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 AngloProtestant
values that built the American
dream. The United States ignores this
challenge at its peril.
By Samuel P. Huntington
EDWARDKEATING/NEWYORKTIMESPHOTOS
30 Foreign Policy
Hispanic
Challenge
The
Huddled masses: Mexican workers gather at the
Smithfield hog plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, to celebrate
a saint’s feast day in June 2000. They were hired
to replace American workers who quit over low wages.
A
Samuel P. Huntington is chairman of the Harvard Academy
for International and Area Studies and cofounder of Foreign
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 public
as an essential component of U.S. identity.
By the latter years of the 19th century, however,
the ethnic component had been broadened to include
Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians, and the United
States’ religious identity was being redefined more
broadly from Protestant to Christian. With World
War II and the assimilation of large numbers of
southern and eastern European immigrants and
their offspring into U.S. society, ethnicity virtually
disappeared as a defining component of national
identity. So did race, following the achievements of
the civil rights movement and the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965. Americans now see and
endorse their country as multiethnic and multiracial.
As a result, American identity is now defined in
terms of culture and creed.
Most Americans see the creed as the crucial element
of their national identity. The creed, however,
was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant culture
of the founding settlers. Key elements of that culture
include the English language; Christianity; reliAmerica
was created by 17th- and
18th-century settlers who were
overwhelmingly white, British,
and Protestant. Their values,
institutions, and culture provided the foundation
for and shaped the development of the United States
in the following centuries. They initially defined
America in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion.
Then, in the 18th century, they also had to
define America ideologically to justify independence
from their home country, which was also white,
British, and Protestant. Thomas Jefferson set forth
this “creed,” as Nobel Prize-winning economist
Gunnar Myrdal called it, in the Declaration of Independence,
and ever since, its principles have been
March | April 2004 31
to black and white American natives. Americans like
to boast of their past success in assimilating millions
of immigrants into their society, culture, and politics.
But Americans have tended to generalize about immigrants
without distinguishing among them and have
focused on the economic costs and benefits of immigration,
ignoring its social and cultural consequences.
As a result, they have overlooked the unique characteristics
and problems posed by contemporary Hispanic
immigration. The extent and nature of this
immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous
immigration, and the assimilation successes of
the past are unlikely to be duplicated with the contemporary
flood of immigrants from Latin America.
This reality poses a fundamental question: Will the
United States remain a country with a single national
language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By
ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their
eventual transformation into two peoples with two
cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages
(English and Spanish).
The impact of Mexican immigration on the
United States becomes evident when one imagines
what would happen if Mexican immigration
abruptly stopped. The annual flow of legal immigrants
would drop by about 175,000, closer to
the level recommended by the 1990s Commission
on Immigration Reform chaired by former U.S.
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Illegal entries
would diminish dramatically. The wages of lowincome
U.S. citizens would improve. Debates over
the use of Spanish and whether English should be
made the official language of state
and national governments would
subside. Bilingual education and
the controversies it spawns would
virtually disappear, as would controversies
over welfare and other
benefits for immigrants. The
debate over whether immigrants
pose an economic burden on state
and federal governments would be
decisively resolved in the negative. The average
education and skills of the immigrants continuing
to arrive would reach their highest levels in U.S. history.
The inflow of immigrants would again become
highly diverse, creating increased incentives for all
immigrants to learn English and absorb U.S. culture.
And most important of all, the possibility of
a de facto split between a predominantly Spanishspeaking
United States and an English-speaking
32 Foreign Policy
[ The Hispanic Challenge ]
gious commitment; English concepts of the rule of
law, including the responsibility of rulers and the
rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values
of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief
that humans have the ability and the duty to try to
create a heaven on earth, a “city on a hill.” Historically,
millions of immigrants were attracted to the
United States because of this culture and the economic
opportunities and political liberties it made possible.
Contributions from immigrant cultures modified
and enriched the Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding
settlers. The essentials of that founding culture
remained the bedrock of U.S. identity, however, at
least until the last decades of the 20th century. Would
the United States be the country that it has been and
that it largely remains today if it had been settled in the
17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants
but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The
answer 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 the
creed that it produced came under assault by the popularity
in intellectual and political circles of the doctrines
of multiculturalism and diversity; the rise of
group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender
over national identity; the impact of transnational cultural
diasporas; the expanding number of immigrants
with dual nationalities and dual loyalties; and
the growing salience for U.S. intellectual, business,
and political elites of cosmopolitan and transnational
identities. The United States’ national identity,
like that of other nation-states, is challenged by the
forces of globalization as well as the needs that globalization
produces among people for smaller and
more meaningful “blood and belief” identities.
In this new era, the single most immediate and
most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity
comes from the immense and continuing immigration
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.
March | April 2004 33
United States would disappear, and with it, a major
potential threat to the country’s cultural and political
integrity.
A W O R L D O F D I F F E R E N C E
Contemporary Mexican and, more broadly, Latin
American immigration is without precedent in U.S.
history. The experience and lessons of past immigration
have little relevance to understanding its
dynamics and consequences. Mexican immigration
differs from past immigration and most other contemporary
immigration due to a combination of six
factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration,
persistence, and historical presence.
Contiguity | Americans’ idea of immigration is
often symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, Ellis
Island, and, more recently perhaps, New York’s
John F. Kennedy Airport. In other words, immigrants
arrive in the United States after crossing several
thousand miles of ocean. U.S. attitudes toward
immigrants and U.S. immigration policies are
shaped by such images. These assumptions and
policies, however, have little or no relevance for
Mexican immigration. The United States is now
confronted by a massive influx of people from a
poor, contiguous country with more than one third
the population of the United States. They come
across a 2,000-mile border historically marked simply
by a line in the ground and a shallow river.
