Liberty and Tyranny (17 page)

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that
9 percent of the population of Mexico
was living in the United States in 2004. Fifty-seven percent of all illegal immigrants are Mexican. Another 24 percent are from other Latin American countries. Fifty-five percent of all Mexicans in the United States are here illegally.
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By 2050, Hispanics will be between 29 percent and 32 percent of the nation’s population.
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Washington Post
columnist Robert J. Samuelson analyzed the Census Bureau’s annual statistical report on poverty and household income for 2006 and found, among other things, that “there were 36.5 million people in poverty. That’s the figure that translates into the 12.3 percent poverty rate. In 1990, the population was smaller, and there were 33.6 million people in poverty, a rate of 13.5 percent. The increase from 1990 to 2006 was 2.9 million people (36.5 million minus 33.6 million). Hispanics accounted for all of the gain.”
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Samuelson explained that “from 1990 to 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased 3.2 million, from 6 million to 9.2 million. Meanwhile, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty fell from 16.6 million (poverty rate: 8.8 percent) in 1990 to 16 million (8.2 percent) in 2006. Among blacks, there was a decline from 9.8 million in 1990 (poverty rate: 31.9 percent) to 9 million (24.3 percent) in 2006. White and black poverty has risen somewhat since 2000 but is down over longer periods.” He added, “Only an act of willful denial can separate immigration and poverty. The increase among Hispanics must be concentrated among immigrants, legal and illegal, as well as their American-born children. Yet, this story goes largely untold.”
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The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald points to another problem with the mass Hispanic migration to the United States—the “fertility surge” among unwed Hispanic women, particularly teenage girls. “Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country—over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women.” Moreover, “the rate of childbirth for Mexican teenagers, who come from by far the largest and fastest-growing immigration population, greatly outstrips every other group.”
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Education is another problem as immigrants bring different cultural attitudes and their sheer numbers overwhelm many school systems. In Mexico, a child is legally required to attend school up through the eighth grade. In part, this is why 32 percent of all illegal immigrants and 15 percent of legal immigrants have not completed the ninth grade. Only 2 percent of natives of the United States have not. Nearly 31 percent of adult immigrants do not have a high school diploma. Eight percent of United States natives do not.
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Local public school systems are struggling with the consequences of the federal government’s policies. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, one out of every five students in 2006 was Hispanic. Between 1990 and 2006, Hispanic students accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total increase in students attending public schools. And by 2050, Pew predicts that the Hispanic school-aged population will increase by 166 percent. Hispanic children are expected to make up the majority of public school students by 2050.
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The enormity of migration to the United States also discourages the use of English and encourages the establishment of ethnic enclaves. The 2007 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found that more than 55 million individuals in the United States speak a language other than English at home. Of these people, more than 34 million speak Spanish at home. More than 16 million of the Spanish-speaking individuals speak English “less than very well.”
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Furthermore, in 2000, 43 percent of Hispanics lived in neighborhoods with Hispanic majorities, up from 39 percent in 1990.
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Of course, the administrative state has prospered hugely from the immigration anarchy the Statist has unleashed. The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector writes that “historically, Hispanics in America have had very high levels of welfare use…. [In recent years], Hispanics were almost three times more likely to receive welfare than non-Hispanic whites. Putting together the greater probability of receiving welfare with the greater cost of welfare per family means that, on average, Hispanic families received four times more welfare per family than white non-Hispanics…. Welfare use can also be measured by immigration status. In general, immigrant households are about 50 percent more likely to use welfare than native-born households. Immigrants with less education are more likely to use welfare.”
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In 2008, a Manhattan Institute study, “Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States,” found that the current level of assimilation of all recent immigrant groups is lower than at any time during the first great migration early in the twentieth century. While some ethnic groups assimilated better than others, and for different reasons, Mexicans were the least assimilated overall and were assimilating at the slowest rate. Even those Mexicans who came to the United States as children (aged five and younger) show discouraging trends. They are more likely than other ethnic immigrant groups to be teen mothers or incarcerated: “Mexican adolescents are imprisoned at rates approximately 80 percent greater than immigrant adolescents generally.”
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Unlike past waves of migration to the United States, which had identifiable beginnings and ends, the current influx is not a wave but an ongoing tsunami that began more than forty years ago and, apart from temporary slowdowns resulting mostly from a cooling American economy and haphazard enforcement of immigration laws, is likely to continue in the decades ahead.

The citizenry was assured that the 1965 act would not produce what it in fact has now produced. Yet, there is no serious effort to repeal chain migration or even call a temporary halt to it. The Statist does not allow the nation time to try to absorb the aliens who are already here before encouraging more to follow. Federal and state laws and policies that grant de facto citizenship to illegal aliens—the lax enforcement of employer sanctions and the granting of driver’s licenses, in-state college tuition, hospital care, mortgages, and public education—send a signal to aliens around the world that America is not serious about immigration enforcement. And when numerous cities and towns designate themselves “sanctuary cities” and order their employees and local law enforcement officers not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the rule of law is flouted by public officials and illegal aliens alike. America has never experienced or tolerated anything like this.

