[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 33 (Monday, March 23, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2415-S2417]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  MUHAMMAD ALI--ATHLETE OF THE CENTURY

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am delighted that my dear friend Muhammad 
Ali has been named by Gentlemen's Quarterly as Athlete of the Century.
  We have had many noteworthy athletes in this century--the century 
that has brought us modern sport. Excellence has been personified by 
such sports heroes as Lou Gehrig, Babe Didrickson Zaharias, Bobby Orr, 
Walter Payton, and Michael Jordan. But, to my mind, though this company 
is clearly outstanding, GQ made the obvious choice.
  Muhammad Ali's road to sports immortality began on January 17, 1942, 
in Louisville, Kentucky. Introduced to boxing at the age of 12, Ali won 
National AAU and Golden Gloves titles. He brought home the Olympic gold 
medal from Rome in 1960.
  After turning professional, he stunned the sports world by defeating 
the also great boxer Sonny Liston in 1964. His victories over such 
accomplished opponents as Liston, Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell, Joe 
Frazier, George Foreman, and Ken Norton make him, in my mind, the 
greatest boxer of all time.
  But Ali's greatness goes beyond his physical strength and 
athleticism, In 1964, he converted to the religion of Islam, adopting a 
set of beliefs for which he would sacrifice a great deal. In 1967, at 
the height of his career, he was convicted of draft evasion and 
stripped of his heavyweight title. For a period of three years, Ali was 
shunned by the boxing world and vilified by many who had previously 
hailed him.
  The conviction was eventually overturned by the United States Supreme

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Court, and Ali turned to the ring in 1970 and took on Joe Frazier in 
the ``Fight of the Century.'' This bout, between the only two 
undefeated fighters, resulted Ali's ascension as the undisputed 
heavyweight champion of the world. Ali brought speed and grace to the 
world of boxing, demonstrating how to ``flit like a butterfly and sting 
like a bee.''
  Ali held this title until 1978 when he lost a hard fought bout to 
Leon Spinks in 15 rounds on points. But, just seven months later, he 
dethroned Spinks and recaptured the title for an unprecedented third 
time.
  I have come to admire Ali, however, not just for his unparalleled 
skill in the boxing ring, but also for his faith and his humanity.
  Ali has traveled the world on humanitarian missions. And he has given 
most unselfishly, particularly to young people. During his recent visit 
to Utah he was never without a gaggle of kids surrounding him. Even 
though the effects of Parkinson's disease have made speech difficult, 
he really does not need to talk to communicate. He exudes kindness and 
friendship.
  I am honored to count Ali and his wonderful wife Lonnie among my 
friends. I commend the writers and editors at GQ for selecting Ali for 
this very significant distinction. No one deserves it more. He's the 
greatest.


                     SUCCESS OF IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, according to a recent study by 
sociologists at Michigan State University, and Princeton University, 
one of the great contributions of immigrants to America, in addition to 
their own skills and hard work, is the values they instill in their 
children--respect for hard work, doing well in school, succeeding 
against the odds, loving their families and their cultures, and an 
abiding belief that the United States is the best country in the world.
  Contrary to many of the myths about immigrants, this study concludes 
that the vast majority of immigrant children learn English. Nine out of 
10 speak their native languages at home, but 88 percent preferred 
English by the time they completed high school.
  This study is also significant because it does not gloss over the 
challenges that many immigrant families face along the way. The study 
reminds us that immigrant children struggle against discrimination and 
anti-immigrant attitudes and policies. The study found that as a result 
of attacks on immigrants in public policy in recent years, children of 
immigrants were less likely to regard themselves as ``Americans'' and 
more likely to regard themselves as members of their ethnic groups. 
This kind of polarization could have profound consequences for our 
society in the future, and we need to be vigilant against it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a March 21 article in the 
New York Times on this study may be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 21, 1998]

           Best Students Are Immigrants' Children, Study Says

                          (By Celia W. Dugger)