This situation is unique for the United States
and the world. No other First World country has
such an extensive land frontier with a Third World
country. The significance of the long Mexican-U.S.
border is enhanced by the economic differences
between the two countries. “The income gap
between the United States and Mexico,” Stanford
University historian David Kennedy has pointed
out, “is the largest between any two contiguous
countries in the world.” Contiguity enables Mexican
immigrants to remain in intimate contact with their
families, friends, and home localities in Mexico as no
other immigrants have been able to do.
Scale | The causes of Mexican, as well as other,
immigration are found in the demographic, economic,
and political dynamics of the sending country
and the economic, political, and social attractions
of the United States. Contiguity, however, obviously
encourages immigration. Mexican immigration
increased steadily after 1965. About 640,000 Mexicans
legally migrated to the United States in the
1970s; 1,656,000 in the 1980s; and 2,249,000 in the
1990s. In those three decades, Mexicans accounted
for 14 percent, 23 percent, and 25 percent of total
legal immigration. These percentages do not equal
the rates of immigrants who came from Ireland
between 1820 and 1860, or from Germany in the
1850s and 1860s. Yet they are high compared to the
highly dispersed sources of immigrants before World
War I, and compared to other contemporary immi-
34 Foreign Policy
grants. To them one must also add the huge numbers
of Mexicans who each year enter the United
States illegally. Since the 1960s, the numbers of
foreign-born people in the United States have
expanded immensely, with Asians and Latin Americans
replacing Europeans and Canadians, and
diversity of source dramatically giving way to the
dominance of one source: Mexico. [See chart on
page 33.] Mexican immigrants constituted 27.6
percent of the total foreign-born U.S. population in
2000. The next largest contingents, Chinese and Filipinos,
amounted to only 4.9 percent and 4.3 percent
of the foreign-born population.
In the 1990s, Mexicans composed
more than half of the new Latin American
immigrants to the United States and, by
2000, Hispanics totaled about one half of
all migrants entering the continental United
States. Hispanics composed 12 percent
of the total U.S. population in 2000.
This group increased by almost 10 percent
from 2000 to 2002 and has now become
larger than blacks. It is estimated Hispanics
may constitute up to 25 percent of
the U.S. population by 2050. These
changes are driven not just by immigration
but also by fertility. In 2002, fertility
rates in the United States were estimated
at 1.8 for non-Hispanic whites,
2.1 for blacks, and 3.0 for Hispanics.
“This is the characteristic shape of developing
countries,” The Economist commented
in 2002. “As the bulge of Latinos
enters peak child-bearing age in a decade
or two, the Latino share of America’s
population will soar.”
In the mid-19th century, English speakers
from the British Isles dominated immigration
into the United States. The pre-World
War I immigration was highly diversified
linguistically, including many speakers of
Italian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, English,
German, Swedish, and other languages. But
now, for the first time in U.S. history, half of
those entering the United States speak a single
non-English language.
Illegality | Illegal entry into the United
States is overwhelmingly a post-1965 and
Mexican phenomenon. For almost a century
after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution,
no national laws restricted or prohibited
immigration, and only a few states imposed modest
limits. During the following 90 years, illegal immigration
was minimal and easily controlled. The
1965 immigration law, the increased availability of
transportation, and the intensified forces promoting
Mexican emigration drastically changed this situation.
Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol rose
from 1.6 million in the 1960s to 8.3 million in the
1970s, 11.9 million in the 1980s, and 14.7 million
in the 1990s. Estimates of the Mexicans who successfully
enter illegally each year range from 105,000
(according to a binational Mexican-American comA
house divided? Lorenzo and Angelica Alvarez watch a Gore-Bush presidential
debate in October 2000 with their three children in their home on the outskirts of El
Paso, Texas. At the time, they remained undecided on which candidate to support.
JOERAEDLE/GETTYIMAGES
March | April 2004 35
mission) to 350,000 during the 1990s (according to
the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service).
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act
contained provisions to legalize the status of existing
illegal immigrants and to reduce future illegal immigration
through employer sanctions and other means.
The former goal was achieved: Some 3.1 million illegal
immigrants, about 90 percent of them from Mexico,
became legal “green card” residents of the United
States. But the latter goal remains elusive. Estimates
of the total number of illegal immigrants in the United
States rose from 4 million in 1995 to 6 million in
1998, to 7 million in 2000, and to between 8 and 10
million by 2003. Mexicans accounted for 58 percent
of the total illegal population in the United States in
1990; by 2000, an estimated 4.8 million illegal Mexicans
made up 69 percent of that
population. In 2000, illegal Mexicans
in the United States were 25
times as numerous as the next largest
contingent, from El Salvador.
Regional Concentration | The U.S.
Founding Fathers considered the dispersion
of immigrants essential to
their assimilation. That has been the
pattern historically and continues to be the pattern for
most contemporary non-Hispanic immigrants. Hispanics,
however, have tended to concentrate regionally:
Mexicans in Southern California, Cubans in
Miami, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans (the last of
whom are not technically immigrants) in New York.
The more concentrated immigrants become, the slower
and less complete is their assimilation.
In the 1990s, the proportions of Hispanics continued
to grow in these regions of heaviest concentration.
At the same time, Mexicans and other Hispanics
were also establishing beachheads elsewhere.
