One of the most important questions facing America and the
Southwest is: Are Mexicans Italians?
Italians were the last
immigrant group to come to America under antagonism and suspicion.
Prejudice was palpable, discrimination widespread, intergroup
relations difficult. The Italians of 100 years ago, like the
Mexican immigrants today, had poor graduation rates, high dropout
rates, higher crime rates, fewer college graduates per capita and
fewer professionals. It seemed for a time that Italians would be a
permanent underclass of blue-collar workers.
But the Italians, while they took longer to succeed in the
traditional ways, took on the educational and success patterns of
the majority community, and now they equal or exceed the
performance of the majority community. They are among the proudest
Americans, with family income and professional status higher than
the national average. Took longer, but succeeded brilliantly. So,
are Mexicans Italians?
Samuel P. Huntington, who gave us the perceptive “The Clash of
Civilizations,” has a new book, “Who Are We?” It should be much
debated by those who care about America’s future.
Huntington states: “The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants
threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two
cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans
and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S.
culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic
enclaves – from Los Angeles to Miami – and rejecting the
Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United
States ignores this challenge at its peril.”
All American history is opposed to Huntington’s thesis and is on
the side of success of our new immigrants. America has been a
powerful assimilating machine, and every immigrant group has had
its doubting xenophobes and mean-spirited skeptics. I mean to be
neither. Hispanic Americans have fought and died for America in
impressive numbers and in proportion to their numbers have won more
Medals of Honor for bravery than any group in America.
But there are three big differences that distinguish current
immigration patterns, which in my opinion make non-assimilation an
equally likely scenario.
Distance: Previous generations of immigrants had to come a long way
and didn’t have much option to go home. They had to totally throw
themselves into becoming Americans. Today, many of our immigrants
can go back to their homes for a weekend. The pull to assimilate is
considerably less. With dual citizenship, they vote both for
president of Mexico and of the United States.
Diversity: The only way immigrants of the past could talk to their
neighbors and live their lives was to learn English and assimilate.
But no longer. Never in history has America accepted so
disproportionate a percentage of one nationality and language
group.
Today, more than 50 percent of our
immigrants are Spanish-speaking, and America is backing into
becoming a bilingual/bicultural country. I know of no
bilingual/bicultural country in the world that lives at peace with
itself.
Discontinuity: The history of American immigration shows times of
large immigration followed by periods of low immigration (war,
depression), which gives the new immigrants a chance to assimilate
and join our community. Today we take approximately 1 million legal
immigrants and have 9 million to 11 million illegal immigrants
residing here, with massive numbers of illegals being added year
after year. There is never the pause that assimilates. Will the
melting pot become a pressure cooker?
I am skeptical of mass immigration because I believe that America
should stabilize its population and move from growth to
sustainability. A related but equally imperative agenda is to
assimilate and acculturate our newcomers.
There is an orthodox liberalism that prevents us from honestly
debating these sensitive issues of race, language and culture. We
can’t solve problems that we don’t talk about.
We should honor diversity, but we must celebrate unity.
Richard D. Lamm is a former three-term governor of Colorado and now
a scholar at the University of Denver.
(This column originally ran April 23, 2004)
