the hispanic challenge - university of minnesota · by samuel p. huntington edward keating/new york...

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.

By Samuel P. Huntington

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30 Foreign Policy

HispanicChallenge

The

Huddled masses: Mexican workers gather at theSmithfield hog plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, to cele-brate a saint’s feast day in June 2000. They were hiredto replace American workers who quit over low wages.

ASamuel P. Huntington is chairman of the Harvard Academy

for International and Area Studies and cofounder of For-eign Policy. Copyright © 2004 by Samuel P. Huntington.

From the forthcoming book Who Are We by Samuel P.

Huntington to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. N.Y.

Printed by permission.

reiterated by statesmen and espoused by the publicas an essential component of U.S. identity.

By the latter years of the 19th century, however,the ethnic component had been broadened to includeGermans, Irish, and Scandinavians, and the UnitedStates’ religious identity was being redefined morebroadly from Protestant to Christian. With WorldWar II and the assimilation of large numbers ofsouthern and eastern European immigrants andtheir offspring into U.S. society, ethnicity virtuallydisappeared as a defining component of nationalidentity. So did race, following the achievements ofthe civil rights movement and the Immigration andNationality Act of 1965. Americans now see andendorse their country as multiethnic and multiracial.As a result, American identity is now defined interms of culture and creed.

Most Americans see the creed as the crucial ele-ment of their national identity. The creed, however,was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant cul-ture of the founding settlers. Key elements of that cul-ture include the English language; Christianity; reli-

America was created by 17th- and18th-century settlers who were

overwhelmingly white, British, and Protestant. Their values,

institutions, and culture provided the foundationfor and shaped the development of the United Statesin the following centuries. They initially definedAmerica in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and reli-gion. Then, in the 18th century, they also had todefine America ideologically to justify independ-ence from their home country, which was also white,British, and Protestant. Thomas Jefferson set forththis “creed,” as Nobel Prize-winning economistGunnar Myrdal called it, in the Declaration of Inde-pendence, and ever since, its principles have been

March | April 2004 31

to black and white American natives. Americans liketo boast of their past success in assimilating millionsof immigrants into their society, culture, and politics.But Americans have tended to generalize about immi-grants without distinguishing among them and havefocused on the economic costs and benefits of immi-gration, ignoring its social and cultural consequences.As a result, they have overlooked the unique charac-teristics and problems posed by contemporary His-panic immigration. The extent and nature of thisimmigration differ fundamentally from those of pre-vious immigration, and the assimilation successes ofthe past are unlikely to be duplicated with the con-temporary flood of immigrants from Latin America.This reality poses a fundamental question: Will theUnited States remain a country with a single nationallanguage and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? Byignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to theireventual transformation into two peoples with twocultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages(English and Spanish).

The impact of Mexican immigration on theUnited States becomes evident when one imagineswhat would happen if Mexican immigrationabruptly stopped. The annual flow of legal immi-grants would drop by about 175,000, closer tothe level recommended by the 1990s Commissionon Immigration Reform chaired by former U.S.Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Illegal entrieswould diminish dramatically. The wages of low-income U.S. citizens would improve. Debates overthe use of Spanish and whether English should be

made the official language of stateand national governments wouldsubside. Bilingual education andthe controversies it spawns wouldvirtually disappear, as would con-troversies over welfare and otherbenefits for immigrants. Thedebate over whether immigrantspose an economic burden on stateand federal governments would be

decisively resolved in the negative. The averageeducation and skills of the immigrants continuingto arrive would reach their highest levels in U.S. his-tory. The inflow of immigrants would again becomehighly diverse, creating increased incentives for allimmigrants to learn English and absorb U.S. cul-ture. And most important of all, the possibility ofa de facto split between a predominantly Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking

32 Foreign Policy

[ The Hispanic Challenge ]

gious commitment; English concepts of the rule oflaw, including the responsibility of rulers and therights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant val-ues of individualism, the work ethic, and the beliefthat humans have the ability and the duty to try tocreate a heaven on earth, a “city on a hill.” Histori-cally, millions of immigrants were attracted to theUnited States because of this culture and the economicopportunities and political liberties it made possible.

Contributions from immigrant cultures modifiedand enriched the Anglo-Protestant culture of the found-ing settlers. The essentials of that founding cultureremained the bedrock of U.S. identity, however, atleast until the last decades of the 20th century. Wouldthe United States be the country that it has been andthat it largely remains today if it had been settled in the17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestantsbut by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? Theanswer is clearly no. It would not be the United States;it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.

In the final decades of the 20th century, however,the United States’ Anglo-Protestant culture and thecreed that it produced came under assault by the pop-ularity in intellectual and political circles of the doc-trines of multiculturalism and diversity; the rise ofgroup identities based on race, ethnicity, and genderover national identity; the impact of transnational cul-tural diasporas; the expanding number of immi-grants with dual nationalities and dual loyalties; andthe growing salience for U.S. intellectual, business,and political elites of cosmopolitan and transna-tional identities. The United States’ national identity,

like that of other nation-states, is challenged by theforces of globalization as well as the needs that glob-alization produces among people for smaller andmore meaningful “blood and belief” identities.

In this new era, the single most immediate andmost serious challenge to America’s traditional iden-tity comes from the immense and continuing immi-gration from Latin America, especially from Mexico,and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared

The cultural division between Hispanics and Anglos

could replace the racial division between blacks and

whites as the most serious cleavage in U.S. society.


United States would disappear, and with it, a majorpotential threat to the country’s cultural and polit-ical integrity.

A W O R L D O F D I F F E R E N C E

Contemporary Mexican and, more broadly, LatinAmerican immigration is without precedent in U.S.history. The experience and lessons of past immi-gration have little relevance to understanding itsdynamics and consequences. Mexican immigrationdiffers from past immigration and most other con-temporary immigration due to a combination of sixfactors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concen-tration, persistence, and historical presence.