While the absolute numbers are often small, the
states with the largest percentage increases in Hispanic
population between 1990 and 2000 were, in
decreasing order: North Carolina (449 percent
increase), Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina,
Nevada, and Alabama (222 percent). Hispanics
have also established concentrations in individual
cities and towns throughout the United States.
For example, in 2003, more than 40 percent of the
population of Hartford, Connecticut, was Hispanic
(primarily Puerto Rican), outnumbering the city’s
38 percent black population. “Hartford,” the city’s
first 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 of
commerce and government.
The biggest concentrations of Hispanics, however,
are in the Southwest, particularly California. In 2000,
nearly two thirds of Mexican immigrants lived in the
West, and nearly half in California. To be sure, the Los
Angeles area has immigrants from many countries,
including Korea and Vietnam. The sources of California’s
foreign-born population, however, differ
sharply from those of the rest of the country, with
those from a single country, Mexico, exceeding totals
for all of the immigrants from Europe and Asia. In Los
Angeles, Hispanics—overwhelmingly Mexican—far
outnumber other groups. In 2000, 64 percent of the
Hispanics in Los Angeles were of Mexican origin, and
46.5 percent of Los Angeles residents were Hispanic,
while 29.7 percent were non-Hispanic whites. By
2010, it is estimated that Hispanics will make up
more than half of the Los Angeles population.
Most immigrant groups have higher fertility rates
than natives, and hence the impact of immigration is
felt heavily in schools. The highly diversified immigration
into New York, for example, creates the
problem of teachers dealing with classes containing
students who may speak 20 different languages at
home. In contrast, Hispanic children make up substantial
majorities of the students in the schools in
many Southwestern cities. “No school system in a
major U.S. city,” political scientists Katrina Burgess
and Abraham Lowenthal said of Los Angeles in their
1993 study of Mexico-California ties, “has ever
experienced such a large influx of students from a single
foreign country. The schools of Los Angeles are
becoming Mexican.” By 2002, more than 70 percent
of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District
were Hispanic, predominantly Mexican, with the
proportion increasing steadily; 10 percent of schoolchildren
were non-Hispanic whites. In 2003, for the
first time since the 1850s, a majority of newborn children
in California were Hispanic.
There is no “Americano dream.” There is only
the American dream created by an
Anglo-Protestant society.
36 Foreign Policy
[ The Hispanic Challenge ]
Persistence | Previous waves of immigrants eventually
subsided, the proportions coming from individual
countries fluctuated greatly, and, after 1924, immigration
was reduced to a trickle. In contrast, the current
wave shows no sign of ebbing and the conditions
creating the large Mexican
component of that wave are
likely to endure, absent a
major war or recession. In
the long term, Mexican
immigration could decline
when the economic wellbeing
of Mexico approximates
that of the United
States. As of 2002, however,
U.S. gross domestic product
per capita was about four
times that of Mexico (in purchasing
power parity terms).
If that difference were cut in
half, the economic incentives
for migration might also
drop substantially. To reach
that ratio in any meaningful future, however, would
require extremely rapid economic growth in Mexico,
at a rate greatly exceeding that of the United States. Yet,
even such dramatic economic development would not
necessarily reduce the impulse to emigrate. During
the 19th century, when Europe was rapidly industrializing
and per capita incomes were rising, 50 million
Europeans emigrated to the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
Historical Presence | No other immigrant group in U.S.
history has asserted or could assert a historical claim
to U.S. territory. Mexicans and Mexican Americans
can and do make that claim. Almost all of Texas,
New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah
was part of Mexico until Mexico lost them as a result
of the Texan War of Independence in 1835-1836 and
the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Mexico is
the only country that the United States has invaded,
occupied its capital—placing the Marines in the “halls
of Montezuma”—and then annexed half its territory.
Mexicans do not forget these events. Quite understandably,
they feel that they have special rights in these
territories. “Unlike other immigrants,” Boston College
political scientist Peter Skerry notes, “Mexicans arrive
here from a neighboring nation that has suffered military
defeat at the hands of the United States; and
they settle predominantly in a region that was once part
of their homeland…. Mexican Americans enjoy a
sense of being on their own turf that is not shared by
other immigrants.”
At times, scholars have suggested that the Southwest
could become the United States’ Quebec. Both
regions include Catholic people and were conquered
by Anglo-Protestant peoples,
but otherwise they
have little in common. Quebec
is 3,000 miles from
France, and each year several
hundred thousand
Frenchmen do not attempt
to enter Quebec legally or
illegally. History shows that
serious potential for conflict
exists when people in one
country begin referring to
territory in a neighboring
country in proprietary terms
and to assert special rights
and claims to that territory.
SPANGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
In the past, immigrants originated overseas and often
overcame severe obstacles and hardships to reach the
United States. They came from many different countries,
spoke different languages, and came legally.
Their flow fluctuated over time, with significant
reductions 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 and
major cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest.
They had no historical claim to any U.S. territory.
On all these dimensions, Mexican immigration is
fundamentally different. These differences combine to
make the assimilation of Mexicans into U.S. culture
and society much more difficult than it was for previous
immigrants. Particularly striking in contrast to
previous immigrants is the failure of third- and fourthgeneration
people of Mexican origin to approximate
U.S. norms in education, economic status, and intermarriage
rates. [See charts on opposite page.]
The size, persistence, and concentration of Hispanic
immigration tends to perpetuate the use of
Spanish through successive generations. The evidence
on English acquisition and Spanish retention
among immigrants is limited and ambiguous. In
2000, however, more than 28 million people in the
United States spoke Spanish at home (10.5 percent
of 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 festivities
in Los Angeles in 2001.
