Latino parents have lower levels of school involvement compared to other ethnic groups, which is often attributed-though not tested-to low English language proficiency. Using a population-based sample of 637 7th grade Latino youth attending an urban school district, we find no significant difference in maternal school involvement when mothers and students are either both fluent in English or both non-fluent. When students are more fluent than their mothers, however, maternal school involvement is significantly lower, suggesting that schools may need to take additional steps to encourage parental involvement when there is language dissonance between parents and their children.
Recently, there has been a surge of national attention toward the U.S.-Mexican border in South Texas, known as the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Despite the attention and potential impact, which the wall would directly have on the RGV community, there has been no systemic attention paid to the opinions of the RGV residents regarding the proposed wall and other related immigration policies. This article, therefore, aims to fill this gap by comparing immigration policy attitudes in the borderland communities to both the national Hispanic and the general national populations. By utilizing original data from an RGV public opinion survey we conducted in 2018, our analysis shows that RGV residents hold more lenient immigration attitudes than do both the national Hispanic and the general populations. We utilize logistic regression analysis to further our understanding of the correlates of these attitudes across different samples. Our findings provide important policy and political implications.