The Virtues of Linguistic Isolation

Study Shows Health Benefit for Immigrants By NINA BERNSTEIN.

...linguistic isolation helps protect them from the higher rates of obesity, asthma, and adolescent risk-taking that afflict native-born and Americanized children.

Though the report also cautions that the language barriers make it harder for children to get the health insurance and education they need, it finds that foreign-born children are healthier when they arrive in the United States than those of the same age who were born here.

In fact, the longer immigrant children stay in America, adopting the diet and lifestyle of their peers, the unhealthier they are likely to become, according to the report, a synthesis of several national studies by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a California philanthropy that studies the well-being of children...

Americans tend to think of adolescence as a developmental period when it is common to experiment and take risks, some researchers say. Among first-generation immigrant teenagers, 8 percent report using three or more controlled substances. That figure rises to 17 percent in the second generation and to a quarter of native-born white adolescents with native-born parents.

"We give adolescents great autonomy," Professor Harris said. "When immigrants come here, they come from cultures where adolescence is not defined that way. As they assimilate and incorporate the U.S. norms, their involvement in less healthy behaviors increases."

Of course, there is a downside.