Contiguity | Americans’ idea of immigration isoften symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, EllisIsland, and, more recently perhaps, New York’sJohn F. Kennedy Airport. In other words, immi-grants arrive in the United States after crossing sev-eral thousand miles of ocean. U.S. attitudes towardimmigrants and U.S. immigration policies areshaped by such images. These assumptions andpolicies, however, have little or no relevance forMexican immigration. The United States is nowconfronted by a massive influx of people from apoor, contiguous country with more than one thirdthe population of the United States. They comeacross a 2,000-mile border historically marked sim-ply by a line in the ground and a shallow river.

This situation is unique for the United Statesand the world. No other First World country hassuch an extensive land frontier with a Third Worldcountry. The significance of the long Mexican-U.S.border is enhanced by the economic differencesbetween the two countries. “The income gapbetween the United States and Mexico,” StanfordUniversity historian David Kennedy has pointedout, “is the largest between any two contiguouscountries in the world.” Contiguity enables Mexicanimmigrants to remain in intimate contact with theirfamilies, friends, and home localities in Mexico as noother immigrants have been able to do.

Scale | The causes of Mexican, as well as other,immigration are found in the demographic, eco-nomic, and political dynamics of the sending coun-try and the economic, political, and social attractionsof the United States. Contiguity, however, obvious-ly encourages immigration. Mexican immigrationincreased steadily after 1965. About 640,000 Mexi-cans legally migrated to the United States in the1970s; 1,656,000 in the 1980s; and 2,249,000 in the1990s. In those three decades, Mexicans account-ed for 14 percent, 23 percent, and 25 percent of totallegal immigration. These percentages do not equalthe rates of immigrants who came from Irelandbetween 1820 and 1860, or from Germany in the1850s and 1860s. Yet they are high compared to thehighly dispersed sources of immigrants before WorldWar I, and compared to other contemporary immi-

34 Foreign Policy

grants. To them one must also add the huge num-bers of Mexicans who each year enter the UnitedStates illegally. Since the 1960s, the numbers offoreign-born people in the United States haveexpanded immensely, with Asians and Latin Amer-icans replacing Europeans and Canadians, anddiversity of source dramatically giving way to thedominance of one source: Mexico. [See chart onpage 33.] Mexican immigrants constituted 27.6percent of the total foreign-born U.S. population in2000. The next largest contingents, Chinese and Fil-ipinos, amounted to only 4.9 percent and 4.3 per-cent of the foreign-born population.

In the 1990s, Mexicans composedmore than half of the new Latin Americanimmigrants to the United States and, by2000, Hispanics totaled about one half ofall migrants entering the continental Unit-ed States. Hispanics composed 12 per-cent of the total U.S. population in 2000.This group increased by almost 10 percentfrom 2000 to 2002 and has now becomelarger than blacks. It is estimated His-panics may constitute up to 25 percent ofthe U.S. population by 2050. Thesechanges are driven not just by immigra-tion but also by fertility. In 2002, fertili-ty rates in the United States were esti-mated at 1.8 for non-Hispanic whites,2.1 for blacks, and 3.0 for Hispanics.“This is the characteristic shape of devel-oping countries,” The Economist com-mented in 2002. “As the bulge of Latinosenters peak child-bearing age in a decadeor two, the Latino share of America’spopulation will soar.”

In the mid-19th century, English speak-ers from the British Isles dominated immi-gration into the United States. The pre-WorldWar I immigration was highly diversifiedlinguistically, including many speakers ofItalian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, English,German, Swedish, and other languages. Butnow, for the first time in U.S. history, half ofthose entering the United States speak a sin-gle non-English language.

Illegality | Illegal entry into the UnitedStates is overwhelmingly a post-1965 andMexican phenomenon. For almost a cen-tury after the adoption of the U.S. Consti-

tution, no national laws restricted or prohibitedimmigration, and only a few states imposed modestlimits. During the following 90 years, illegal immi-gration was minimal and easily controlled. The1965 immigration law, the increased availability oftransportation, and the intensified forces promotingMexican emigration drastically changed this situa-tion. Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol rosefrom 1.6 million in the 1960s to 8.3 million in the1970s, 11.9 million in the 1980s, and 14.7 millionin the 1990s. Estimates of the Mexicans who suc-cessfully enter illegally each year range from 105,000(according to a binational Mexican-American com-

A house divided? Lorenzo and Angelica Alvarez watch a Gore-Bush presidentialdebate in October 2000 with their three children in their home on the outskirts of ElPaso, Texas. At the time, they remained undecided on which candidate to support.

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mission) to 350,000 during the 1990s (according tothe U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service).

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Actcontained provisions to legalize the status of existingillegal immigrants and to reduce future illegal immi-gration through employer sanctions and other means.The former goal was achieved: Some 3.1 million ille-gal immigrants, about 90 percent of them from Mex-ico, became legal “green card” residents of the Unit-ed States. But the latter goal remains elusive. Estimatesof the total number of illegal immigrants in the Unit-ed States rose from 4 million in 1995 to 6 million in1998, to 7 million in 2000, and to between 8 and 10million by 2003. Mexicans accounted for 58 percentof the total illegal population in the United States in1990; by 2000, an estimated 4.8 million illegal Mex-icans made up 69 percent of thatpopulation. In 2000, illegal Mexi-cans in the United States were 25times as numerous as the next largestcontingent, from El Salvador.

Regional Concentration | The U.S.Founding Fathers considered the dis-persion of immigrants essential totheir assimilation. That has been thepattern historically and continues to be the pattern formost contemporary non-Hispanic immigrants. His-panics, however, have tended to concentrate region-ally: Mexicans in Southern California, Cubans inMiami, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans (the last ofwhom are not technically immigrants) in New York.The more concentrated immigrants become, the slow-er and less complete is their assimilation.