JILLCONNELLY/GAMMAPRESS
March | April 2004 37
of these spoke English worse than “very well,” a 66
percent increase since 1990. According to a U.S.
Census Bureau report, in 1990 about 95 percent of
Mexican-born immigrants spoke Spanish at home;
73.6 percent of these did not speak English very
well; and 43 percent of the Mexican foreign-born
were “linguistically isolated.” An earlier study in Los
Angeles found different results for the U.S.-born
second generation. Just 11.6 percent spoke only
Spanish or more Spanish than English, 25.6 percent
spoke both languages equally, 32.7 percent more
English 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 fluently.
Nonetheless, in 1999, some 753,505 presumably
second-generation students in Southern
California schools who spoke Spanish at home were
not proficient in English.
38 Foreign Policy
[ The Hispanic Challenge ]
English language use and fluency for first- and
second-generation Mexicans thus seem to follow the
pattern common to past immigrants. Two questions
remain, however. First, have changes occurred over
time in the acquisition of English and the retention
of Spanish by second-generation Mexican immigrants?
One might suppose that, with the rapid
expansion of the Mexican immigrant community,
people of Mexican origin would have less incentive
to become fluent in and to use English in 2000 than
they had in 1970. Second, will the third generation
follow the classic pattern with fluency in English
and little or no knowledge of Spanish, or will it
retain the second generation’s fluency in both languages?
Second-generation immigrants often look
down on and reject their ancestral language and are
embarrassed by their parents’ inability to communicate
in English. Presumably, whether second-generation
Mexicans share this attitude will help shape the
extent to which the third generation retains any
knowledge of Spanish. If the second generation does
not reject Spanish outright, the third generation is also
likely to be bilingual, and fluency in both languages
is likely to become institutionalized in the MexicanAmerican
community.
Spanish retention is also bolstered by the overwhelming
majorities (between 66 percent and 85
percent) of Mexican immigrants and Hispanics
who emphasize the need for their children to be fluent
in Spanish. These attitudes contrast with those
of other immigrant groups. The New Jersey-based
Educational Testing Service finds “a cultural difference
between the Asian and Hispanic parents
with respect to having their children maintain their
native language.” In part, this difference undoubtedly
stems from the size of Hispanic communities,
which creates incentives for fluency in the ancestral
language. Although second- and third-generation
Mexican Americans and other Hispanics acquire
competence in English, they also appear to deviate
from the usual pattern by maintaining their competence
in Spanish. Second- or third-generation
Mexican Americans who were brought up speaking
only English have learned Spanish as adults and
are encouraging their children to become fluent in
it. Spanish-language competence, University of
New Mexico professor F. Chris Garcia has stated,
is “the one thing every Hispanic
takes pride in, wants to protect
and promote.”
A persuasive case can be made
that, in a shrinking world, all Americans
should know at least one important
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 different
to argue that Americans should know a non-English
language in order to communicate with their fellow citizens.
Yet that is what the Spanish-language advocates
have in mind. Strengthened by the growth of Hispanic
numbers and influence, Hispanic leaders are actively
seeking to transform the United States into a bilingual
society. “English is not enough,” argues Osvaldo
Soto, president of the Spanish American League Against
Discrimination. “We don’t want a monolingual society.”
Similarly, Duke University literature professor (and
Chilean immigrant) Ariel Dorfman asks, “Will this
country speak two languages or merely one?”And his
answer, of course, is that it should speak two.
Hispanic organizations play a central role in
inducing the U.S. Congress to authorize cultural
maintenance programs in bilingual education; as a
result, children are slow to join mainstream classes.
The continuing huge inflow of migrants makes it
increasingly possible for Spanish speakers in New
York, Miami, and Los Angeles to live normal lives
without knowing English. Sixty-five percent of the
children in bilingual education in New York are
Spanish speakers and hence have little incentive or
need to use English in school.
Dual-language programs, which go one step beyond
bilingual education, have become increasingly popular.
In these programs, students are taught in both English
and Spanish on an alternating basis with a view to making
English-speakers fluent in Spanish and Spanishspeakers
fluent in English, thus making Spanish the
equal of English and transforming the United States into
a two-language country. Then U.S. Secretary of Education
Richard Riley explicitly endorsed these programs
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.
March | April 2004 39
Todos—Excellence for all.” Civil rights organizations,
church leaders (particularly Catholic ones), and many
politicians (Republican as well as Democrat) support
the impetus toward bilingualism.
Perhaps equally important, business groups seeking
to corner the Hispanic market support bilingualism
as well. Indeed, the orientation of U.S. businesses
to Hispanic customers means they increasingly
need bilingual employees; therefore, bilingualism is
affecting earnings. Bilingual police officers and firefighters
in southwestern cities such as Phoenix and
Las Vegas are paid more than those who only speak
English. In Miami, one study found, families that
spoke 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, increasing
numbers of Americans (particularly black Americans)
will not be able to receive the jobs or the pay
they would otherwise receive because they can speak
to their fellow citizens only in English.
In the debates over language policy, the late
California Republican Senator S.I. Hayakawa once
highlighted the unique role of Hispanics in opposing
English. “Why is it that no Filipinos, no Koreans
object to making English the official language?
No Japanese have done so. And certainly not the
Vietnamese, who are so damn happy to be here.
They’re learning English as fast as they can and
winning spelling bees all across the country. But the
Hispanics alone have maintained there is a problem.
There [has been] considerable movement to
make 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 government.
In many states, those aspiring to political
office might have to be fluent in both languages.
