By: beverly j. irby & Rafael lara alecio  (Page 2/12)

It is hard to measure the economic benefits and costs of immigrants. Periodic accounting estimates provide a measurement at a point in time; estimates that compare immigrant taxes to the cost of the public services they consume show that taxes do not cover service costs. The major reason for the taxes-costs gap is the cost of educating the children of immigrants, which can be considered a long-term investment as well as a short-term cost (Garcia y Griego&Martin, 2000). They furthered their thoughts indicating that long-term growth prospects depend in large part on how well the children of immigrants are educated, how many go to college, how many immigrants with little education will get adult education, how well the children succeed in school and the labor market, and how many of those children will attain a college degree.

According to Grow (2004), despite low family incomes, which at $33,000 a year lag the national average of $42,000, Hispanics' soaring buying power increasingly influences the food Americans eat, the clothes they buy, and the cars they drive. They have many more years of buying power due to their young age. Companies are scrambling to revamp products and marketing to reach the fastest-growing consumer group. Latino flavors are seeping into mainstream culture, too. With Hispanic youth a majority of the under-18 set, or close to it, in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, and San Antonio, what's hip there is spreading into suburbia, much the way rap exploded out of black neighborhoods in the late 1980s.

Latinos appear to be able to, through persistence and hard work, improve their living conditions. Though still low, Grow (2004) continued, Latino's disposable income has jumped 29% since 2001, to $652 billion last year, double the pace of the rest of the population, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. Similarly, the ranks of Latino entrepreneurs has jumped by 30% since 1998, calculates the Internal Revenue Service.

In a hegemonic society, as evidenced in recent writings by Huntington (2004) and Hanson (2003), the domination of thought continues to come from the middle class white male. This thought perpetuates language as a barrier to economic upward mobility. The aforementioned pundits claim that non-English speaking individuals actually send the economy into a downward spiral. They promoted the melding of cultures and a one language system. They suggested that if Latinos are allowed to continue their culture and language and not assimilate, rather only to acculturate, that specifically, this situation will promote a separate and unequal society. Latinos, they indicated, would be held in lower class positions and would be set in language and culture groups aside from mainstream America. However, even as and if Latino's English language is improved, prejudices are still observed due to sometimes maintained thick Spanish accents or continuous grammatical errors--certainly making an inequitable perception of their intelligence and abilities. The underlying point that these men make appears to go straight to the heart of the economy--the point: language is power, economic power.