As a more conservative adult, I take seriously Nicholas Lemann's thesis in The Promised Land (1991), that a less quiescent legislative review might have checked some of Johnson's hasty overachievements.
A final model, the "success orientation model" (Boyd and Grieco 1998) or the "immigrant optimism hypothesis" (Kao and Tienda 1995), also emphasizes progress of immigrant origin groups over successive generations; but, unlike the "linear assimilation" or the "ethnic segmentation" models, it stresses the relative overachievements of the second generation compared with the first- and the third-plus generations, particularly the third-plus majority population.
There might have been the overachievements of Italia 90 and of Euro 96 - memorable and inspiring but, alas, deceiving - but, overall, the past two generations have thrown up more underachievement than is comfortable.
