With growth woes mounting in Southern Nevada, elected officials are scrambling to find money to pay for water and other pressing needs.

The available funding sources are gaming taxes, property taxes, mining taxes, sales taxes and impact fees on new construction. Raising one or all of them could be an option.

In Nevada, however, political realities restrict which taxes are likely to go up.

By 3:30 p.m. last Saturday, services had long since closed. The only scragglers remaining on pews and in hallways seemed to linger, albeit enthusiastically, without intent.

Walking up the main Hoover entrance, it struck me again how beautiful this old building looks. Seems straight out of Budapest or something. Maybe it was an old synagogue. Maybe I'm projecting.

Either way, arches line its multi-pronged openings, and the red brick definitely gives it an air of age. The stain glass window enhances the effect. Not what I would expect from a house of worship belonging to one of the newer branches of Christiantity.

But that's LA for you. Old buildings (well, old for a new city) host newcomers (and in LA, most are newcomers, anyway).

Several deacons waited for me. Earlier, I had set up these meetings with Adventist missionary Salvador Rolando Garcia, a Guatemalan who had grown up with the Adventist church.

Most of the deacons--Henemias Jaures and Jairo Morales, for example--had come from Central America. Most among those hailed from Gautemala. Many had been raised Adventist. Others had "found" the church.

"We like the lack of hierarchy," one said, explaining that this particular branch had 25 deacons and nearly as many female "diocanesas."

They said they related to the Old Testament view that Saturday should be a holy day. And they referred me to the works of one Adventist founder Ellen G. White, giving me the address of a bookstore in Glendale likely to suit my "researching" needs.

The gentleman also mapped out the various Adventist church in the area. I can't emphasize enough the fact that I'm happy to do a story in LA--where I can spend the time looking at things in person, up close and over a period of time on a repeat basis. But that's just me.

I also think I'll be taking their reading advice. Good to know about the beliefs held by those on whom you are reporting, right? I have no stance on the matter, but it boils down to this: I'm going to be exploring the demographic shifts from Catholicism to Evangelism within the Central American in Los Angeles.

- Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation by Alejandro Portes and and Ruben G. Rumbaut (University of California Press, 2001) 

Immigration, today, is beginning to look very different than it did a decade or so ago. The flow across the border is slowing and, as authors Portes and Rumbaut emphasised in their 2001 book Legacies, the "immigrant stock" is growing up American.

This presents an entirely new set of challenges for cities, like Los Angeles, that experienced the greatest immigrant influx in the 1990s and are now home to a swelling second generation population. Unlike their parents, these U.S.-born children have both the security of legal citizenship and the natural assimilation of the English language. But, the authors explain, social upward mobility -- the movement toward higher levels of educational attainment and financial status -- is not necessarily guaranteed. 

"Some of the ethnic groups being created by the new immigration are in a clearly upward path, moving into society's mainstream in record time and enriching it in the process with their culture and energies. Others, on the contrary, seem poised for a path of blocked aspirations and downward mobility, reproducing the plight of today's impoverished domestic minorities. The size of the problems of American cities may increase concomitantly, the only difference being that the participants may come from new ethnic quarters. Were this outcome to become dominant among the second generation, a new rainbow underclass would be the prospect facing urban America by the middle of the next century."

Portes and Rumbaut present 12 stories that illustrate the varying experiences of second generation immigrants in America, arguing that, in some cases, a "peculiar paradox" occurs. While a first generation immigrant is driven to seek a better life by escaping the hardship and struggle of his or her homeland, the incentive to succeed differs for the U.S.-born, second generation immigrant. In some cases, the authors state, "greater family economic achievement and security sometimes lead to lower aspirations among secure and acculturated children." By comparison, "legal insecurity and a precarious economic situation spur their ambition."

While comfort is not always necessarily an impediment to aspiration, and struggle not always an incentive for success, the second generation undoubtedly carries the burden of their parents' struggle to find a better life for themselves and their children.