       A multiyear survey that is the largest ever of the children 
     of immigrants--who now account for almost one in five 
     American children--found that they overwhelmingly prefer 
     English to their parents' native tongues and have higher 
     grades and steeply lower school dropout rates than other 
     American children.
       While a majority of those surveyed, who were predominantly 
     Hispanic, Asian and black children, said they had personally 
     experienced discrimination, an even larger majority of them 
     said they still believed that the United States is the best 
     country in the world to live in. The youths were adolescent.
       The lead researchers on the study describe these findings 
     as reassuring indications that the children of immigrants are 
     unlikely to form a new multiethnic underclass, as some 
     experts fear, cut off from the mainstream by academic failure 
     and an inability to speak English.
       But the researchers also say it is still an open question 
     how well these young people will do in college and the job 
     market, a caution shared by other experts.
       The researchers said that the survey brought into sharp 
     relief the extraordinary diversity of the children of 
     immigrants, not only by national origin, but by social class. 
     It reaches from the young of Chinese and Indian couples from 
     highly educated, upper-middle-class backgrounds to Mexicans 
     and Dominicans from the humblest origins.
       ``What can certainly be predicted now is that the destinies 
     of these youth will diverge,'' said Professor Ruben Rumbaut, 
     a sociologist at Michigan State University. ``Some will go up 
     and some will go down.''
       The survey, which shows that the children of immigrants 
     outperform their American peers and that those from more 
     advantaged backgrounds do better than poorer children, 
     will inevitably become fodder for the larger debate about 
     the United States' immigration policy.
       Supporters of the current high levels of immigration will 
     cite the achievements of these young people, while critics 
     may find reinforcement for their view that national policy 
     should be titled to favor more highly skilled and educated 
     immigrants.
       The research team, led by Rumbaut and Professor Alejandro 
     Portes, a sociologist at Princeton University, first 
     interviewed 5,200 youngsters in Southern California and South 
     Florida in 1992 when the youths were in the eighth or ninth 
     grades, and then tracked down 82 percent of them for a second 
     interview in 1995 and 1996 when most of them were high school 
     seniors.
       This fall, another team of sociologists will begin a large-
     scale survey of the grown children of immigrants in New York 
     City and its suburbs, focusing on adults 18 to 32 years old, 
     rather than adolescents.
       The number of children who are either immigrants or the 
     American-born offspring of immigrants grew to 13.7 million 
     last year, from 8 million in 1990, making them the fastest-
     growing segment of the U.S. population under the age of 18, 
     according to a new analysis of census data by Rumbaut.
       The $1 million survey of the children of immigrants was 
     financed by the Russell Sage, Andrew W. Mellon, Spencer and 
     National Science Foundations. The researchers provided their 
     findings to The New York Times.
       Among the most striking findings of the bicoastal survey of 
     children from San Diego and Dade and Broward counties in 
     South Florida have to do with the contentious issue of 
     language. While nine out of 10 of the youths surveyed spoke a 
     language other than English at home, almost exactly the same 
     proportion, 88 percent, preferred English by the end of high 
     school.
       Rumbaut wrote, ``The findings suggest that the linguistic 
     outcomes for the third generation--the grandchildren of the 
     current wave of immigrants--will be no different than what 
     has been the age-old pattern in American history: The 
     grandchildren may learn a few foreign words and phrases as a 
     quaint vestige of their ancestry, but they will most likely 
     grow up speaking English only.''
       And the professor also pointed to the ascendancy of English 
     as evidence of the irrelevance of a California ballot 
     initiative that could end bilingual education, which has been 
     depicted as an impediment to the acquisition of English. 
     ``English is triumphing with breathtaking rapidity,'' he 
     said.
       The study presents a generally upbeat portrayal of the 
     children of immigrants as ambitious, hopeful and resilient in 
     the face of discrimination.
       In San Diego, the children of immigrants had better grades 
     than their American peers in every grade. The gap narrowed 
     over time, largely because the poorly performing children of 
     immigrants were more likely to stay in school than their 
     peers who were not the children of immigrants, the 
     researchers say. In South Florida, the school districts were 
     unable to provide the researchers with grade-point averages 
     for the district as a whole.
       But when the researchers analyzed how the children of 
     immigrants were faring by national origin, they found that 
     levels of scholastic success diverged sharply. Generally, the 
     children whose immigrant parents had better educations and 
     jobs and who came from stable, two-parent families were 
     predictably more successful, with a few startling 
     exceptions.
       The children of Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Korean 
     parents had the highest grade-point averages, A's and B's. 
     English-speaking West Indians had lower grades, C's and C-
     pluses. Latin American and Haitian youths performed most 
     poorly, with averages that were slightly higher or lower than 
     a C.
       But a few groups defied what would have been expected based 
     on their socioeconomic status. The children of Southeast 
     Asian refugees, who came from the most impoverished 
     backgrounds and whose parents were among the least educated, 
     were also among the least likely to drop out of school and 
     had above-average grades. They did it by studying for longer 
     hours and watching less television than many of the other 
     children of immigrants, the study found.
       And the children of Cuban immigrants, who were from average 
     to above-average socioeconomic backgrounds, had the highest 
     dropout rates and among the lowest grades (an average of C or 
     C-plus), the survey reported. The Cuban children, who 
     belonged to the dominant group in metropolitan Miami faced 
     less discrimination than any other group in the survey, the 
     researchers said.
       The children of Cubans did worse academically than the 
     children of Mexicans, who are one of the poorest and by far 
     the largest immigrant group in the United States.
       The findings about Cubans were among the survey's most 
     startling to Rumbaut and Portes and their colleague, Lisandro 
     Perez, director of the Cuban Research Center at Florida 
     International University, who are all Cuban immigrants 
     themselves.
       Portes had earlier hypothesized that Cuban youths would use 
     their economically powerful ethnic enclave as a springboard 
     to higher education and the middle class, much as

