According to the Migration Policy Institute’s analysis of the 2010 Census, 15 percent of the immigrant population is between the ages of five and seventeen. Many immigrant children arrive speaking only their native language, or very limited English; many live in low-income areas and face the challenge of assimilation along with the many other issues families living in poverty have to deal with on a regular basis; many arrive in the United States having fled violence in their homelands.
Whether the Tsanaev brothers had difficulties integrating into American society as young immigrants is unknown. The brothers left a violent region for the United States; but the American public has yet to learn whether the violence in their homeland contributed to their wish to perpetrate violence on others.
While these question may remain unanswered, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco argues that the Tsarnaev case does highlight the issues many immigrant children face in the United States. Suárez-Orozco has has interviewed hundreds of immigrant children over the course of his career as an anthropologist. He is the dean of U.C.L.A.’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and co-author of “Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society.”