Moreover, rather than Americanize aliens and use public and private institutions to inculcate them with the virtues of American culture, language, mores, history, traditions, and customs, the Statist is cultivating a
cultural relativism
in which the cultures from which the aliens fled are given equal accord with the American culture. But all cultures are not equal, as evidenced, in part, by the alien fleeing his own country for the American culture and the American citizen staying put. It is normal and healthy for ethnic groups to celebrate their diverse heritages—Columbus Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.—and they have since the nation’s founding. Most large cities have a Chinatown, Little Italy, and Germantown. In many of these ethnic neighborhoods, the “old language” is still spoken, especially among the older generations. But neither the heritage nor home language of the individual has ever competed with the American culture for dominance. The history of immigration in the United States up to now has been of assimilation.

In his 1796 Farewell Address to the nation, George Washington explained it this way:

For more than two centuries, individuals with diverse backgrounds have come together to form a national “melting pot” and harmonious society sustained by allegiance to the country and its founding principles. But today’s open-ended mass migration, coupled with the destructive influences of biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, and affirmative action, have combined to form the building blocks of a different kind of society—where aliens are taught to hold tightly to their former cultures and languages, balkanization grows, antagonism and conflict are aroused, and victimhood is claimed at perceived slights. If a nation does not show and teach respect for its own identity, principles, and institutions, that corrosive attitude is conveyed to the rest of the world, including newly arriving aliens. And if this is unchecked, the nation will ultimately cease to exist.

Dr. Samuel P. Huntington, who served as chairman of Harvard’s Government Department and its Academy for International and Area Studies, observed that “the persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages…. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.” He argued that “Mexican immigration differs from past immigration and most other contemporary immigration due to a combination of six factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration [in the Southwest], persistence, and historical presence.” The consequences, he believed, are stark: “Demographically, socially, and culturally, the
reconquista
[re-conquest] of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway.”
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The United States is already a bilingual nation. Government at all levels and a growing list of private concerns do business in both English and Spanish. And Spanish is the predominant language in communities throughout the country. This is a destructive condition. St. Augustine observed: “When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship.”
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Alexis de Tocqueville made the same point: “Language is perhaps the strongest, perhaps most enduring link which unites men.”
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How can the alien participate fully in American society if he does not share the language that binds citizen to citizen? How can he acquire better skills, pursue higher learning, or interact effectively in the marketplace if he does not speak English? How can he assess the benefit of entering into contracts or other legal arrangements if he cannot understand the terms and conditions to which he commits himself? And most important, how can the alien comprehend the nation’s founding principles and pledge allegiance to them if he cannot be sure of their intended meaning? Clearly neither the alien nor the civil society is the better.

Yet proponents of unrestricted immigration vilify those who attempt to promote a common language. Raul Yzaguirre, who for thirty years was president and CEO of the group National Council of La Raza, reportedly said that “U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.”
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Funded, in part, by the Ford Foundation and numerous other corporate and nonprofit contributions, La Raza—meaning “the race” in English—works tirelessly against the assimilation of legal Hispanic aliens into American society and for the continuation of illegal Hispanic migration into the country. Writing in
FrontPage Magazine,
John Perazzo disclosed that La Raza

views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation


favors racial and ethnic preferences for minorities in the workplace and in higher education


supports open borders and amnesty for all illegal aliens


supports the DREAM Act, which is designed to allow illegal aliens to attend college at the reduced tuition rates normally reserved for in-state legal residents


advocates “reform” that would give illegal aliens full access to taxpayer-funded health care services


characterizes any reduction in government assistance to illegal border-crossers as “a disgrace to American values”


supports access to driver’s licenses for illegal aliens


supports voting rights for illegal aliens


opposes the Aviation Transportation and Security Act requiring that all airport baggage screeners be U.S. citizens


opposes the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act, which would empower state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws


opposes the REAL ID Act, which requires that all driver’s license and photo ID applicants be able to verify they are legal residents of the United States, and that the documents they present to prove their identity are genuine.
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Despite this radical agenda, which has been consistently rejected by American voters, leaders of this movement are welcomed at the highest levels of power. Hillary Clinton appointed Yzaguirre as cochair of her presidential campaign and assigned him to lead her outreach to Hispanics. McCain was honored by his group in 1999. President Obama appointed Cecilia Muñoz, a senior vice president of La Raza, as director of his Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. There are a multitude of such groups and individuals welcome at the highest levels of the government, where they exert influence on public policy decisions. McCain also appointed an individual to the top ranks of his presidential campaign—Juan Hernandez, who was born in America but holds dual citizenship with Mexico—as his Hispanic outreach director. Hernandez once held the same position for Mexico’s former president, Vicente Fox. In 2001, Hernandez, speaking of Mexican-Americans, said that “I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’”
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