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     Eastern European Jews did in an earlier wave of immigration.
       ``As it turns out, the enclave may not be a springboard,'' 
     Perez said, ``but a cushy net that means you don't have to 
     depend exclusively on education for a job. It may be that 
     Cubans are right, and will do better going to work at an 
     uncle's factory in Hialeah. We're not certain how it will 
     translate economically.''
       The survey also found some intriguing changes in the way 
     the children of immigrants identified themselves, possibly 
     reflecting their altered relationship to the rest of American 
     society or perhaps just adolescent rebelliousness.
       When the youths were first interviewed, more than half 
     labeled themselves as hyphenated Americans or as plain 
     Americans. That sounded like old-fashioned assimilation and 
     it might have been expected that, three years later, even 
     more of the youths would have chosen an American identity.
       But the results of the second interview, conducted in the 
     months after California's passage of Proposition 187, the 
     initiative that called for restricting social and educational 
     benefits to illegal immigrants, turned those expectations on 
     their head.
       Only a third of the youths in Southern California picked an 
     American identity the second time around, while almost half 
     identified themselves by their national identity, especially 
     youths of Mexican and Filipino descent, who belong to the two 
     largest immigrant groups in the United States.
       The researchers interpreted the change as part of a 
     backlash among these youth against what they perceived as 
     immigrant bashing that surfaced in the campaign for 
     Proposition 187.
       In South Florida the pattern was different, but equally 
     striking. The proportion identifying themselves by some kind 
     of American label dropped to about a third, while those who 
     chose ethnic identities such as Hispanic or black doubled to 
     38 percent, mainly among Latin Americans and Jamaicans.
       The more militant, nationalistic identities assumed by 
     Mexicans and Filipinos in California, and the minority-groups 
     identities chosen in Florida, reflected the youths' rising 
     awareness ``of the ethnic and racial categories in which they 
     were persistently classified by mainstream society, Rumbaut 
     wrote.
       In one of the more troubling findings of the study, the 
     young people who identified themselves by ethnic identities 
     like Chicano or Latino in junior high had lower grades and 
     somewhat higher dropout rates than the other children 
     studied. This finding lends support to analysts who have 
     suggested that children of immigrants who come to identify 
     with American minorities may take on ``oppositional'' 
     identities and see doing well in school as ``acting white.''

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