The special social and
cultural problems
posed by Mexican
immigration to the United States
have received little public attention
or meaningful discussion.
But many academic sociologists
and other scholars have warned
of them for years.
In 1983, the distinguished
sociologist Morris Janowitz
pointed to the “strong resistance
to acculturation among
Spanish-speaking residents” in
the United States, and argued
that “Mexicans are unique as
an immigrant group in the
persistent strength of their
communal bonds.” As a
result, “Mexicans, together
with other Spanish-speaking
populations, are creating a
bifurcation in the social-political
structure of the United States
that approximates nationality
divisions….”
Other scholars have reiterated
these warnings, emphasizing
how the size, persistence,
and regional concentration of
Mexican immigration obstruct
assimilation. In 1997, sociologists
Richard Alba and Victor
Nee pointed out that the fourdecade
interruption of largescale
immigration after 1924
“virtually guaranteed that ethnic
communities and cultures
would be steadily weakened
over time.” In contrast, continuation
of the current high levels
of Latin American immigration
“will create a fundamentally different
ethnic context from that
faced by the descendants of
European immigrants, for the
new ethnic communities are
highly likely to remain large,
culturally vibrant, and institutionally
rich.” Under current
conditions, sociologist Douglas
Massey agrees, “the character of
ethnicity will be determined relatively
more by immigrants and
relatively less by later generations,
shifting the balance of
ethnic identity toward the language,
culture, and ways of life
of the sending society.”
“A constant influx of new
arrivals,” demographers Barry
Edmonston and Jeffrey Passel
contend, “especially in predominantly
immigrant neighborhoods,
keeps the language
alive among immigrants and
their children.” Finally, American
Enterprise Institute scholar
Mark Falcoff also observes that
because “the Spanish-speaking
population is being continually
replenished by newcomers
faster than that population is
being assimilated,” the widespread
use of Spanish in the
United States “is a reality that
cannot be changed, even over
the longer term.” —S.P.H.
Early Warnings
40 Foreign Policy
[ The Hispanic Challenge ]
Bilingual candidates for president and elected federal
positions would have an advantage over English-only
speakers. If dual-language education
becomes prevalent in elementary and secondary
schools, teachers will increasingly be expected to be
bilingual. Government documents and forms could
routinely be published in both languages. The use
of both languages could become acceptable in congressional
hearings and debates and in the general
conduct of government
business. Because most of
those whose first language
is Spanish will also
probably have some fluency
in English, English
speakers lacking fluency
in Spanish are likely to
be and feel at a disadvantage
in the competition
for jobs, promotions,
and contracts. [See sidebar
on opposite page.]
In 1917, former U.S.
President Theodore Roosevelt
said: “We must
have but one flag. We
must also have but one
language. That must be
the language of the Declaration
of Independence,
of Washington’s Farewell
address, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and second
inaugural.” By contrast, in June 2000, U.S. president
Bill Clinton said, “I hope very much that I’m
the last president in American history who can’t
speak Spanish.” And in May 2001, President Bush
celebrated Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo national holiday
by inaugurating the practice of broadcasting
the weekly presidential radio address to the American
people in both English and Spanish. In September
2003, one of the first debates among the
Democratic Party’s presidential candidates also
took place in both English and Spanish. Despite the
opposition of large majorities of Americans, Spanish
is joining the language of Washington, Jefferson,
Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and the Kennedys as
the language of the United States. If this trend continues,
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.
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 States
in two significant ways: Important portions of the
country become predominantly Hispanic in language
and culture, and the nation as a whole becomes bilingual
and bicultural. The most important area where
Hispanization is proceeding rapidly is, of course, the
Southwest. As historian Kennedy argues, Mexican
Americans in the Southwest will soon have “sufficient
coherence and critical
mass in a defined region
so that, if they choose, they
can preserve their distinctive
culture indefinitely.
They could also eventually
undertake to do what
no previous immigrant
group could have dreamed
of doing: challenge the
existing cultural, political,
legal, commercial, and
educational systems to
change fundamentally not
only the language but also
the very institutions in
which they do business.”
Anecdotal evidence of
such challenges abounds.
In 1994, Mexican Americans
vigorously demonstrated
against California’s
Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits to
children of illegal immigrants—by marching through
the streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexican
flags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998,
at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Angeles,
Mexican Americans booed the U.S. national
anthem and assaulted U.S. players. Such dramatic
rejections of the United States and assertions of Mexican
identity are not limited to an extremist minority
in the Mexican-American community. Many Mexican
immigrants and their offspring simply do not
appear to identify primarily with the United States.
Empirical evidence confirms such appearances.
A 1992 study of children of immigrants in Southern
California and South Florida posed the following
question: “How do you identify, that is, what do you
call yourself?” None of the children born in Mexico
answered “American,” compared with 1.9 percent
to 9.3 percent of those born elsewhere in Latin
America or the Caribbean. The largest percentage of
The natives are restless: Members of the California Coalition
for Immigration Reform protest the arrival of Mexican
President Vicente Fox to California in March 2001. Fox had
called for looser restrictions on immigration between
Mexico and the United States.
SCOTTNELSON/AFP
March | April 2004 41
In the 1993 film Falling
Down, Michael Douglas
plays a white former
defense company employee
reacting to the humiliations that
he sees imposed on him by a
multicultural society. “From the
get-go,” wrote David Gates in
Newsweek, “the film pits Douglas—the
picture of obsolescent
rectitude with his white shirt,
tie, specs, and astronaut haircut—against
a rainbow coalition
of Angelenos. It’s a cartoon
vision of the beleaguered white
male in multicultural America.”
