The American Community Survey is an annual survey administered by the federal government to help local officials and community leaders and businesses understand the changes that take place in their communities. It includes percentages of our population’s graduate school attainment and the employment of Mexican Americans in various occupations.  These important factors influence the allocation of federal resources. Mexican American Proarchives uses the data provided by the American Community Survey to better understand how Mexican Americans compare to the general population.

The primary goal of Mexican American Proarchives is to inform its readers of the percentage of Mexican Americans who obtain a graduate or professional degree. It is the main indicator of individuals employed in professions which require a degree; for example, doctors, teachers, etc. Mexican Americans are considered an underrepresented minority because their percentage of professionals when compared with the general population is very low.

The percentage of Mexican Americans vs the Total Population is 11.2%

The following are graphs which represent the contrast between the employment of the total population of the US vs the Mexican American population.

First up is:

Educational Attainment for 2022 Comparison of Mexican American Attainment vs. Total Population

The total population with Graduate or professional degrees is 14.0%. Mexican Americans is 4.7%

Under Occupations:

Management, business, science, and arts occupations, the total population is 42% for Mexican Americans its 23%

Under Industry:

Professional, scientific, and management and administrative and waste management services, the total population is 12.6%, Mexican Americans are 10.6%

Lastly, if you compare income in dollar during the past 12 months, the total population earned $108,024, Mexican Americans, earned $84,404

The American Community Survey for the year 2019 has reported the following results:

• Graduate School enrollment has only inched upwards in tandem with the General Population.
• Mexican American enrollment is still dismally low as compared to the General Population.

Graduations numbers for Bachelors degrees have shot up for both groups but the General Population has far outpaced the advances in Mexican American graduation rates.

For both Occupations in Mgmt, Business, Science, and Arts, and Industry, Scientific and Mgmt, and Admin and Waste Management, Mexican American Professionals lag for behind the numbers reported for the General Population, and increases for Mexican American Professionals have been in tandem with the General Population.

Despite some gains, Mexican Americans continue to lag behind the general population in college enrollment, degrees and professional occupations. This has been the primary focus on my web site [https://mexican-american-proarchive.com/] and my annual reports. Herein lies the reason for my taking the time to write them.

As a Mexican American Professional (retired educator), when I first looked at the dismal numbers which compares Educational Attainment between Mexican Americans and the total populations, I was dismayed at the disparity.
The annual Community Survey published by the Census Bureau shows the following results for this year and the prior year.

The American Community census reports on college enrollment:

It is simple to observe that the total population college enrollment has decreased by .3% from years 2016 to 2017 but compared to Mexican American enrollment for 2016 the total population is 8.4% higher than the Mexican American college enrollment. On the positive side, college enrollment has gone up for Mexicans American from 19.3% to 19.6%. We will take that.

Continue reading →

It is of utmost importance to discuss why Mexican Americans have trailed most minority groups in educational achievement. The Atlantic recently published a Feb. 8, 2017 article titled “The Myth of Immigrants’ Educational Attainment,” in which new research from sociologist Cynthia Feliciano, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, “found that the reason immigrant families appear so successful is not upward mobility, but the ability to work their way into the same class they occupied in their native country.”

This is an interesting new theory that shines the light on groups such as Cubans that excel far beyond all other Hispanic groups in educational attainment.

The good news is that in spite of many explanations to the inequality between the educational attainment of Mexican Americans and the larger population in the United Sates, numbers in this educational achievement gap keep rising.

News from the American Community Census is better than last year’s. Mexican American college enrollment in the US rose from 18.9% in 2015 to 19.3% in 2016, in spite of the total college enrollment falling from 27.8% in 2015 to 27.7% in 2016.

Continue reading →

It is of utmost importance to discuss why Mexican Americans have trailed most minority groups in educational achievement. The Atlantic recently published a Feb. 8, 2017 article titled “The Myth of Immigrants’ Educational Attainment,” in which new research from sociologist Cynthia Feliciano, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, “found that the reason immigrant families appear so successful is not upward mobility, but the ability to work their way into the same class they occupied in their native country.”

