ABSTRACT
For at least the next 50 years, immigrants and their U.S.-born children will constitute more than half of both the Asian and Latino populations in this country (Edmonston & Passel, 1994). At the same time, Asians and Latinos are the two fastest growing U.S. populations due to immigration and births in immigrant families, especially among Chinese and Mexicans. By the year 2040, it is estimated that Asians and Latinos will together make up 28% of the total U.S. population (10% and 18%, respectively; Edmonston & Passel, 1994). The relative recency and size of the Asian and Latino populations means that for the next half century these two groups will be characterized by a constant process of sociocultural change as new immigrants and their children adapt to life in the United States. The direction and nature of this change will be influenced by the sociocultural ecology of the United States, which is itself being gradually transformed by the growing numbers of Asian and Latino immigrant families. Thus, unlike European immigrants who replaced their ethnic cultures with a Euro-American culture, Asians and Latinos, by virtue of their recency and size, are creating ecological niches in this society that provide more alternatives to sociocultural change than assimilation. Prolonged immigration will sustain sociocultural links to Asia and Latin America that will make these ecological niches binational in character. Consequently, biculturalism may replace assimilation as the preferred mode of sociocultural adaptation to the United States for Asians and Latinos.
