page_title: Mexican Americans
section_title: Immigration and segregation
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican Americans / Segregation issues / Immigration and segregation
caption_attribution_description: English: El Paso Morning Times, El Paso, Texas, January 30, 1917 Headlinedː "Bill Before Congress To Prevent Mexicans Voting" and reporting on the 1917 Bath Riots.
context_page_description: Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexican descent. As of July 2018, Mexican Americans made up 11.3% of the United States' population, as 37.0 million U.S. residents identified as being of full or partial Mexican ancestry. As of July 2018, Mexican Americans comprised 61.9% of all Latinos in Americans in the United States. Many Mexican Americans reside in the American Southwest; over 60% of all Mexican Americans reside in the states of California and Texas. As of 2016, Mexicans made up 53% of the total population of Latino foreign-born Americans. Mexicans are also the largest foreign-born population, accounting for 25% of the total foreign-born population, as of 2017.
  The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world, second only to Mexico itself, and comprising more than 24% of the entire Mexican-origin population of the world. Mexican American families of indigenous heritage have been in the country for at least 15,000 years, and mestizo Mexican American history spans more than 400 years, since the 1598 founding of Spanish New Mexico.
context_section_description: Immigration hubs are popular destinations for Latino immigrants. These segregated areas have historically served the purpose of allowing immigrants to become comfortable in the United States, accumulate wealth, and eventually leave.
  This model of immigration and residential segregation, explained above, is the model which has historically been accurate in describing the experiences of Latino immigrants. However, the patterns of immigration seen today no longer follows this model. This old model is termed the standard spatial assimilation model. More contemporary models are the polarization model and the diffusion model: The spatial assimilation model posits that as immigrants would live within this country's borders, they would simultaneously become more comfortable in their new surroundings, their socioeconomic status would rise, and their ability to speak English would increase. The combination of these changes would allow for the immigrant to move out of the barrio and into the dominant society. This type of assimilation reflects the experiences of immigrants of the early twentieth century.
  Polarization model suggests that the immigration of non-Black minorities into the United States further separates Blacks and Whites, as though the new immigrants are a buffer between them. This creates a hierarchy in which Blacks are at the bottom, Whites are at the top, and other groups fill the middle. In other words, the polarization model posits that Asians and Hispanics are less segregated than their African American peers because White American society would rather live closer to Asians or Hispanics than African Americans.
  The diffusion model has also been suggested as a way of describing the immigrant's experience within the United States. This model is rooted in the belief that as time passes, more and more immigrants enter the country. This model suggests that as the United States becomes more populated with a more diverse set of peoples, stereotypes and discriminatory practices will decrease, as awareness and acceptance increase. The diffusion model predicts that new immigrants will break down old patterns of discrimination and prejudice, as one becomes more and more comfortable with the more diverse neighborhoods that are created through the influx of immigrants. Applying this model to the experiences of Mexican Americans forces one to see Mexican American immigrants as positive additions to the "American melting pot," in which as more additions are made to the pot, the more equal and accepting society will become.
caption: El Paso Morning Times newspaper January 30, 1917 Headlinedː "Bill Before Legislature To Prevent Mexicans Voting" depicts the 1917 Bath Riots begun by Carmelita Torres at the Santa Fe International Bridge disinfecting plant at the El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico border.
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