This is an interesting new theory that shines the light on groups such as Cubans that excel far beyond all other Hispanic groups in educational attainment. Continue reading →

News from the census American Community Survey is generally good for the 2015 year. Mexican American college enrollment was up from 18.7% to 18.9% in the 2014 and 2015 years. Graduate or professional degree attainment was also up from 2.9% to 3.0%. The number of bachelor’s degrees granted to Mexican American students rose from 7.6% in 2014 to 7.8% in 2015.

In spite of these gains, Mexican Americans still remain at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to earning a bachelor’s degree. Even after broadening the group to Latinos or Hispanics, this group still lags behind. According to the Pew Hispanic Center: “As of 2014, among Hispanics ages 25 to 29, just 15% of Hispanics have a bachelor’s degree or higher. By comparison, among the same age group, about 41% of whites have a bachelor’s degree or higher (as do 22% of blacks and 63% of Asians).” Pew reports that the main reasons for this low graduation rate is that Hispanics are less likely “to enroll in a four-year college, attend an academically selective college and enroll full-time.”

Also in the good news column, the University of California will continue to push for a greater number of underrepresented minorities; namely, Chicano/Latino students whose resident freshmen numbers rose from 2.7% to 32.3% of admitted California freshmen. In other good news, the proportion of Chicano/Latino students transferring from community colleges increased to 29.3% from 26.8% for 2015.

Occupations, including those in management, business, science, and art, fared better for Mexican Americans. The number of Mexican Americans filling these occupations rose from 17.4% in 2014 to 17.5% in 2015.

The total number of Hispanics filling these occupations was 16.1% in 2015, a bit lower than Mexican Americans specifically.

Percentage of industry employment that is of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, 2014 annual averages

Information
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The report shows that industrial employment for Mexican Americans remained the same for 2014 and 2015 at 10.2%.

The figures for Hispanic or Latino employment for 2015 and 2016 show a healthy increase.

According to the Pew Hispanic center, “Construction, professional and business services, health services, financial services and food services…showed healthy gains.” Most of the jobs gained by native-born Hispanic workers were in manufacturing, mostly durable goods (82,000 Hispanic workers in this industry), followed by wholesale and retail trade (79,000), publishing, broadcasting, communication and information services (55,000), and construction (54,000).

Foreign-born Hispanics had the most job gains in construction (417,000), followed by business and professional services (179,000). Together, those two industries accounted for almost three-quarters (74%) of all jobs gained by foreign-born Latinos between 2005 and 2006.

The business and professional services sector, which ranges from management and technical services to janitorial, landscaping, and waste management services, is also a key employer for non-Hispanic workers. Of the total increase in employment in 2005-06, non-Hispanic workers accounted for 410,000 employees in the industry, native-born workers 327,000, and foreign-born workers 83,000.

Sources

Census Bureau, Selected Population Profile in the United States 2015

Pew Research Center

University of California

Bureau of Labor Statistics

The previous two articles I wrote regarding Mexican American Professionals were based on a broad definition of professionals. I used our population with college degrees or higher as the bases for my articles. Since then I have obtained new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to broaden my definition of Mexican American Professionals to include most individual who are employed as doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc. (see the list of professions on the next page to the article)

In 2007 the total white employment for age 16 years and over was 146,047,000.

The total employed persons of Mexican ancestry was 12,908,000, or about ten percent of the white employed population. The total Non-Hispanic white population in 2007 was 199.1 million and for Mexican Americans it was 29.1 million.

If you compare the percentage of Mexican Americans vs. White Professional workers:

Mexican vs White Professional Workers by Percentage 2007

The chart shows what minuscule portion of employed professionals Mexican Americans occupy. Mexican Americans were only 3.63% of Professionals in 2008 as compared to the total Mexican American vs. white worker population which is about 8.84%. The Healthcare field shows only a 6.69% showing among this professional group.

The following chart is a detailed comparison of the percentage of Mexican Americans vs. White Professional workers. It is significant to note that among professionals Mexican Americans represent only 2.13% of employed professionals as compared to White workers in computer and mathematical occupations while in service occupations such as farming, fishing and forestry they weigh in at 27.3%.

Mexican vs White professional workers detailed breakdown 2007

The following charts show the distribution of Mexican Americans and White workers by sector.

