In my CA suburb, the Korean parents have broken away from the PTA in our once prize winning high school and started their own for their own agenda. Their kids do not date anyone outside their race, so there is less intermarriage, not more.

In the five years since Bush stopped prosecuting employers for hiring illegals, the Latino gangs are now within two blocks of my house instead of two miles, and the Asian gangs (hunting for the cash kept at home because of their illegal cash economy) are new additions to our city. I don’t do business with them anymore because I cannot take the chance of doing business in cash–the IRS knows me, if not them.

50% of Latinos do not graduate high school.

Cultural institutions like the museums, the performing arts center, civic celebrations are dying out because of the demographic shift: They are rejecting Us, not the other way around.

My friend in an upscale neighborhood has a boarding house for 25 illegals next door (houses being too expensive for regular families to buy). The economic failure of early examples of this insular, short term thinking, like Little Saigon, abound.

I hope he’s right and I’m wrong, but that’s not my experience and I do live on the “street.”

Mitch said we like to cherry pick from the new arrivals. Isn’t that the truth. Salsa has replaced catsup as the most popular condiment. I’m glad I grew up before the era of political rectitude, but there is a lot more choice these days.

You’re so right. The illegal situation is also unfairly biased in favor of Latin America and this is exacerbated by the family reunification rules.

How about the following: a) crack down harder on illegals (by making deportation much easier) b) open up legal immigration more and c) change the rules to favor doctors and engineers and writers over brothers and sisters. These changes would make it easier for Russians, and Koreans, and Poles, and Thais to enter. It would even help those who choose to flee from a decaying EU.

Good luck Brent. You’ll need patience if not luck.

It’s Polyannish to think this is having no effect on the quality of the immigrants coming into this country.

And, of course, on a personal level it infuriates me to realize just how many people have deliberately been allowed to enter the country illegally, over the months I’ve been attempting to bring my finacee into the country legally. We’re punishing the law abiding, and rewarding criminals.

The tow turned into what may well be the most interesting 20 miles I’ve ever been a passenger. The tow truck dude, it turned out, was Puerto Rican. And, as he informed me as he talked non-stop for the entire ride, not a fake Cuban immigrant Puerto Rican but a “real” one – a “native”. He covered an enormous amount of conversational ground among which was that his cousin was one of the pilots who was shot down and died in the Libyan raid that Reagan launched (he was not fond of the French for denying access to their airspace) and, most importantly to me, he covered the topic of how the United States is “an idea”, a political idea, that was not dependent upon ethnicity or language but, rather, something a person could “buy into” and “embrace” rather than being born into. What a fascinating 40 minutes that was.

The area where I live has a large and quite diversified immigrant population: Asian (primarily Indian and Chinese), Eastern European (primarily Russian and Polish which seems to have shifted from Jewish to a more generalized sampling), “Latino” (primarily Mexican), and Phillipino. A decade or slightly more ago there was also something of a Baltic influx but, interestingly, this has long since stopped and even seems to have reversed to a degree with some portion of the Baltic immigrants (Lithuanian and Estonian primarily) “returning” to their “homeland”.

For what I have no doubt are mostly economic reasons it has been completely common for me to be able to have regular contact with first and second generations from all but the Latino portion of this immigrant diversity. The second generation has always astonished me with how easily they “Americanize”. They speak “standard” local English, they pursue, for the most part, similar activities as the more “native” yutes, etc. They seem quite adept at putting their ethnic/cultural heritage into the American context.

Beyond contact with “laborers”, however, I have not experienced much contact with the Mexican immigrants. Essentially they’ve always seemed an outlier swarm of sorts. They are easy to see as they go around doing landscaping and waiting tables and such, but they haven’t seemed to be integrating/assimilating/alloying (a good term, BTW). They weren’t moving into neighborhoods, showing up at community sorts of things, or even onto the yute sports fields (with the exception of soccer). This seems, however, to be starting to change. Mexican adults seem to be starting to show up as coaches (still primarily limited to soccer) and in what most would term more “upscale employment” such as having their own small businesses.

Recently a Mexican family even moved in next door to me. I first met the children. Their English was completely ordinary. They play and chase their kitten indistinguishably from any other children. I recently had the opportunity, which I decided to sieze, to meet the adults. On the surface at least they seem identical in virtually every way, except of course the specifics of their ethnic heritage, to all the other various immigrants I have ordinary contact with. Their English is far from perfect but they, like everyone else around them, are going about their lives and raising their family. They go to work and they come home.

Funny how this stuff works and seems to do so first time, every time. Kinda like a Timex watch. Nuttin’ fancy, but remarkably predictable.

Again, purely anecdotal, but I am not seeing anything of the sort from the muslim community. They are here but they seem like a ghost community. I find this interesting and troubling.

In terms of politics, it is difficult to see where there would be any qualitative change attributable to Latino immigration. First, Latinos are far from homogeneous (they have nearly all been at war with their Spanish-speaking neighbors at one time or another – I can’t think of an exception offhand). Chileans and Dominicans have less in common with each other than we have with Australians. Second, there is no political program in their countries of origin that they can bring with them, like politicized Islamism. More likely than not, they will join one of the two major coalitions already in existence, depending on the fit (Cubans and Venezuelans to one side, Mexicans and Guatemalans to the other).

If the Southwest hasn’t become a Spanish-speaking Quebec by now, what makes them imagine it might anytime soon?