In the 1990s, the proportions of Hispanics con-tinued to grow in these regions of heaviest concen-tration. At the same time, Mexicans and other His-panics were also establishing beachheads elsewhere.While the absolute numbers are often small, thestates with the largest percentage increases in His-panic population between 1990 and 2000 were, indecreasing order: North Carolina (449 percentincrease), Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, South Car-olina, Nevada, and Alabama (222 percent). His-panics have also established concentrations in indi-vidual cities and towns throughout the United States.For example, in 2003, more than 40 percent of thepopulation of Hartford, Connecticut, was Hispan-ic (primarily Puerto Rican), outnumbering the city’s38 percent black population. “Hartford,” the city’sfirst Hispanic mayor proclaimed, “has become a

Latin city, so to speak. It’s a sign of things to come,”with Spanish increasingly used as the language ofcommerce and government.

The biggest concentrations of Hispanics, however,are in the Southwest, particularly California. In 2000,nearly two thirds of Mexican immigrants lived in theWest, and nearly half in California. To be sure, the LosAngeles area has immigrants from many countries,including Korea and Vietnam. The sources of Cali-fornia’s foreign-born population, however, differsharply from those of the rest of the country, withthose from a single country, Mexico, exceeding totalsfor all of the immigrants from Europe and Asia. In LosAngeles, Hispanics—overwhelmingly Mexican—faroutnumber other groups. In 2000, 64 percent of theHispanics in Los Angeles were of Mexican origin, and

46.5 percent of Los Angeles residents were Hispan-ic, while 29.7 percent were non-Hispanic whites. By2010, it is estimated that Hispanics will make upmore than half of the Los Angeles population.

Most immigrant groups have higher fertility ratesthan natives, and hence the impact of immigration isfelt heavily in schools. The highly diversified immi-gration into New York, for example, creates theproblem of teachers dealing with classes containingstudents who may speak 20 different languages athome. In contrast, Hispanic children make up sub-stantial majorities of the students in the schools inmany Southwestern cities. “No school system in amajor U.S. city,” political scientists Katrina Burgessand Abraham Lowenthal said of Los Angeles in their1993 study of Mexico-California ties, “has everexperienced such a large influx of students from a sin-gle foreign country. The schools of Los Angeles arebecoming Mexican.” By 2002, more than 70 percentof the students in the Los Angeles Unified School Dis-trict were Hispanic, predominantly Mexican, with theproportion increasing steadily; 10 percent of school-children were non-Hispanic whites. In 2003, for thefirst time since the 1850s, a majority of newborn chil-dren in California were Hispanic.

There is no “Americano dream.” There is only

the American dream created by an

Anglo-Protestant society.

36 Foreign Policy


Persistence | Previous waves of immigrants eventual-ly subsided, the proportions coming from individualcountries fluctuated greatly, and, after 1924, immi-gration was reduced to a trickle. In contrast, the cur-rent wave shows no sign of ebbing and the conditionscreating the large Mexicancomponent of that wave arelikely to endure, absent amajor war or recession. Inthe long term, Mexicanimmigration could declinewhen the economic well-being of Mexico approxi-mates that of the UnitedStates. As of 2002, however,U.S. gross domestic productper capita was about fourtimes that of Mexico (in pur-chasing power parity terms).If that difference were cut inhalf, the economic incentivesfor migration might alsodrop substantially. To reachthat ratio in any meaningful future, however, wouldrequire extremely rapid economic growth in Mexico,at a rate greatly exceeding that of the United States. Yet,even such dramatic economic development would notnecessarily reduce the impulse to emigrate. Duringthe 19th century, when Europe was rapidly industri-alizing and per capita incomes were rising, 50 millionEuropeans emigrated to the Americas, Asia, and Africa.

Historical Presence | No other immigrant group in U.S.history has asserted or could assert a historical claimto U.S. territory. Mexicans and Mexican Americanscan and do make that claim. Almost all of Texas,New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utahwas part of Mexico until Mexico lost them as a resultof the Texan War of Independence in 1835-1836 andthe Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Mexico isthe only country that the United States has invaded,occupied its capital—placing the Marines in the “hallsof Montezuma”—and then annexed half its territory.Mexicans do not forget these events. Quite under-standably, they feel that they have special rights in theseterritories. “Unlike other immigrants,” Boston Collegepolitical scientist Peter Skerry notes, “Mexicans arrivehere from a neighboring nation that has suffered mil-itary defeat at the hands of the United States; andthey settle predominantly in a region that was once partof their homeland…. Mexican Americans enjoy a

sense of being on their own turf that is not shared byother immigrants.”

At times, scholars have suggested that the South-west could become the United States’ Quebec. Bothregions include Catholic people and were conquered

by Anglo-Protestant peo-ples, but otherwise theyhave little in common. Que-bec is 3,000 miles fromFrance, and each year sev-eral hundred thousandFrenchmen do not attemptto enter Quebec legally orillegally. History shows thatserious potential for conflictexists when people in onecountry begin referring toterritory in a neighboringcountry in proprietary termsand to assert special rightsand claims to that territory.

SPANGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

In the past, immigrants originated overseas and oftenovercame severe obstacles and hardships to reach theUnited States. They came from many different coun-tries, spoke different languages, and came legally.Their flow fluctuated over time, with significantreductions occurring as a result of the Civil War,World War I, and the restrictive legislation of 1924.They dispersed into many enclaves in rural areas andmajor cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest.They had no historical claim to any U.S. territory.

On all these dimensions, Mexican immigration isfundamentally different. These differences combine tomake the assimilation of Mexicans into U.S. cultureand society much more difficult than it was for pre-vious immigrants. Particularly striking in contrast toprevious immigrants is the failure of third- and fourth-generation people of Mexican origin to approximateU.S. norms in education, economic status, and inter-marriage rates. [See charts on opposite page.]

The size, persistence, and concentration of His-panic immigration tends to perpetuate the use ofSpanish through successive generations. The evi-dence on English acquisition and Spanish retentionamong immigrants is limited and ambiguous. In2000, however, more than 28 million people in theUnited States spoke Spanish at home (10.5 percentof all people over age five), and almost 13.8 million

A case of mistaken identity? A street vendor peddles T-shirts and nationalism during Cinco de Mayo festivi-ties in Los Angeles in 2001.