Mexican American occupation by sector 2007

White American occupation by sector 2007

These charts show the distribution of occupations and it is clear to see the disparities in management and professional occupations. 15% of Mexican Americans are involved in management and related fields where 35% of Whites are professionals. Roughly 24% of Mexican American workers are employed at service occupations whereas less than 17% of White workers are doing those jobs.

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One final note

It is interesting to note that in 2008 there are (0) averages for Mexican Americans involved in the following professions:

• Funeral directors

• Financial examiners

• Mathematicians

• Actuaries

• Agricultural Engineers

• Biomedical Engineers

• Mining and geological engineers, including mining safety engineers

• Nuclear engineers

• Conservation scientists and foresters

• Physical scientists

• Sociologists

• Urban and regional planners

• Nuclear technicians

• Directors, religious activities and education

• Archivists, curators, and museum technicians

• Media and communication equipment workers

• Podiatrists

• Audiologists

• Health diagnosing and treating practitioners

• Fish and game wardens

• Ship and boat captains and operators

Conclusions and Prospects

If you examine the trend for the years from 2007 to 2008 it’s not an optimistic one. In the chart Management and professional occupations the numbers are not moving up from year to year and in some cases the number have gone down.

I have not read any studies that nail down why these numbers are not showing improvement, but there are some writers who do offer some explanations.

Mitchell A. Kaplan in an article for the Hispanic Outlook on March 3, 2009 states that Hispanics face five major social and economic barriers to educational opportunity. They are:

1. Lack of supportive social and economic resources….

2. The immigrant and socioeconomic status of their parents.

3. The lack of parental knowledge of the internal workings of the American educational system.

4. Inadequate school resources to help compensate for educational disparities.

5. Weak relationships that Hispanics form with their teachers that tend to undermine their success.

Once again, please note that the above statements refer to Hispanic and not specifically to Mexican Americans.

It is my hope that some of these negative trends turn around.  They are a reminder that great disparities in professional employment still exist between the white community and the Mexican American community.

Sources:

1. “Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity”, 2007. U.S Department of Labor. Report 1005.   P. 4, 9

2. Household Data: Annual Averages. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employed Hispanic or Latino workers by sex, occupation, class of worker, full-or part-time status, and detailed ethnic group.

At last, some data

Humberto (Tito) Gutierrez

Since I wrote the first article about Mexican-American Professionals, the Census Bureau has created The American Community Survey (ACS). It …”is part of the Decennial Census Program. It is a survey that is sent to a small percentage of our population on a rotating basis. This data was previously collected only in census years in conjunction with the decennial census. Since the ACS is conducted every year, rather than once every ten years, it will provide more current data…” Given this fact, statistical information about Mexican-Americans is much more current and precise.

Why should we care?

From the year 2,000 to the present, Mexicans 25 years and older had the lowest proportion of Hispanics with a bachelor’s degree or more.

Census Bureau 2000 Demographic Profile characteristics: Race, ethnic, or ancestry group.

Then and now: Have Mexican- American Professionals grown in numbers since 2004?

The answer is yes, but not by much.

• In 1985 the educational attainment of Mexican-Americans 25 years or older was 5.5%
• In 1989 it was 6.1%
• In 2,000 it was 7%
• In 2002 it was 7.6%
• During the years 2005 to 2007 it was 6.0%
• In 2007 it was 6.2%

You may ask; why did the numbers drop from 2002 to 2005?

The reason is that these are percentages of the total Mexican- American population which in:

• 2002 numbered 25.1 million
• 2005 numbered 28.1 million
• 2007 numbered 29.1 million

Between 2002 and 2005 there was an increase of 3 million Mexican-Americans, therefore the growth among Mexican-American college graduates had to increase by that proportional amount and obviously, it did not.

How do percentages of Mexican- American college graduate students compare with non-Hispanic groups? The chart below shows how the two groups compared in 2002.

Census Bureau 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates.

Other years we can compare the contrast between Mexican-American and Non-Hispanic groups that have attained a B.A. or more are:

In 1989 21.1 % of the non-Hispanic group had earned a B.A. or more, compared to 6.1 for Mexican-Americans.

• In 2,000 24.4% for non- Hispanics and 7% for Mexican-Americans.
• In 2,002 29% for non-Hispanics and 7.6% for Mexican Americans.