In some cases, this added pressure can be overwhelming. At Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles, one ninth-grade student with Mexican parents says that his own goals are disputed by his parents who want him to aim higher and work harder in school. He is pushed to achieve high grades, he says, often suffering harsh penalties including physical beatings from his father. Portes and Rumbaut describe the pressure exerted by immigrant parents as a form of "psychological leverage." The children of immigrants are pushed to feel a "sense of obligation" to their parents for the struggles that were overcome in order to afford them life in the United States.

Yet, at the same time, these children also have their own struggles to contend with. In the case of this particular ninth-grader, he is not only a child of the second generation immigrant stock, but he is also trapped in a school system affected by poverty, crime and minimal resources. The opportunity to experience one-on-one learning in classes where his grades continue to slide, such as algebra, is nonexistent. Although his parents dealt with the struggles of traversing across the border, making a new life in a different country in the hope of ensuring security for their child, he now faces his own forms of confinement.

The barriers to social upward mobility still exist, but in a different form.   

In the worst case scenario, parental pressure mingled with the personal stresses of acculturation can lead to embarrassment and rebellion. Self-esteem may plummet, encouraging children to find solace in unsavory social locations, such as gangs, crime or drugs. The opportunities for generational discord are also widened, since the children of immigrants are essentially growing up in an entirely different culture from their parents.

Additionally, social upward mobility for the second generation and their immigrant parents is greatly impacted by political and cultural resistance from outside. As Portes and Rumbaut stress in their concluding chapter, "hostile governmental and societal reception" of immigrants and their children only serves to widen cultural divides, increasing the fear of and from the immigrant stock and their surroundings and impeding academic achievements and aspirations. The immigrant stock then becomes "more pre-occupied with issues of ethnic identity and reassertiveness than with the achievement of high goals through individual effort."

Negative stereotyping then becomes a form of "self-fulfilling prophesy." The new immigrant stock is kept at the bottom of the social ladder, and the progression of social upward mobility is significantly slowed, and perhaps even stunted. 

Now, Marta plans to be a first-generation college student and become a social worker. "I want to help students understand that education is important to make their future better than their parents," she said. "I'm really proud of myself for being on the honor roll. I thought that I would never come this far, to high school. I was thinking that I would be a failure."

Luis*, who sits opposite Marta in class, doesn't think that his education will continue beyond the high school exit exam. "My dad says that I'm not allowed to go to college," he says. "We can't afford it." Instead, Luis hopes to follow in his father's footsteps and become a custom car mechanic. Eventually, he'd also like to be a NASCAR driver. "I'd like to be able to go fast, without the cops chasing me," he says. During the summer, Luis works at his dad's shop, learning the custom car trade. But he has yet to get behind the wheel. First, his dad says, he's got to improve his grades. College may be out of the question, but graduating high school is essential.

How far does the apple fall from the tree?  

Children of immigrants, like Marta and Luis, are a growing population in California. Rather than being newcomers to the state, like their parents were, they are a "homegrown population." They are U.S.-born, and California-bred. Their lives and experiences differ from that of the traditional "immigrant."

"Immigration experts have a special term for homegrown children, calling them second generation residents," reads a report released this week by USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development. "Born in California, or the U.S., these children are U.S. citizens, fluent English speakers, and beneficiaries of California schools."

That being so, the report continues, "recent evidence suggests they are poised for much greater economic success than their parents."

But "economic success" inevitably depends on adequate education levels, and both Marta and Luis attend a school with a drop-out rate of 50 percent. The Los Angeles Unified School District at large, which has a student population made up of more than 75 percent Hispanic children, has been battling severe drop-out rates and low test scores for decades. District-wide, 32 percent of Hispanic children drop out of LAUSD high schools every year, compared to 21 percent across the entire state. And as these children move through the school system, their educational levels actually fall. In second grade, just 18 percent of Hispanic children are considered "below basic" in their English language skills. By tenth grade, that figure has jumped to 66 percent.

The lack of proficiency in vital subject areas like English and math is also significantly higher for students coming from economically disadvantaged households. Although the poverty rate for U.S.-born children and those with legal immigrant parents is practically the same, children of unauthorized immigrant parents are twice as likely to be living in poverty.      

*Names have been changed to protect the students and their families.