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of these spoke English worse than “very well,” a 66percent increase since 1990. According to a U.S.Census Bureau report, in 1990 about 95 percent ofMexican-born immigrants spoke Spanish at home;73.6 percent of these did not speak English verywell; and 43 percent of the Mexican foreign-bornwere “linguistically isolated.” An earlier study in LosAngeles found different results for the U.S.-bornsecond generation. Just 11.6 percent spoke only

Spanish or more Spanish than English, 25.6 percentspoke both languages equally, 32.7 percent moreEnglish than Spanish, and 30.1 percent only English.In the same study, more than 90 percent of the U.S.-born people of Mexican origin spoke English flu-ently. Nonetheless, in 1999, some 753,505 presum-ably second-generation students in SouthernCalifornia schools who spoke Spanish at home werenot proficient in English.

38 Foreign Policy


English language use and fluency for first- andsecond-generation Mexicans thus seem to follow thepattern common to past immigrants. Two questionsremain, however. First, have changes occurred overtime in the acquisition of English and the retentionof Spanish by second-generation Mexican immi-

grants? One might suppose that, with the rapidexpansion of the Mexican immigrant community,people of Mexican origin would have less incentiveto become fluent in and to use English in 2000 thanthey had in 1970. Second, will the third generationfollow the classic pattern with fluency in Englishand little or no knowledge of Spanish, or will itretain the second generation’s fluency in both lan-guages? Second-generation immigrants often lookdown on and reject their ancestral language and areembarrassed by their parents’ inability to communi-cate in English. Presumably, whether second-gener-ation Mexicans share this attitude will help shape theextent to which the third generation retains anyknowledge of Spanish. If the second generation doesnot reject Spanish outright, the third generation is alsolikely to be bilingual, and fluency in both languagesis likely to become institutionalized in the Mexican-American community.

Spanish retention is also bolstered by the over-whelming majorities (between 66 percent and 85percent) of Mexican immigrants and Hispanicswho emphasize the need for their children to be flu-ent in Spanish. These attitudes contrast with thoseof other immigrant groups. The New Jersey-basedEducational Testing Service finds “a cultural dif-ference between the Asian and Hispanic parentswith respect to having their children maintain theirnative language.” In part, this difference undoubt-edly stems from the size of Hispanic communities,which creates incentives for fluency in the ancestrallanguage. Although second- and third-generationMexican Americans and other Hispanics acquirecompetence in English, they also appear to deviatefrom the usual pattern by maintaining their com-

petence in Spanish. Second- or third-generationMexican Americans who were brought up speak-ing only English have learned Spanish as adults andare encouraging their children to become fluent init. Spanish-language competence, University ofNew Mexico professor F. Chris Garcia has stated,

is “the one thing every Hispanictakes pride in, wants to protectand promote.”

A persuasive case can be madethat, in a shrinking world, all Amer-icans should know at least one impor-tant foreign language—Chinese,Japanese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic,Urdu, French, German, or Spanish—so as to understand a foreign culture

and communicate with its people. It is quite differentto argue that Americans should know a non-Englishlanguage in order to communicate with their fellow cit-izens. Yet that is what the Spanish-language advocateshave in mind. Strengthened by the growth of Hispan-ic numbers and influence, Hispanic leaders are active-ly seeking to transform the United States into a bilin-gual society. “English is not enough,” argues OsvaldoSoto, president of the Spanish American League AgainstDiscrimination. “We don’t want a monolingual socie-ty.” Similarly, Duke University literature professor (andChilean immigrant) Ariel Dorfman asks, “Will thiscountry speak two languages or merely one?”And hisanswer, of course, is that it should speak two.

Hispanic organizations play a central role ininducing the U.S. Congress to authorize culturalmaintenance programs in bilingual education; as aresult, children are slow to join mainstream classes.The continuing huge inflow of migrants makes itincreasingly possible for Spanish speakers in NewYork, Miami, and Los Angeles to live normal liveswithout knowing English. Sixty-five percent of thechildren in bilingual education in New York areSpanish speakers and hence have little incentive orneed to use English in school.

Dual-language programs, which go one step beyondbilingual education, have become increasingly popular.In these programs, students are taught in both Englishand Spanish on an alternating basis with a view to mak-ing English-speakers fluent in Spanish and Spanish-speakers fluent in English, thus making Spanish theequal of English and transforming the United States intoa two-language country. Then U.S. Secretary of Edu-cation Richard Riley explicitly endorsed these pro-grams in his March 2000 speech, “Excelencia para

One index foretells the future: In 1998, “José”

replaced “Michael” as the most popular name for

newborn boys in both California and Texas.


Todos—Excellence for all.” Civil rights organizations,church leaders (particularly Catholic ones), and manypoliticians (Republican as well as Democrat) supportthe impetus toward bilingualism.

Perhaps equally important, business groups seek-ing to corner the Hispanic market support bilin-gualism as well. Indeed, the orientation of U.S. busi-nesses to Hispanic customers means they increasinglyneed bilingual employees; therefore, bilingualism isaffecting earnings. Bilingual police officers and fire-fighters in southwestern cities such as Phoenix andLas Vegas are paid more than those who only speakEnglish. In Miami, one study found, families thatspoke only Spanish had average incomes of $18,000;English-only families had average incomes of$32,000; and bilingual families averaged more than$50,000. For the first time in U.S. history, increasingnumbers of Americans (particularly black Ameri-cans) will not be able to receive the jobs or the pay

they would otherwise receive because they can speakto their fellow citizens only in English.

In the debates over language policy, the lateCalifornia Republican Senator S.I. Hayakawa oncehighlighted the unique role of Hispanics in oppos-ing English. “Why is it that no Filipinos, no Kore-ans object to making English the official language?No Japanese have done so. And certainly not theVietnamese, who are so damn happy to be here.They’re learning English as fast as they can andwinning spelling bees all across the country. But theHispanics alone have maintained there is a prob-lem. There [has been] considerable movement tomake Spanish the second official language.”

If the spread of Spanish as the United States’second language continues, it could, in due course,have significant consequences in politics and gov-ernment. In many states, those aspiring to politicaloffice might have to be fluent in both languages.