A plausible reaction to the
demographic changes underway
in the United States could be the
rise of an anti-Hispanic, antiblack,
and anti-immigrant movement
composed largely of white,
working- and middle-class males,
protesting their job losses to
immigrants and foreign countries,
the perversion of their culture,
and the displacement of
their language. Such a movement
can be labeled “white nativism.”
“Cultured, intelligent, and
often possessing impressive
degrees from some of America’s
premier colleges and universities,
this new breed of white racial
advocate is a far cry from the
populist politicians and hooded
Klansmen of the Old South,”
writes Carol Swain in her 2002
book, The New White Nationalism
in America. These new white
nationalists do not advocate
white racial supremacy but
believe in racial self-preservation
and affirm that culture is a product
of race. They contend that
the shifting U.S. demographics
foretell the replacement of white
culture by black or brown cultures
that are intellectually and
morally inferior.
Changes in the U.S. racial
balance underlie these concerns.
Non-Hispanic whites dropped
from 75.6 percent of the population
in 1990 to 69.1 percent in
2000. In California—as in
Hawaii, New Mexico, and the
District of Columbia—non-Hispanic
whites are now a minority.
Demographers predict that,
by 2040, non-Hispanic whites
could be a minority of all Americans.
Moreover, for several
decades, interest groups and
government elites have promoted
racial preferences and
affirmative action, which favor
blacks and nonwhite immigrants.
Meanwhile, pro-globalization
policies have shifted jobs
outside the United States, aggravated
income inequality, and
promoted declining real wages
for working-class Americans.
Actual and perceived losses
in power and status by any
social, ethnic, racial, or economic
group almost always produce
efforts to reverse those losses. In
1961, the population of Bosnia
and Herzegovina was 43 percent
Serb and 26 percent Muslim. In
1991, it was 31 percent Serb and
44 percent Muslim. The Serbs
reacted with ethnic cleansing. In
1990, the population of California
was 57 percent non-Hispanic
white and 26 percent Hispanic.
By 2040, it is predicted to be
31 percent non-Hispanic white
and 48 percent Hispanic. The
chance that California whites
will react like Bosnian Serbs is
about zero. The chance that they
will not react at all is also about
zero. Indeed, they already have
reacted by approving initiatives
against benefits for illegal immigrants,
affirmative action, and
bilingual education, as well as
by the movement of whites out
of the state. As more Hispanics
become citizens and politically
active, white groups are likely to
look for other ways of protecting
themselves.
Industrialization in the late
19th century produced losses for
U.S. farmers and led to agrarian
protest groups, including the
Populist movement, the Grange,
the Nonpartisan League, and
the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Today, white nativists
could well ask: If blacks and
Hispanics organize and lobby
for special privileges, why not
whites? If the National Association
for the Advancement of
Colored People and the National
Council of La Raza are legitimate
organizations, why not a
national organization promoting
white interests?
White nationalism is “the
next logical stage for identity
politics in America,” argues
Swain, making the United
States “increasingly at risk of
large-scale racial conflict
unprecedented in our nation’s
history.” The most powerful
stimulus to such white nativism
will be the cultural and linguistic
threats whites see from the
expanding power of Hispanics
in U.S. society.
—S.P.H.
The Threat of White Nativism?
42 Foreign Policy
[ The Hispanic Challenge ]
Mexican-born children (41.2 percent) identified
themselves as “Hispanic,” and the second largest
(36.2 percent) chose “Mexican.” Among MexicanAmerican
children born in the United States, less
than 4 percent responded “American,” compared to
28.5 percent to 50 percent of those born in the
United States with parents from elsewhere in Latin
America. Whether born in Mexico or in the United
States, Mexican children overwhelmingly did not
choose “American” as their primary identification.
Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista
(re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by
Mexican immigrants is well underway. A meaningful
move to reunite these territories with Mexico seems
unlikely, but Prof. Charles Truxillo of the University
of New Mexico predicts that by 2080 the southwestern
states of the United States and the northern states
of Mexico will form La República del Norte (The
Republic of the North). Various writers have referred
to the southwestern United States plus northern Mexico
as “MexAmerica” or “Amexica” or “Mexifornia.”
“We are all Mexicans in this valley,” a former county
commissioner of El Paso, Texas, declared in 2001.
This trend could consolidate the Mexican-dominant
areas of the United States into an autonomous, culturally
and linguistically distinct, and economically
self-reliant bloc within the United States. “We may be
building toward the one thing that will choke the melting
pot,” warns former National Intelligence Council
Vice Chairman Graham Fuller, “an ethnic area and
grouping so concentrated that it will not wish, or need,
to undergo assimilation into the mainstream of American
multi-ethnic English-speaking life.”
A prototype of such a region already exists—in
Miami.
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 speakers—overwhelmingly
Cuban—established their dominance
in virtually every aspect of the city’s life, fundamentally
changing its ethnic composition, culture,
politics, and language. The Hispanization of Miami
is without precedent in the history of U.S. cities.
The economic growth of Miami, led by the early
Cuban immigrants, made the city a magnet for
migrants from other Latin American and Caribbean
countries. By 2000, two thirds of Miami’s people
were Hispanic, and more than half were Cuban or
of Cuban descent. In 2000, 75.2 percent of adult
Miamians spoke a language other than English at
home, compared to 55.7 percent of the residents of
Los Angeles and 47.6 percent of New Yorkers. (Of
Miamians speaking a non-English language at home,
87.2 percent spoke Spanish.) In 2000, 59.5 percent
of Miami residents were foreign-born, compared to
40.9 percent in Los Angeles, 36.8 percent in San
Francisco, and 35.9 percent in New York. In 2000,
only 31.1 percent of adult Miami residents said they
spoke English very well, compared to 39.0 percent
in Los Angeles, 42.5 percent in San Francisco, and
46.5 percent in New York.
