Are second-generation immigrants at more of a disadvantage than their parents were at surviving an economic downturn?

In Gustavo Arellano's "Postcard from the Recession," published March 11, in the Los Angeles Times, he tells the story of his Mexican-immigrant parents: a truck driver with a fourth-grade education and a tomato canner. They bought their own home and sent their children to school; Arellano earned a master's degree from UCLA. Yet Arellano, a contributing editor at the LA Times, feels like his parents are better equipped to deal with change for two reasons: circumstance and experience.

While his parents are 10 years from paying off their mortgage, Arellano says he can't afford to buy a home. And even though he and his peers are better educated than their parents, he thinks his generation is less adaptable. Arellano's father has worked numerous jobs, from construction work to an Alcoholics Anonymous counselor, and Arellano says he's ready and willing to learn another trade if he needs to.

So we're left with this fact: The immigrants of my parents' generation are better off than their educated American kids ... My parents came from a generation of nothing, an existence in which the sword of poverty dangled above families daily, teaching them to always prepare for the worst. My peers and I, spoiled on the Reagan-era notion of faith in money, stand at the edge of economic despair with few tools for coping ..."