This paper uses data on earnings and education from the 1971 Current Population Survey to test three hypotheses of ethnic achievement and assimilation. The evidence does not support the hypothesis that differences among European ethnic groups have melted away during the three generatioons since the end of the second wave of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Statistically significant differences in both education and earnings persist. The differences in earnings have definitely been narrowing over time. However, the differences in earnings do not disappear when ethnic differences in education, location, age and marital status are taken into account. However, the differences that persist are not those that the melting pot hypothesis, or other theories, of social mobility, would predict. The second wave groups, the more recent arrivals from supposedly inferior cultures, in many cases have higher average earnings with and without adjusting for other factors than the first wave groups. Although differences in education and earnings persist among European ethnic groups, contrary to the melting pot hypothesis, these differences completely contradict theories that predict that later groups or Southern and Eastern European groups should do worse than earlier or Northern and Western European groups. (Author/JM)