From 2005 to 2007 it was 27% for non-Hispanics and 6% for Mexican-Americans. The percentage of Non-Hispanic white is 29.4 compared with 11.1 for Hispanics and 7.6 for Mexicans.

Foreign born Mexican-American fared even worse. In 2007 Educational Attainment by Mexicans at the B.A. degree or more was only 5.2%.

Census Bureau, Foreign Born Population in the United States: 2003.

Educational Attainment by Nativity, Showing Countries of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population with 1 Million or More: 2007

What are some reasons for the great discrepancy between Mexican-American and Mexican academic achievement and Non-Hispanic populations?

One possible explanation is that Mexican-Americans are mostly employed in service, precision, production, craft and transportation jobs. This means that both Mexican groups have limited economic resources to fund their college careers. To this point, the Hispanic-Serving Institution Program found in areas which service Hispanics, funds Hispanics who want to attend college. There is a statistical chart entitled “Location of Hispanic-Serving Institutions of Higher Education in the United States by State and Percentage of Latino Undergraduates Enrolled 2003 to 2004”. This data can be found at the National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS Survey 2003 to2004.

One last comment.

It is interesting to note that the level of students in Higher Education (Instruccion Superior) in Mexico for 25 to 30 year olds is 16% of the total Mexican population.

Los Jóvenes en México, Instituto de Estadística Geográfica e Informática. PDF file, starts on P174.

In summary:

We have made some progress filling in the gap between Mexican-American professionals (6.1% in 1989) to (6.2% in 2007) and Non-Hispanics which in 2007 number 27%. At this pace it would take Mexican-American 27 years to catch up with the Non-Hispanic population.

Sources:

• Census Bureau 2000 Demographic Profile characteristics: Race, ethnic, or ancestry group.
• Census Bureau 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates.
• Census Bureau, Foreign Born Population in the United States: 2003. Slide show.
• Census Bureau, Social and Economic Characteristics of the Hispanic Population: 2006. Table 39.
• Los Jóvenes en México, Instituto de Estadística Geográfica e Informática. PDF file, starts on P174.

These PDF files are the complete documents, parts of which were used to write the above article.

• Census Bureau, Percent of Persons 25 Years Old and Over Who Have Completed High School or College, by Race Hispanic Origin and Sex: Selected Years 1940 to 1990. PDF file.
• Census Bureau, Hispanic Population in the United States: 2002. Current Population Reports. PDF file
• Census Bureau, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2003. PDF file.

An Odyssey in Search of Elusive Data
by Humberto Gutierrez

My Oh My, How Things Have Changed!
On a recent trip to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, I was very surprised to observe the differences in the city where I’d spent my high school and college years.

My memories of El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico, are negative. One reason is that what was then called Texas Western College and now is The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) was an institution where it was almost unknown for Mexican-Americans to join any fraternity. Now I find out that UTEP has a president who is Mexican-American. Similarly, my first cousin, who was voted out when she tried to join a sorority at Texas Western, is now the proud owner of a company and has received many local business honors.

There are many other dramatic changes in these two border cities since I lived there some 30 years ago. The minority back then–Mexican-Americans–is now the majority, yet there is so little research available on Mexican-Americans and how they are progressing. This is true in El Paso, Texas, and throughout the United States.

Most literature and research fails to segregate data on Mexican-Americans from that of all Latinos or Hispanics. Also, most literature and research describes only the poor segment of our Mexican-American community, though with good reason. They are most in need. According to the figures on California during the 1990s, “The income of a family of four in the lowest quarter of wage earners fell from $28,600 to $27,000 in constant dollars.”

But it is important to know more about the group of Mexican-American professionals who are and will be more and more influential in shaping the future of our society.

In Search of Statistics
A U.S. Census Bureau report dated March 2001 stated that “Among Hispanics, 66 percent were of Mexican origin. The country’s overall Latino population was close to 33,000,000 or 12 percent of our total population.” Some scholars are saying that the census 2000 figures show the
Hispanic population at 35.3 million, about 3 million more than that estimate.

