LINDA THOM: Hispanic Maternal Poverty—Another Problem That Amnesty Won’t “Get Behind Us.”

From the CDC report: “Hispanic mothers (8.2% of Hispanic births) were more than twice as likely” as any other racial or ethnic group to be uninsured. Hispanic women of Central and South American origins were the most likely to be uninsured (13.3%).

For all Hispanic birth mothers, native-born and immigrant, 61% of births were funded by Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded means-tested, welfare program of health coverage for low income and poor people. Medicaid funded three-quarters of teen births and almost two-thirds (65.5%) of births to unmarried women. The CDC report adds: “Uninsured mothers were the most likely to have less than a high school education (44%).”

Almost half of immigrants to the US are Hispanic, mostly Mexicans and Central and South Americans. Unfortunately, they and their children and grandchildren represent a disproportionate number of unmarried parents, teen parents and uneducated parents.

They are poor and they continue to be poor, generation after generation. Amnesty will not fix this.

We know this from the birth data. . . . Here is the report for 2010—Births: Final Data for 2010, August 28, 2012. [PDF]

It shows that, in 2010, 3,999,386 women gave birth and of those 945,180 were Hispanic (23.6%). Of the 372,175 births to teens, one third (33.2%) were Hispanic. Of the 1,633,471 births to unmarried women, 504,411 (31%) were to Hispanic mothers. In 2010, 44% of Hispanic birth mothers were U.S.-born and 56% foreign-born.