The special social andcultural problemsposed by Mexican

immigration to the United Stateshave received little public atten-tion or meaningful discussion.But many academic sociologistsand other scholars have warnedof them for years.

In 1983, the distinguishedsociologist Morris Janowitzpointed to the “strong resist-ance to acculturation amongSpanish-speaking residents” inthe United States, and arguedthat “Mexicans are unique asan immigrant group in thepersistent strength of theircommunal bonds.” As aresult, “Mexicans, togetherwith other Spanish-speakingpopulations, are creating abifurcation in the social-politicalstructure of the United Statesthat approximates nationali-ty divisions….”

Other scholars have reiter-ated these warnings, emphasiz-ing how the size, persistence,and regional concentration ofMexican immigration obstructassimilation. In 1997, sociolo-gists Richard Alba and VictorNee pointed out that the four-decade interruption of large-scale immigration after 1924“virtually guaranteed that eth-nic communities and cultureswould be steadily weakenedover time.” In contrast, continu-ation of the current high levelsof Latin American immigration“will create a fundamentally dif-ferent ethnic context from thatfaced by the descendants ofEuropean immigrants, for thenew ethnic communities arehighly likely to remain large,culturally vibrant, and institu-tionally rich.” Under currentconditions, sociologist DouglasMassey agrees, “the character of

ethnicity will be determined rela-tively more by immigrants andrelatively less by later genera-tions, shifting the balance ofethnic identity toward the lan-guage, culture, and ways of lifeof the sending society.”

“A constant influx of newarrivals,” demographers BarryEdmonston and Jeffrey Passelcontend, “especially in pre-dominantly immigrant neigh-borhoods, keeps the languagealive among immigrants andtheir children.” Finally, Ameri-can Enterprise Institute scholarMark Falcoff also observes thatbecause “the Spanish-speakingpopulation is being continuallyreplenished by newcomersfaster than that population isbeing assimilated,” the wide-spread use of Spanish in theUnited States “is a reality thatcannot be changed, even overthe longer term.” —S.P.H.

Early Warnings

40 Foreign Policy


Bilingual candidates for president and elected fed-eral positions would have an advantage over Eng-lish-only speakers. If dual-language educationbecomes prevalent in elementary and secondaryschools, teachers will increasingly be expected to bebilingual. Government documents and forms couldroutinely be published in both languages. The useof both languages could become acceptable in con-gressional hearings and debates and in the gener-al conduct of governmentbusiness. Because most ofthose whose first lan-guage is Spanish will alsoprobably have some flu-ency in English, Englishspeakers lacking fluencyin Spanish are likely tobe and feel at a disad-vantage in the competi-tion for jobs, promotions,and contracts. [See side-bar on opposite page.]

In 1917, former U.S.President Theodore Roo-sevelt said: “We musthave but one flag. Wemust also have but onelanguage. That must bethe language of the Dec-laration of Independence,of Washington’s Farewelladdress, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and secondinaugural.” By contrast, in June 2000, U.S. presi-dent Bill Clinton said, “I hope very much that I’mthe last president in American history who can’tspeak Spanish.” And in May 2001, President Bushcelebrated Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo national hol-iday by inaugurating the practice of broadcastingthe weekly presidential radio address to the Amer-ican people in both English and Spanish. In Sep-tember 2003, one of the first debates among theDemocratic Party’s presidential candidates alsotook place in both English and Spanish. Despite theopposition of large majorities of Americans, Span-ish is joining the language of Washington, Jeffer-son, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and the Kennedys asthe language of the United States. If this trend con-tinues, the cultural division between Hispanics andAnglos could replace the racial division betweenblacks and whites as the most serious cleavage inU.S. society.

B L O O D I S T H I C K E R T H A N B O R D E R S

Massive Hispanic immigration affects the United Statesin two significant ways: Important portions of thecountry become predominantly Hispanic in languageand culture, and the nation as a whole becomes bilin-gual and bicultural. The most important area whereHispanization is proceeding rapidly is, of course, theSouthwest. As historian Kennedy argues, MexicanAmericans in the Southwest will soon have “suffi-

cient coherence and criticalmass in a defined regionso that, if they choose, theycan preserve their distinc-tive culture indefinitely.They could also eventual-ly undertake to do whatno previous immigrantgroup could have dreamedof doing: challenge theexisting cultural, political,legal, commercial, andeducational systems tochange fundamentally notonly the language but alsothe very institutions inwhich they do business.”

Anecdotal evidence ofsuch challenges abounds.In 1994, Mexican Ameri-cans vigorously demon-strated against California’s

Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits tochildren of illegal immigrants—by marching throughthe streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexicanflags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998,at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Ange-les, Mexican Americans booed the U.S. nationalanthem and assaulted U.S. players. Such dramaticrejections of the United States and assertions of Mex-ican identity are not limited to an extremist minori-ty in the Mexican-American community. Many Mex-ican immigrants and their offspring simply do notappear to identify primarily with the United States.

Empirical evidence confirms such appearances.A 1992 study of children of immigrants in SouthernCalifornia and South Florida posed the followingquestion: “How do you identify, that is, what do youcall yourself?” None of the children born in Mexi-co answered “American,” compared with 1.9 per-cent to 9.3 percent of those born elsewhere in LatinAmerica or the Caribbean. The largest percentage of

The natives are restless: Members of the California Coalitionfor Immigration Reform protest the arrival of MexicanPresident Vicente Fox to California in March 2001. Fox hadcalled for looser restrictions on immigration betweenMexico and the United States.

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In the 1993 film FallingDown, Michael Douglasplays a white former

defense company employeereacting to the humiliations thathe sees imposed on him by amulticultural society. “From theget-go,” wrote David Gates inNewsweek, “the film pits Dou-glas—the picture of obsolescentrectitude with his white shirt,tie, specs, and astronaut hair-cut—against a rainbow coali-tion of Angelenos. It’s a cartoonvision of the beleaguered whitemale in multicultural America.”