Let me here remind the reader that the real human beings behind these numbers represent the entire spectrum of historical roots that one could imagine. At one end, you have the Mexican-American whose roots reach back to the arrival of Spanish explorers on this continent. A case in point is my stepfather’s nephew, a lawyer turned teacher. His grandmother’s last name was Flores. She was a native of Floresville, Texas, a small town near San Antonio named after her family during the early Spanish Exploration of North America. On the other end of the spectrum are the newly migrated Mexican-American professionals, about whom we know so little.

The chart shows numbers of employed Mexican-Americans and Cuban-Americans and the percentage of which are managers and professionals,as reported in the 1990 Census, by gender.

Employed Hispanic persons by occupation as percent of all employed Hispanic persons by sex, by type of Hispanic origin, 1990. The numbers represent thousands.

There are far fewer Cubans than Mexican-Americans, yet they are 25.4 percent of the Hispanic managers and professionals. It is also noteworthy that males outnumber females by a ratio of almost 2- to-1.

Similar data for 1985, for both sexes, shows Hispanics of Mexican origin as 5.1 percent of all Hispanics in “executive, administrative, and managerial occupations”; those of Cuban origin, 8.3 percent; Puerto Rican, 6.4 percent; and Other Hispanic, 7.0 percent.

We might conclude that 12 years ago, Mexican-Americans were the least likely to work in managerial or professional occupations, but with ground gained since 1985.

Some figures for the year 2000 Census are available, but thus far they refer to Hispanics and are not broken into subgroups. They show that “Hispanics are less likely than Non-Hispanic Whites to work in high-paying managerial and professional specialty occupations. In 2000, 14 percent of Hispanics
were in managerial or professional occupations compared to 33 percent of Non-Hispanic Whites. Eighteen percent of Hispanic women were in managerial or professional occupations, compared to 11 percent of Hispanic men.”

The proportions for Hispanics overall are similar to the figures from the 1990 Census for Mexican-American professionals–9.6 percent for men versus 16.3 percent for women and, for Hispanics, 11 percent for men and 18 percent for women.

Data made available on March 6, 2001, tell us that “the proportion of the Hispanic population age 25 and over with at least a bachelor’s degree ranged from 23 percent for those of Cuban origin to 7 percent for those of Mexican origin, according to survey data collected in 2000 and released… by the
Commerce Department’s Census Bureau.” There is a note of caution by the Census Bureau, to wit, these are estimates, collected in the March 2000 current population survey (CPS), and should not be confused with the Census 2000 results, which are scheduled for release over the next three years.

Checking the educational attainment of the Hispanic population, 25 years old and over, by type of origin, for the years 1985 and 1989, I found that for the Cuban population, there has been a steady rise in the percentage that have completed four years of college or more. In 1985, 13.7 percent of Cubans had at least a bachelor’s degree; in 1989, 19.8 percent; and in 2000, 23 percent. For
Mexican-Americans, 5.5 percent in 1985, 6.1 percent in 1989, and 7 percent in 2000, a slower rise for Mexican-Americans, but one must consider that Mexican-Americans represent a larger population. For example, in 1989, there were 790 Cubans with at least a bachelor’s degree, but at the same time, 5,931 Mexican-Americans with bachelor’s degrees. This does not mean that we should be content with what is obviously low representation of Mexican-Americans.

Mexican Stereotypes Holding Firm
Reviewing a report in The San Francisco Chronicle on the 2000 Census for information on professionals from Mexico, I read the following:

“…For immigrants who come from poor countries with scant educational opportunities, however, job prospects in the United States can be limited. Mexicans from rural areas, for example, lack an education that has kept up with changes in technology,” said Abdiel Onate, a professor of Latin American History at San Francisco State University…“They do all the menial jobs, here,” he said. “All the labor in the kitchens of the restaurants in the Bay area, installing telephones, landscaping, gardening, construction work. Without their labor, things would be much more expensive.”

This quote speaks for itself. There is little or no mention of Mexican-American professionals. There is still the focus on the stereotypical image of the Mexican-American as being uneducated.

The article does mention that Terry Alderete, vice president of Alameda County’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and chief of operations for the unity council, a community development agency, “has seen a wide range of new Mexican immigrants arriving in Alameda County over the past decade,
from day laborers to business people with capital to invest…”

No mention was made of education levels that would indicate Mexican-American professionals.

