>Latinos from Central America, who are completely different than those from Spain or Cuba and the rest of the world. They exist in a kind of 'separate' USA and while technically might have the opportunities others have, they live in a system that is not suited to exploiting them. They are happy in their version of he US, they're family oriented, patriots - but not going to college or after the white collar trades like migrants from 'everywhere else'.
This is so wrong and misinformed it's hard to know what to say. This sounds like the happy slaves justification for slavery.
The fact of the matter is that Latino immigrants from Central/South America follow the same path of assimilation as immigrants from anywhere else do. From the outside it may not see like it but that's because there's a steady flow of new immigrants. I've taught a lot of second-generation Latino immigrants who are very much interested in college and white-collar trades and not looking to continue in low-wage service jobs.
To the extent that there's no opportunity to climb it's because of racist attitudes like yours.
"immigrants from Central/South America follow the same path of assimilation as immigrants from anywhere else do."
Their experience, on the whole is different.
For some obviously much more than others.
Latino Household income is 1/2 that of other recent migrant groups of colour i.e. Asians [1], who fare better than 'White Americans', a simple fact which makes your 'it's all racism' immediately, well, probably wrong.
Latino Americans are more likely to live in a segregated version of America almost due to their own choices, much like many other groups have historically, and much like 'micro enclaves' (i.e. Armenian, Persian, Chinese, Turkish) form among migrant communities across North America, UK, Australia, Germany etc. - the difference being, their cohort is enormous. Entire cities, or regions of cities are formed by relative newcomers from Central America, that doesn't happen with other migrant groups.
Latino Americans fare considerably more poorly in school, and in terms of academic achievement; the independent test scores (to which I referred) point to that, and there's ample evidence of that otherwise.
The 'it's all because of racism argument' holds little water, obviously, because other 'migrants of colour' in the US do actually very well. Would you imply that Latinos face 'racism' but migrants from India don't? That's not a very sound argument.
There's even more detailed data to refute your argument, right in the 2018 PISA references I provided. While migrants across the board fare more poorly in school than regular citizens, in the US, Canada, UK (aka Anglosphere) - once you normalize for income, migrants overall actually do as well as or better than local kids. The same is not the case in Germany or Finland (ostensibly #1 place for education). This is really strong evidence that actually, migrants tend to have 'opportunity' at least in the Anglosphere, at least the level of education.
China, India, and Europe have high, even elite standards for education at least for a minority, and migrants from those places are likely to be from the upper tranches of that spectrum. Canada mostly accepts only those with a University degree.
Migrants from Central America not only come from nations with very poor educational standards, but they're also individually, very poor. Many people cross the US border with literally nothing, often as refugees.
The contrast between Latino Americans and others holds even for rates of crime, where Latino Americans are over-represented in almost all forms of crime, while their counterparts, migrants from other nations, are actually underrepresented in crime data.
Latino Americans, unlike African Americans, are not represented as much pop culture, music, sports and media nearly to the same extent, almost as though 'they don't exist' - or rather they do, but in 'their own media'. Even during the 'Oscar's So White' uproar, nobody wanted to point out that nary 100% of the Latino prize winners were not American. Nobody seemed to care.
Go ahead and name for me some Black SNL cast members. That's easy. Now name the Latinos ones. Much harder. I can't think of a single one other than Fred Armisen who has a bit of 'Latino Heritage'.
If you take a moment to visit those areas of Texas and California, you'll realize how vast the submersion in 'Another America' many of them live in, and that it forms an existential artifact of their integration experience, which is very much unlike those of other migrants.
(Again, it's not entirely the case, obviously there are millions of Latino Americans who live as 'statistically normative Americans')
"To the extent that there's no opportunity to climb it's because of racist attitudes like yours. "
I think it's probably people screaming about this or that and throwing names around that is 'a core problem'.
Latino America is 'different enough' from the other cohorts, and they are 'big enough' that this implies differing policy measures, approaches etc..
This is so wrong and misinformed it's hard to know what to say. This sounds like the happy slaves justification for slavery.
The fact of the matter is that Latino immigrants from Central/South America follow the same path of assimilation as immigrants from anywhere else do. From the outside it may not see like it but that's because there's a steady flow of new immigrants. I've taught a lot of second-generation Latino immigrants who are very much interested in college and white-collar trades and not looking to continue in low-wage service jobs.
To the extent that there's no opportunity to climb it's because of racist attitudes like yours.