[Verginius Rufus]

California is not the state with the highest percentage of Hispanics--New Mexico is (42% vs. 32.4% for California, 32.0% for Texas, and 25.3% for Arizona). These figures are from the 2003 World Almanac, which doesn't distinguish between citizens and non-citizens...but I doubt that New Mexico has a higher proportion of illegal aliens than California does, certainly not enough to put its proportion of Hispanic citizens below California's).

[BohDaThone]

Vast numbers of the "hispanics" in New Mexico are lineal descendants of people who were in the "US" territory, long before most of our ancestors -- many before Plymouth rock. The New Mexico constitutional convention of 1912 had both spanish and english as official languages. There are certainly illegal hispanics in New Mexico, but they are far outnumbered by the long-descended citizens. Remember, we had a "consulate" at Taos, Old Mexico, right up to 1847.