But an article in the Austin American Statesman; July 12, 2001, quoting a relevant study, said: “Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are better educated than widely believed, more urban, and increasingly more likely to settle in Texas than in California… [I]t challenges long-held stereotypes and is raising concerns in Mexico about a brain-drain flowing north…. [T]he migration of highly educated Mexicans ‘has a high cost for the development of Mexico, and their loss weakens all of society.’ ‘It implies the transfer of a valuable human resource, in which our country has made a substantial investment.’ About 6 percent of all Mexicans older than 20 who have college or postgraduate (SIC) degrees now live in the United States… Mexican demographers said the study’s findings confirm anecdotal indications that they have seen for years of migrant trends shifting from rural to urban and from unskilled to professional. They attributed the brain drain to Mexican oversupply meeting with U.S. demand.”

A Phoenix/Tucson Study
Dr. Ramona Ortega-Liston published in Public Personnel Management a very interesting article entitled “Mexican-American Professionals in Municipal Administration: Do They Really Lag Behind in Terms of
Education, Seniority, and On-The-Job Training?”

The related study took place in the cities of Phoenix and Tucson.

“Separation of data by ethnicity and nativity distinguishes this study from previous research that includes all Hispanics,” she wrote. “First, Mexican nationals were separated from Mexican-Americans. Second, Mexican-American professionals were separated from all other Spanishsurnamed ethnic groups. The need for separating data by ethnicity and nativity has been recommended…because it may yield a more accurate profile of each ethnic group on specific variables examined.” She should
be applauded for this great insight but gives credit in her footnotes to others who have advanced this strategy. She also concluded that at least for that study group in Arizona, “Mexican-American managers do not appear to lag behind on important career variables such as seniority, education,
and on-the-job training…”

Science and Engineering
The National Science Foundation, in its Science and Engineering Indicators 2002, Vol. 2, reports that in 1999 there were 31,700 foreignborn (Mexican) U.S. residents with science and engineering degrees. This number does not include individuals with only foreign degrees who were not in the U.S. in 1990. Although this sounds like a great many, the total number of U.S. scientists and engineers in 1999 was 13,003,900. The total of foreign-born scientists and engineers is less than 1 percent.

The number of recipients of doctorates from U.S. universities who plan to stay in the U.S. and were born in Mexico remained steady, varying from 10 in 1996 to 11 in 1999.

There is no separate number for Mexican-Americans, but the total number of Hispanic science and engineering grads with earned bachelor’s degrees has grown from 9,268 in 1977 to 26,725 in 1999. Still a small fraction of the total science and engineering graduates.

By coincidence, Dr. Diana S. Natalicio, the president of my alma mater, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), is a member of The National Science Board, which submits biennial science indicators and science and engineering indicators, in accordance with Sec.4(J) of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, to the president and Congress.

It is gratifying to read that UTEP is involved in the training of engineers who work for the factories located in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. This industry has grown to 3,500 plants along the 2,000-mile border that take advantage of cheaper labor in Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). UTEP has started a weekend graduate engineering program for advanced-level factory employees. About 100 engineers are participating.

Breaking Stereotypes
Hector De Jesús Ruiz, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, is a Mexican-American engineer who represents the continuing change in our Mexican-American community. He was born in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He
tells us that what helps him get through tough times is a memory from when he was 14 years old. He recalls that “a politician was on the radio proclaiming that he represented the party of the poor and the destitute. My father said, ‘Son, when you grow up, I don’t want you to be a member of a
party that caters to the oppressed and the poor. You have to aspire to be a member of a party that is happy, winning, and influential.’” Ruiz adds that the experience stuck with him and says that he does not want to be the underdog–he wants to try to figure out how he can win big.

Conversations Across the Border
During my last visit to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, I had the opportunity to visit a private college and prep school where my niece, Cecilia Valdez, is a teacher and administrator.

The campus is very modern, with some of the newest advances in technology that money can buy. At this institution, students are prepared for the job market in Mexico and in the U.S. The curriculum reflects both markets.