A plausible reaction to thedemographic changes underwayin the United States could be therise of an anti-Hispanic, anti-black, and anti-immigrant move-ment composed largely of white,working- and middle-class males,protesting their job losses toimmigrants and foreign coun-tries, the perversion of their cul-ture, and the displacement oftheir language. Such a movementcan be labeled “white nativism.”

“Cultured, intelligent, andoften possessing impressivedegrees from some of America’spremier colleges and universities,this new breed of white racialadvocate is a far cry from thepopulist politicians and hoodedKlansmen of the Old South,”writes Carol Swain in her 2002book, The New White National-ism in America. These new whitenationalists do not advocatewhite racial supremacy butbelieve in racial self-preservationand affirm that culture is a prod-uct of race. They contend thatthe shifting U.S. demographics

foretell the replacement of whiteculture by black or brown cul-tures that are intellectually andmorally inferior.

Changes in the U.S. racialbalance underlie these concerns.Non-Hispanic whites droppedfrom 75.6 percent of the popu-lation in 1990 to 69.1 percent in2000. In California—as inHawaii, New Mexico, and theDistrict of Columbia—non-His-panic whites are now a minor-ity. Demographers predict that,by 2040, non-Hispanic whitescould be a minority of all Ameri-cans. Moreover, for severaldecades, interest groups andgovernment elites have pro-moted racial preferences andaffirmative action, which favorblacks and nonwhite immi-grants. Meanwhile, pro-global-ization policies have shifted jobsoutside the United States, aggra-vated income inequality, andpromoted declining real wagesfor working-class Americans.

Actual and perceived lossesin power and status by anysocial, ethnic, racial, or economicgroup almost always produceefforts to reverse those losses. In1961, the population of Bosniaand Herzegovina was 43 percentSerb and 26 percent Muslim. In1991, it was 31 percent Serb and44 percent Muslim. The Serbsreacted with ethnic cleansing. In1990, the population of Califor-nia was 57 percent non-Hispan-ic white and 26 percent Hispan-ic. By 2040, it is predicted to be31 percent non-Hispanic whiteand 48 percent Hispanic. Thechance that California whites

will react like Bosnian Serbs isabout zero. The chance that theywill not react at all is also aboutzero. Indeed, they already havereacted by approving initiativesagainst benefits for illegal immi-grants, affirmative action, andbilingual education, as well asby the movement of whites outof the state. As more Hispanicsbecome citizens and politicallyactive, white groups are likely tolook for other ways of protectingthemselves.

Industrialization in the late19th century produced losses forU.S. farmers and led to agrarianprotest groups, including thePopulist movement, the Grange,the Nonpartisan League, andthe American Farm Bureau Fed-eration. Today, white nativistscould well ask: If blacks andHispanics organize and lobbyfor special privileges, why notwhites? If the National Associa-tion for the Advancement ofColored People and the Nation-al Council of La Raza are legit-imate organizations, why not anational organization promot-ing white interests?

White nationalism is “thenext logical stage for identitypolitics in America,” arguesSwain, making the UnitedStates “increasingly at risk oflarge-scale racial conflictunprecedented in our nation’shistory.” The most powerfulstimulus to such white nativismwill be the cultural and linguis-tic threats whites see from theexpanding power of Hispanicsin U.S. society.

—S.P.H.

The Threat of White Nativism?

42 Foreign Policy


Mexican-born children (41.2 percent) identifiedthemselves as “Hispanic,” and the second largest(36.2 percent) chose “Mexican.” Among Mexican-American children born in the United States, lessthan 4 percent responded “American,” compared to28.5 percent to 50 percent of those born in theUnited States with parents from elsewhere in LatinAmerica. Whether born in Mexico or in the UnitedStates, Mexican children overwhelmingly did notchoose “American” as their primary identification.

Demographically, socially, and culturally, the recon-quista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States byMexican immigrants is well underway. A meaningfulmove to reunite these territories with Mexico seemsunlikely, but Prof. Charles Truxillo of the Universityof New Mexico predicts that by 2080 the southwest-ern states of the United States and the northern statesof Mexico will form La República del Norte (TheRepublic of the North). Various writers have referredto the southwestern United States plus northern Mex-ico as “MexAmerica” or “Amexica” or “Mexifornia.”“We are all Mexicans in this valley,” a former coun-ty commissioner of El Paso, Texas, declared in 2001.

This trend could consolidate the Mexican-dominantareas of the United States into an autonomous, cul-turally and linguistically distinct, and economicallyself-reliant bloc within the United States. “We may bebuilding toward the one thing that will choke the melt-ing pot,” warns former National Intelligence CouncilVice Chairman Graham Fuller, “an ethnic area andgrouping so concentrated that it will not wish, or need,to undergo assimilation into the mainstream of Ameri-can multi-ethnic English-speaking life.”

A prototype of such a region already exists—inMiami.

B I E N V E N I D O A M I A M I

Miami is the most Hispanic large city in the 50 U.S.states. Over the course of 30 years, Spanish speak-ers—overwhelmingly Cuban—established their dom-inance in virtually every aspect of the city’s life, fun-damentally changing its ethnic composition, culture,politics, and language. The Hispanization of Miamiis without precedent in the history of U.S. cities.

The economic growth of Miami, led by the earlyCuban immigrants, made the city a magnet formigrants from other Latin American and Caribbeancountries. By 2000, two thirds of Miami’s peoplewere Hispanic, and more than half were Cuban orof Cuban descent. In 2000, 75.2 percent of adult

Miamians spoke a language other than English athome, compared to 55.7 percent of the residents ofLos Angeles and 47.6 percent of New Yorkers. (OfMiamians speaking a non-English language at home,87.2 percent spoke Spanish.) In 2000, 59.5 percentof Miami residents were foreign-born, compared to40.9 percent in Los Angeles, 36.8 percent in SanFrancisco, and 35.9 percent in New York. In 2000,only 31.1 percent of adult Miami residents said theyspoke English very well, compared to 39.0 percentin Los Angeles, 42.5 percent in San Francisco, and46.5 percent in New York.

