Male immigrants from Mexico who settled in California during the 1970s saw their inflation-adjusted incomes rise 26 percent during the 1980s, according to a study released in November by the University of Southern California. By contrast, male immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia who also came to the state in the 1970s more than doubled their incomes in the 1980s. They are just making progress a lot slower than other groups. The children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants, seeing their parents stuck in hard, low-paying jobs while watching images from television and other media of the good life, grow bitter and pessimistic, sociologists and some students say. That's the pain there is in Mexico.
People are angry here because they are getting a little bit and they want more.
At its worst, the lack of optimism and progress fuels the urban violence, drug use and other forms of self destruction plaguing the Mexican-American and other ethnic communities in the inner cities, experts say. They look backwards, and they don't see anything. They look at their present and they don't see anything. And so they look in the future and they don't see anything. But that kind of despair has affected relatively few Mexican immigrants.