The school’s coordinator of international programs informed me that the school offers student exchange programs with Boston University, Purdue, University of British Columbia, and many other schools of higher learning throughout the world. The curriculum is accredited by the
Southwestern Association of Colleges and Universities. The coordinator told me that as many as 42 students transfer to the University of Texas at El Paso, located just across the border. The reasons for their transfer vary and include curriculum and finances. Some career tracks are not offered
at the college. Some students at the school are U. S. citizens and for them it is cheaper to attend UTEP.

I asked her about the factories along the border established through NAFTA, referred to in Mexico as “maquilas.” She told me that maquilas bring in their own professionals, according to the needs of each company. Obviously, they are a great source for all types of jobs along the border with Mexico. She had knowledge of a number of graduates who felt that there still exists prejudice against the foreign-born when applying for work in the U.S. The visa process is lengthy and costly. Her own brother, now working in Kentucky as an engineer for a Mexican company, would like to relocate in Mexico, she said.

During my visit, I also had the good fortune to talk with the coordinator of science programs for the college, who spoke about her very successful sons, both of whom work in the U.S. Her oldest earned his master’s degree from UTEP in engineering communications and studied his high school (preparatoria) in Mexico. He is now a successful design engineer in Newport Beach, Calif. Through his good academic record and teacher recommendations, he was able to qualify for a resident passport in the U.S. Her younger son was a business administration major at UTEP and earned an M.A. in accounting. He now works for El Paso Energy in Houston, Texas, and is married to a U.S. citizen, which allows him to file for his own U.S. residency.

In both situations, the quality of their lives in the U.S. far exceeds the one they would have experienced in Mexico, according to their mother. They are well adjusted to the competitive life in the U.S. and have proved that they can succeed in the U.S.

It is important to state that UTEP’s enrollment includes 1,749 students from Mexico, a 4 percent increase over last year. According to Natalicio, “These students represent approximately 15 percent of all Mexican nationals enrolled in the U.S. colleges and universities…”

Epilogue
I would like to encourage social researchers to separate data that refer to Mexican-Americans. It will help us assess the progress or lack of it of our Mexican-American community. Also, the persons who report the news in the media need to be more sensitive to patronizing and stereotyping.

My thanks to Walter Gilmore for his ideas, and to all the reference librarians at Sánchez Library, Pacifica, San Francisco State, and Skyline College. To all of you, a big Mexican hug.

References
Tyche Hendricks, “All Roads Lead to the Bay Area”, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 27, 2002, p. A12

Census Bureau SIC 926110, “Diversity of the Country’s Hispanics Highlighted in the U.S. Census Bureau Report, U.S. Newswire; March 6, 2001.

Pinto Alicea, Ines. Chapa, Flores, and Yzaguirre Press for Equity. Latino perspective on census 2000. Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, Sept. 10, 2001 V.11; N.24 p 20.

Science and Engineering Indicators-2002. Vol. 2 p.A2-23 Garwood, Alfred. Hispanic Americans, a Statistical Sourcebook, published by Numbers and Concepts, 1991. Boulder, Colo. p. 132

US. Newswire, March 6, 2001.

Nova, UTEP Alumni Magazine. Winter 2002. p. 8
Lynn Elber, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, Aug. 16,
2002, p. D 18.

San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 27, 2002, p. A12

Susan Ferriss, American-Statesman International Staff, Austin American
Statesman; Austin, Texas; July 12, 2001, p.A4.

Ramona Ortega-Liston, “Mexican-American Professionals in Municipal Administration: Do They Really Lag Behind in Terms of Education, Seniority, and On-the-Job Training?” Public Personnel Management,
Summer 2001 V30 12 p. 197.

Science and Engineering Indicators-2002, Vol., 2, National Science Foundation, p.A169.

About the Author
Humberto Gutiérrez holds a B.A. in philosophy from UTEP, an M.A. in administration and supervision of education from CSU-Northridge, and was a doctoral candidate in both romance linguistics and philosophy of education at UCLA. His career in education spans three decades and includes teaching people of all ages, elementary and high school through college. He has developed and taught bilingual and multicultural programs at Mendocino College and throughout the L.A. Unified School District. Publications include Spanish for Our Schools and Spanish Developmental Reading Program, both for the L.A. City Schools, and Mexican-American History, for the Hispanic Urban Center.