The Cuban takeover had major consequencesfor Miami. The elite and entrepreneurial class flee-ing the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro inthe 1960s started dramatic economic developmentin South Florida. Unable to send money home,they invested in Miami. Personal income growth inMiami averaged 11.5 percent a year in the 1970sand 7.7 percent a year in the 1980s. Payrolls inMiami-Dade County tripled between 1970 and1995. The Cuban economic drive made Miami aninternational economic dynamo, with expandinginternational trade and investment. The Cubanspromoted international tourism, which, by the1990s, exceeded domestic tourism and madeMiami a leading center of the cruise ship industry.Major U.S. corporations in manufacturing, com-munications, and consumer products moved theirLatin American headquarters to Miami from otherU.S. and Latin American cities. A vigorous Spanishartistic and entertainment community emerged.Today, the Cubans can legitimately claim that, inthe words of Prof. Damian Fernández of FloridaInternational University, “We built modernMiami,” and made its economy larger than thoseof many Latin American countries.

A key part of this development was the expan-sion of Miami’s economic ties with Latin America.Brazilians, Argentines, Chileans, Colombians, andVenezuelans flooded into Miami, bringing theirmoney with them. By 1993, some $25.6 billion ininternational trade, mostly involving LatinAmerica, moved through the city. Throughout thehemisphere, Latin Americans concerned withinvestment, trade, culture, entertainment, holidays,and drug smuggling increasingly turned to Miami.

Such eminence transformed Miami into aCuban-led, Hispanic city. The Cubans did not, inthe traditional pattern, create an enclave immigrantneighborhood. Instead, they created an enclave city


with its own culture andeconomy, in which assimila-tion and Americanizationwere unnecessary and insome measure undesired. By2000, Spanish was not justthe language spoken in mosthomes, it was also the princi-pal language of commerce,business, and politics. Themedia and communicationsindustry became increasinglyHispanic. In 1998, a Spanish-language television stationbecame the number-one sta-tion watched by Miamians—the first time a foreign-lan-guage station achieved thatrating in a major U.S. city.“They’re outsiders,” one suc-cessful Hispanic said of non-Hispanics. “Here we are members of the powerstructure,” another boasted.

“In Miami there is no pressure to be American,”one Cuban-born sociologist observed. “People canmake a living perfectly well in an enclave that speaksSpanish.” By 1999, the heads of Miami’s largestbank, largest real estate development company, andlargest law firm were all Cuban-born or of Cubandescent. The Cubans also established their domi-nance in politics. By 1999, the mayor of Miami andthe mayor, police chief, and state attorney of Miami-Dade County, plus two thirds of Miami’s U.S.Congressional delegation and nearly one half of itsstate legislators, were of Cuban origin. In the wakeof the Elián González affair in 2000, the non-Hispanic city manager and police chief in MiamiCity were replaced by Cubans.

The Cuban and Hispanic dominance of Miamileft Anglos (as well as blacks) as outside minoritiesthat could often be ignored. Unable to communi-cate with government bureaucrats and discrimi-nated against by store clerks, the Anglos came torealize, as one of them put it, “My God, this is whatit’s like to be the minority.” The Anglos had threechoices. They could accept their subordinate andoutsider position. They could attempt to adoptthe manners, customs, and language of the His-panics and assimilate into the Hispanic communi-ty—“acculturation in reverse,” as the scholars Ale-jandro Portes and Alex Stepick labeled it. Or they

could leave Miami, and between 1983 and 1993,about 140,000 did just that, their exodus reflect-ed in a popular bumper sticker: “Will the lastAmerican to leave Miami, please bring the flag.”

C O N T E M P T O F C U LT U R E

Is Miami the future for Los Angeles and the south-west United States? In the end, the results could besimilar: the creation of a large, distinct, Spanish-speaking community with economic and politicalresources sufficient to sustain its Hispanic identityapart from the national identity of other Americansand also able to influence U.S. politics, government,and society. However, the processes by which thisresult might come about differ. The Hispanization ofMiami has been rapid, explicit, and economicallydriven. The Hispanization of the Southwest hasbeen slower, unrelenting, and politically driven. TheCuban influx into Florida was intermittent andresponded to the policies of the Cuban government.Mexican immigration, on the other hand, is con-tinuous, includes a large illegal component, andshows no signs of tapering. The Hispanic (that is,largely Mexican) population of Southern Californiafar exceeds in number but has yet to reach the pro-portions of the Hispanic population of Miami—though it is increasing rapidly.

The early Cuban immigrants in South Floridawere largely middle and upper class. Subsequent

Se habla español: A Los Angeles newsstand offers dozens of Spanish-language titles.

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44 Foreign Policy


immigrants were more lower class. In the South-west, overwhelming numbers of Mexican immi-grants have been poor, unskilled, and poorly edu-cated, and their children are likely to face similarconditions. The pressures toward Hispanizationin the Southwest thus come from below, whereasthose in South Florida came from above. In the longrun, however, numbers are power, particularly ina multicultural society, a political democracy, anda consumer economy.

Another major difference concerns the relationsof Cubans and Mexicans with their countries of ori-gin. The Cuban community has been united in itshostility to the Castro regime and in its efforts topunish and overthrow that regime. The Cuban gov-ernment has responded in kind. The Mexican com-munity in the United States has been more ambiva-lent and nuanced in its attitudes toward theMexican government. Since the 1980s, however,the Mexican government has sought to expand thenumbers, wealth, and political power of the Mex-ican community in the U.S. Southwest and to inte-grate that population with Mexico. “The Mexicannation extends beyond the territory enclosed by itsborders,” Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said inthe 1990s. His successor, Vicente Fox, called Mex-ican emigrants “heroes” and describes himself aspresident of 123 million Mexicans, 100 million inMexico and 23 million in the United States.

