and 5 percent Asian. This value is a significant increase from previous years -- minorities made up 31 percent of public school students in 1993 and 41 percent in 2003 -- and the rates are expected to rise.

While the student population is seeing an increase in diversity, the same trend is not being observed amongst teachers as a "diversity gap" has been spotted. A study from the National Education Association (NEA) has found that of the 3.3 million public school teachers in America, 82 percent are white, 8 percent are Hispanic/Latino, 7 percent are African-American, and 2 percent are Asians.

“Brown was a major accomplishment and we should rightfully be proud. But a real celebration should also involve thinking seriously about why the country has turned away from the goal of Brown and accepted deepening polarization and inequality in our schools,” said Orfield in a statement. “It is time to stop celebrating a version of history that ignores our last quarter century of retreat and begin to make new history by finding ways to apply the vision of Brown in a transformed, multiracial society in another century.”