Professor Schaff posts below a picture from the Mexican-American protesters in Southern California. I repost it here:
We received this reply to Professor Schaff's musings, from Audra Bonhorst:
Did Dr. Schaff look at the picture that he is saying is a lack of assimilation? I believe the point that the sign carriers are saying is that they are born Americans. As far as having signs proclaiming peoples heritage and foreign flags, has he not been around on St. Patrick's Day?
Well ... no. What the sign is obviously saying is that Southern California was once part of Mexico, and still rightfully belongs to her. These young people are in their homelands because they are Mexicans, not because they were born in the U.S. (though I suspect Bonhorst is right that many or most of them were). This interpretation is more than confirmed by the ubiquitous presence of Mexican flags at the rally, as well as by the infamous photo that I posted below, showing an upside down U.S. flag flying below a Mexican flag. Whatever that is, Ms. Bonhorst, it isn't pride in U.S. citizenship.
It seems obvious that the organizers of the rally are trying to provoke a hostile reaction in Washington and in California. They are trying to turn parts of the southern United States into our own version of Quebec. They suppose that a large demographic group, viscerally hostile to anglophone America, would be better positioned to extract concessions from the U.S. government. For reasons I mention in my earlier post, I think that would be a political disaster.
The developed world seems to be entering a period of immigrant militancy, as is very evident from Europe. The U.S. is in a much better position than Europe for the simple reason that we can offer the immigrant population something that Europe can't: jobs. But I say again that we need to do two things right now: 1) take steps to actually bring the border under control by dramatically increasing the border security forces and enacting real sanctions against businesses that hire undocumented workers; and 2) offering a real path to citizenship for those undocumented workers that are already here.
It was true not so long ago that Hispanic Americans were more likely to assimilate than others, more likely to marry outside their own ethnic group for example. My guess is that this is still true, but it makes little difference so long as the supply of illegal immigrants is constantly replenished. If the border can be brought under control, the children of today's marchers will gradually find English far more useful in their lives than Spanish.
Mexican Americans are a vital part of the Democratic coalition. But if Mexican nationalism is to be the dominate ideology of that population, the Democrats will sooner rather than later be forced to abandon them.
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