As their numbers increase, Mexican Americansfeel increasingly comfortable with their own cultureand often contemptuous of American culture. Theydemand recognition of their culture and the historicMexican identity of the U.S. Southwest. They callattention to and celebrate their Hispanic and Mex-ican past, as in the 1998 ceremonies and festivitiesin Madrid, New Mexico, attended by the vice pres-ident of Spain, honoring the establishment 400years earlier of the first European settlement inthe Southwest, almost a decade before Jamestown.As the New York Times reported in September1999, Hispanic growth has been able to “help‘Latinize’ many Hispanic people who are finding iteasier to affirm their heritage…. [T]hey findstrength in numbers, as younger generations growup with more ethnic pride and as a Latin influencestarts permeating fields such as entertainment,advertising, and politics.” One index foretells thefuture: In 1998, “José” replaced “Michael” as themost popular name for newborn boys in both Cal-ifornia and Texas.

I R R E C O N C I L A B L E D I F F E R E N C E S

The persistence of Mexican immigration into the Unit-ed States reduces the incentives for cultural assimila-tion. Mexican Americans no longer think of themselvesas members of a small minority who must accommo-date the dominant group and adopt its culture. As theirnumbers increase, they become more committed totheir own ethnic identity and culture. Sustained numer-ical expansion promotes cultural consolidation andleads Mexican Americans not to minimize but to gloryin the differences between their culture and U.S. cul-ture. As the president of the National Council of LaRaza said in 1995: “The biggest problem we have isa cultural clash, a clash between our values and the val-ues in American society.” He then went on to spell outthe superiority of Hispanic values to American values.In similar fashion, Lionel Sosa, a successful Mexican-American businessman in Texas, in 1998 hailed theemerging Hispanic middle-class professionals wholook like Anglos, but whose “values remain quite dif-ferent from an Anglo’s.”

To be sure, as Harvard University political scien-tist Jorge I. Domínguez has pointed out, MexicanAmericans are more favorably disposed towarddemocracy than are Mexicans. Nonetheless, “fero-cious differences” exist between U.S. and Mexican cul-tural values, as Jorge Castañeda (who later served asMexico’s foreign minister) observed in 1995. Cas-tañeda cited differences in social and economic equal-ity, the unpredictability of events, concepts of time epit-omized in the mañana syndrome, the ability to achieveresults quickly, and attitudes toward history, expressedin the “cliché that Mexicans are obsessed with histo-ry, Americans with the future.” Sosa identifies sever-al Hispanic traits (very different from Anglo-Protestantones) that “hold us Latinos back”: mistrust of peopleoutside the family; lack of initiative, self-reliance, andambition; little use for education; and acceptance ofpoverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heav-en. Author Robert Kaplan quotes Alex Villa, a third-generation Mexican American in Tucson, Arizona,as saying that he knows almost no one in the Mexi-can community of South Tucson who believes in “edu-cation and hard work” as the way to material pros-perity and is thus willing to “buy into America.”Profound cultural differences clearly separate Mexicansand Americans, and the high level of immigrationfrom Mexico sustains and reinforces the prevalence ofMexican values among Mexican Americans.

Continuation of this large immigration (withoutimproved assimilation) could divide the United States


into a country of two languages and two cultures.A few stable, prosperous democracies—such asCanada and Belgium—fit this pattern. The differ-ences in culture within these countries, however, donot approximate those between the United States andMexico, and even in these countries language dif-ferences persist. Not many Anglo-Canadians areequally fluent in English and French, and the Cana-dian government has had to impose penalties to getits top civil servants to achieve dual fluency. Muchthe same lack of dual competence is true of Walloonsand Flemings in Belgium. The transformation ofthe United States into a country like these would notnecessarily be the end of the world; it would, how-ever, be the end of the America we have known for

more than three centuries. Americans should not letthat change happen unless they are convinced thatthis new nation would be a better one.

Such a transformation would not only revolu-tionize the United States, but it would also haveserious consequences for Hispanics, who will be inthe United States but not of it. Sosa ends his book,The Americano Dream, with encouragement foraspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. “The Americanodream?” he asks. “It exists, it is realistic, and it isthere for all of us to share.” Sosa is wrong. There isno Americano dream. There is only the Americandream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mex-ican Americans will share in that dream and in thatsociety only if they dream in English.

For an overview of U.S. immigration, see David Heer’s Immigration in America’s Future: Social Sci-ence Findings and the Policy Debate (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). Roger Daniels provides a recenthistory of U.S. immigration policy in Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigrants and Immi-gration Policy Since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003). A sophisticated analysis of the costs andbenefits of immigration is George J. Borjas’s Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Econ-omy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

On the ability of immigrants to assimilate, consult Milton M. Gordon’s Assimilation in AmericanLife: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).Richard Alba and Victor Nee analyze developments since the 1960s in Remaking the American Main-stream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).See also Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passel’s (eds.) Immigration and Ethnicity: The Integration ofAmerica’s Newest Arrivals (Washington: Urban Institute Press, 1994). Bill Richardson encourages U.S.Hispanics to affect U.S. foreign policy in “Hispanic American Concerns” (Foreign Policy, Fall 1985).

For an overview of Mexican immigration issues, consult the studies in Crossings: Mexican Immi-gration in Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge: Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Cen-ter for Latin American Studies, 1998), edited by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. Very different but equal-ly important aspects of U.S.-Mexican relations are discussed in Abraham F. Lowenthal and KatrinaBurgess’s (eds.) The California-Mexico Connection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993) andJorge I. Domínguez and Rafael Fernández de Castro’s The United States and Mexico (New York:Routledge, 2001). Excellent explorations of the U.S.-Mexican border include Robert S. Leiken’s TheMelting Border: Mexico and Mexican Communities in the United States (Washington: Center forEqual Opportunity, 2000) and Peter Andreas’s Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Itha-ca: Cornell University Press, 2000). Doris Meissner offers her perspectives and experiences onimmigration and security in the interview “On the Fence” (Foreign Policy, March/April 2002).Finally, for a superb study of the psychology, sociology, and politics of Mexican Americans, see PeterSkerry’s Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (New York: Free Press, 1993).

»For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensive index of related Foreign Policy articles, go to www.foreignpolicy.com.

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