That guy looks awfully familiar.
Posted on 06/11/2005 4:31:22 PM PDT by bayourod
We are a nation of immigrants, neatly epitomized in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ironic remark to the Daughters of the American Revolution: "Welcome, fellow immigrants." Immigrants come to America for many reasons, but mainly they come because it's the land of opportunity and upward mobility where achievement is more important than inheritance. Uprooting themselves from the familiarity of family, community, and even language and culture, they are self-selected risk-takers, which is why they tend to be hardworking, self-starting, creative, and smart. It's also why immigration has been such an economic plus for America and why so many of us look so favorably on legal immigrants.
Some Americans, however, have reservations, and some, perhaps driven by nativist, anti-immigrant sentiment or concern over the cost of illegal immigrants, decry the huge waves of legal and illegal Hispanic immigration we've seen over the past 50 years: Eleven million illegals live in a shadow world within our borders, reinforced annually by an influx of hundreds of thousands more. They are mainly from Mexico, just a car ride away, so they can maintain real and emotional ties to their home country. The anxiety is that Hispanics will retain their language and culture and thus remain separate from and isolated within America. The popular phrase is that they will acculturate rather than assimilate, for Hispanics can remain within their own culture given the easy accessibility to Spanish TV networks, newspapers, and radio stations--and the fact that many tend to live in large Spanish-speaking enclaves, in places like California--all of which raises the concern that we might become a bilingual country.
Roots. The concerns are understandable, but the thing to really watch is not how much Hispanics are changing America but how much America is changing Hispanics. They are learning English as fast as any immigrant group. True, they are retaining their native language longer, but the transition from Spanish to English is virtually completed in one generation, on average. Of the children born here to immigrants, only 7 percent rely on Spanish as their primary language, and nearly half have no Spanish skills at all. Of the third generation, that is, Latinos born of U.S.-born parents, virtually none speak only Spanish, and less than a quarter are bilingual. According to the Pew Hispanic Center poll of 2004, 96 percent believe English is fundamental to their future. By the third generation, 60 percent of Mexican-American children speak only English at home.
When Hispanics have children in America, they tend to sink deeper roots here and lose touch with the homes they left behind. That's why there is little difference, for example, between Mexican-American lifestyles and other American lifestyles. Hispanics are embracing the American way. Their goals are the essence of the American dream: economic opportunity and security, health and education, and home ownership. They place as much emphasis on the American values of hard work and family as any group in America.
They are also intermarrying at a rate similar to that of other immigrant groups. By the third generation, a third of Hispanic women marry non-Latinos. They serve and die in the military as much as any other group in proportion to their population and now compose about 10 percent of the U.S. military. They have also done relatively well financially for a community that came here with virtually nothing. Nearly 80 percent live above the poverty line, and 68 percent of those who have lived here for 30 years or more own their own homes. Their culture of hard work, in other words, has enabled them to climb out of poverty, and they are going through the same powerful process of change as any of the immigrant groups that have come to the United States, melting gradually but inexorably into our middle and working classes. The one area where they lag is education. Roughly 60 percent of Hispanics graduate from high school, compared with 90 percent of nonimmigrant Americans; only 8 percent get college degrees, compared with 26 percent of whites. Their strong work ethic compounds the problem by drawing many young Latinos into the workforce before they finish high school, keeping high school graduation rates lower and trapping too many in low-wage service jobs. In fairness, the urban public schools that they typically attend have failed them, as they have failed so many others, for these are no longer the best schools with the best teachers, as they were a century ago.
Yes, the challenges of this wave of Hispanic immigration are daunting, especially the illegals. But there's no reason to be pessimistic. The evidence suggests strongly that we will be able to absorb the Hispanics--as we have earlier generations from Europe--and weave them into a dynamic American society. Not only that. Every new wave of immigrants has taught our nation something new and enriched our culture. This, in other words, is an opportunity, not a problem.
Actually, a drive through the city of my birth, Los Angeles, would suggest just the opposite.
too bad you were unbanned.
You seem to be unable to differentiate between the outrage at ILLEGAL immigration and the acceptance of of normal immigration that has always taken place.
In your bizarro world, any time a person attacks ILLEGAL immigration, they are a racist redneck who hates all immigrants.
But I'd like to thank you, because of the rantings of unthinking people like you, more people are paying attention to the problems of ILLEGAL immigration and they see how absurd your position is. Every time you post you make your side look bad. Thank you.
It all comes down to behavior.
Immigrants that can keep themselves out of trouble and be productive are plenty welcome.
That guy looks awfully familiar.
Oprima el numero dos para ingles.
In your bizarro world, any time a person attacks ILLEGAL immigration, they are a racist redneck who hates all immigrants.
It's difficult to believe that opponents of illegal immigration are simply upset over the "illegal" part.
Afterall, when was the last time you got upset about someone driving illegally over the speed limit? Such people are breaking the rules and acting illegally! Where is law enforcement to clamp down on all those speeders?
The fact is most people that speed realize that government does a poor job deciding on the appropriate speed limit in many places. They do such a bad job that most people simply ignore this rule of the road.
The same can be said for how the government handles immigration rules.
So lets focus on what really matters: character and behavior. Illegal immigrants aren't often people of poor character or bad behavior.
Well said--I recently read an introduction to some writer who was praised for battling an "anti-immigrant" bill, neglecting of course to mention it was an anti-ILLEGAL immigrant" bill.
It's truly annoying how libs, like FDR in that quote, toss around that "immigrants" line. I never emmigrated from anywhere. Libs are gonna have to learn to be as accepting of those of us who were born here (as were my parents) as they are of illegal immigrants.
I know you posted that for other reasons, but I never got beyond the "model of the week" section. Aye caramba!
LOL!!!!!
Are you serious with this rationalization?? By this stretch virtually any illegal activity is justified. A bunch of moral and legal relativism if you ask me. LMAO!
Thanks a lot for providing the photographic equivalent of a bucket of cold water. (With a Koran floating in it.) :(
HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
(sorry)
Big Mort Zuckerman fan rod?
I don't care if they're from the moon.
We're overcrowded as it is.
Time for immigration to end.
My many-times great-grandfather, Chief of the Powhattans, had something to say about illegal immigration.
Others said it, too. "The whites, they are like locusts." Now, it's the whites who are saying "The latinos, they are like locusts."
What goes around, comes around. In the end, you get done to you what you did to others.
Makes you stop and think, doesn't it?
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