The Cuban takeover had major consequences
for Miami. The elite and entrepreneurial class fleeing
the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in
the 1960s started dramatic economic development
in South Florida. Unable to send money home,
they invested in Miami. Personal income growth in
Miami averaged 11.5 percent a year in the 1970s
and 7.7 percent a year in the 1980s. Payrolls in
Miami-Dade County tripled between 1970 and
1995. The Cuban economic drive made Miami an
international economic dynamo, with expanding
international trade and investment. The Cubans
promoted international tourism, which, by the
1990s, exceeded domestic tourism and made
Miami a leading center of the cruise ship industry.
Major U.S. corporations in manufacturing, communications,
and consumer products moved their
Latin American headquarters to Miami from other
U.S. and Latin American cities. A vigorous Spanish
artistic and entertainment community emerged.
Today, the Cubans can legitimately claim that, in
the words of Prof. Damian Fernández of Florida
International University, “We built modern
Miami,” and made its economy larger than those
of many Latin American countries.
A key part of this development was the expansion
of Miami’s economic ties with Latin America.
Brazilians, Argentines, Chileans, Colombians, and
Venezuelans flooded into Miami, bringing their
money with them. By 1993, some $25.6 billion in
international trade, mostly involving Latin
America, moved through the city. Throughout the
hemisphere, Latin Americans concerned with
investment, trade, culture, entertainment, holidays,
and drug smuggling increasingly turned to Miami.
Such eminence transformed Miami into a
Cuban-led, Hispanic city. The Cubans did not, in
the traditional pattern, create an enclave immigrant
neighborhood. Instead, they created an enclave city
March | April 2004 43
with its own culture and
economy, in which assimilation
and Americanization
were unnecessary and in
some measure undesired. By
2000, Spanish was not just
the language spoken in most
homes, it was also the principal
language of commerce,
business, and politics. The
media and communications
industry became increasingly
Hispanic. In 1998, a Spanishlanguage
television station
became the number-one station
watched by Miamians—
the first time a foreign-language
station achieved that
rating in a major U.S. city.
“They’re outsiders,” one successful
Hispanic said of nonHispanics.
“Here we are members of the power
structure,” another boasted.
“In Miami there is no pressure to be American,”
one Cuban-born sociologist observed. “People can
make a living perfectly well in an enclave that speaks
Spanish.” By 1999, the heads of Miami’s largest
bank, largest real estate development company, and
largest law firm were all Cuban-born or of Cuban
descent. The Cubans also established their dominance
in politics. By 1999, the mayor of Miami and
the mayor, police chief, and state attorney of MiamiDade
County, plus two thirds of Miami’s U.S.
Congressional delegation and nearly one half of its
state legislators, were of Cuban origin. In the wake
of the Elián González affair in 2000, the nonHispanic
city manager and police chief in Miami
City were replaced by Cubans.
The Cuban and Hispanic dominance of Miami
left Anglos (as well as blacks) as outside minorities
that could often be ignored. Unable to communicate
with government bureaucrats and discriminated
against by store clerks, the Anglos came to
realize, as one of them put it, “My God, this is what
it’s like to be the minority.” The Anglos had three
choices. They could accept their subordinate and
outsider position. They could attempt to adopt
the manners, customs, and language of the Hispanics
and assimilate into the Hispanic community—“acculturation
in reverse,” as the scholars Alejandro
Portes and Alex Stepick labeled it. Or they
could leave Miami, and between 1983 and 1993,
about 140,000 did just that, their exodus reflected
in a popular bumper sticker: “Will the last
American 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 southwest
United States? In the end, the results could be
similar: the creation of a large, distinct, Spanishspeaking
community with economic and political
resources sufficient to sustain its Hispanic identity
apart from the national identity of other Americans
and also able to influence U.S. politics, government,
and society. However, the processes by which this
result might come about differ. The Hispanization of
Miami has been rapid, explicit, and economically
driven. The Hispanization of the Southwest has
been slower, unrelenting, and politically driven. The
Cuban influx into Florida was intermittent and
responded to the policies of the Cuban government.
Mexican immigration, on the other hand, is continuous,
includes a large illegal component, and
shows no signs of tapering. The Hispanic (that is,
largely Mexican) population of Southern California
far exceeds in number but has yet to reach the proportions
of the Hispanic population of Miami—
though it is increasing rapidly.
The early Cuban immigrants in South Florida
were largely middle and upper class. Subsequent
Se habla español: A Los Angeles newsstand offers dozens of Spanish-language titles.
JILLCONNELLY/GAMMAPRESS
44 Foreign Policy
[ The Hispanic Challenge ]
immigrants were more lower class. In the Southwest,
overwhelming numbers of Mexican immigrants
have been poor, unskilled, and poorly educated,
and their children are likely to face similar
conditions. The pressures toward Hispanization
in the Southwest thus come from below, whereas
those in South Florida came from above. In the long
run, however, numbers are power, particularly in
a multicultural society, a political democracy, and
a consumer economy.
Another major difference concerns the relations
of Cubans and Mexicans with their countries of origin.
The Cuban community has been united in its
hostility to the Castro regime and in its efforts to
punish and overthrow that regime. The Cuban government
has responded in kind. The Mexican community
in the United States has been more ambivalent
and nuanced in its attitudes toward the
Mexican government. Since the 1980s, however,
the Mexican government has sought to expand the
numbers, wealth, and political power of the Mexican
community in the U.S. Southwest and to integrate
that population with Mexico. “The Mexican
nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its
borders,” Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said in
the 1990s. His successor, Vicente Fox, called Mexican
emigrants “heroes” and describes himself as
president of 123 million Mexicans, 100 million in
Mexico and 23 million in the United States.
As their numbers increase, Mexican Americans
feel increasingly comfortable with their own culture
and often contemptuous of American culture. They
demand recognition of their culture and the historic
Mexican identity of the U.S. Southwest. They call
attention to and celebrate their Hispanic and Mexican
past, as in the 1998 ceremonies and festivities
in Madrid, New Mexico, attended by the vice president
of Spain, honoring the establishment 400
years earlier of the first European settlement in
the Southwest, almost a decade before Jamestown.
As the New York Times reported in September
1999, Hispanic growth has been able to “help
‘Latinize’ many Hispanic people who are finding it
easier to affirm their heritage…. [T]hey find
strength in numbers, as younger generations grow
up with more ethnic pride and as a Latin influence
starts permeating fields such as entertainment,
advertising, and politics.” One index foretells the
future: In 1998, “José” replaced “Michael” as the
most popular name for newborn boys in both California
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 United
States reduces the incentives for cultural assimilation.
Mexican Americans no longer think of themselves
as members of a small minority who must accommodate
the dominant group and adopt its culture. As their
numbers increase, they become more committed to
their own ethnic identity and culture. Sustained numerical
expansion promotes cultural consolidation and
leads Mexican Americans not to minimize but to glory
in the differences between their culture and U.S. culture.
As the president of the National Council of La
Raza said in 1995: “The biggest problem we have is
a cultural clash, a clash between our values and the values
in American society.” He then went on to spell out
the superiority of Hispanic values to American values.
In similar fashion, Lionel Sosa, a successful MexicanAmerican
businessman in Texas, in 1998 hailed the
emerging Hispanic middle-class professionals who
look like Anglos, but whose “values remain quite different
from an Anglo’s.”
To be sure, as Harvard University political scientist
Jorge I. Domínguez has pointed out, Mexican
Americans are more favorably disposed toward
democracy than are Mexicans. Nonetheless, “ferocious
differences” exist between U.S. and Mexican cultural
values, as Jorge Castañeda (who later served as
Mexico’s foreign minister) observed in 1995. Castañeda
cited differences in social and economic equality,
the unpredictability of events, concepts of time epitomized
in the mañana syndrome, the ability to achieve
results quickly, and attitudes toward history, expressed
in the “cliché that Mexicans are obsessed with history,
Americans with the future.” Sosa identifies several
Hispanic traits (very different from Anglo-Protestant
ones) that “hold us Latinos back”: mistrust of people
outside the family; lack of initiative, self-reliance, and
ambition; little use for education; and acceptance of
poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven.
Author Robert Kaplan quotes Alex Villa, a thirdgeneration
Mexican American in Tucson, Arizona,
as saying that he knows almost no one in the Mexican
community of South Tucson who believes in “education
and hard work” as the way to material prosperity
and is thus willing to “buy into America.”
Profound cultural differences clearly separate Mexicans
and Americans, and the high level of immigration
from Mexico sustains and reinforces the prevalence of
Mexican values among Mexican Americans.
Continuation of this large immigration (without
improved assimilation) could divide the United States
March | April 2004 45
into a country of two languages and two cultures.
A few stable, prosperous democracies—such as
Canada and Belgium—fit this pattern. The differences
in culture within these countries, however, do
not approximate those between the United States and
Mexico, and even in these countries language differences
persist. Not many Anglo-Canadians are
equally fluent in English and French, and the Canadian
government has had to impose penalties to get
its top civil servants to achieve dual fluency. Much
the same lack of dual competence is true of Walloons
and Flemings in Belgium. The transformation of
the United States into a country like these would not
necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however,
be the end of the America we have known for
more than three centuries. Americans should not let
that change happen unless they are convinced that
this new nation would be a better one.
Such a transformation would not only revolutionize
the United States, but it would also have
serious consequences for Hispanics, who will be in
the United States but not of it. Sosa ends his book,
The Americano Dream, with encouragement for
aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. “The Americano
dream?” he asks. “It exists, it is realistic, and it is
there for all of us to share.” Sosa is wrong. There is
no Americano dream. There is only the American
dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican
Americans will share in that dream and in that
society only if they dream in English.
For an overview of U.S. immigration, see David Heer’s Immigration in America’s Future: Social Science
Findings and the Policy Debate (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). Roger Daniels provides a recent
history of U.S. immigration policy in Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigrants and Immigration
Policy Since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003). A sophisticated analysis of the costs and
benefits of immigration is George J. Borjas’s Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
On the ability of immigrants to assimilate, consult Milton M. Gordon’s Assimilation in American
Life: 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 Mainstream:
Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
See also Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passel’s (eds.) Immigration and Ethnicity: The Integration of
America’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 Immigration
in Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge: Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center
for Latin American Studies, 1998), edited by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. Very different but equally
important aspects of U.S.-Mexican relations are discussed in Abraham F. Lowenthal and Katrina
Burgess’s (eds.) The California-Mexico Connection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993) and
Jorge 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 The
Melting Border: Mexico and Mexican Communities in the United States (Washington: Center for
Equal Opportunity, 2000) and Peter Andreas’s Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2000). Doris Meissner offers her perspectives and experiences on
immigration 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 Peter
Skerry’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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