The Mexican immigration wave

Peter Brimelow:

Poor, illiterate Mexicans, like most other Hispanic immigrants, don't do particularly well in the sophisticated American economy. Nor do their children. In fact, there is recent evidence that, even after four generations, fewer than 10 per cent of Mexicans have post-high-school degrees, as opposed to nearly half of non-Mexican-Americans. Basically, the US is importing a new underclass.

Even more striking, the US Census has for the first time begun to pick up the existence of individuals—most, but not all, Hispanic—who are American-born (and thus citizens) but who can't speak English very well. In 2000 there were 5.6 million, an increase of 40 per cent since 1990. Unmistakably, the melting pot has sprung a leak.

Mass immigration was unleashed by the 1965 Immigration Act. Before that there had been a four-decade period of virtually no immigration—one of many such little-recognized pauses, stretching back into colonial times and critical to the process of assimilation. Matters were made worse after 1965 by the collapse of immigration controls on the southern border and elsewhere. (The Eisenhower administration abruptly ended a very similar illegal immigration crisis in the 1950s by deporting more than a million illegals in its now forgotten Operation Wetback.)

Because Americans of all races have brought their family size down to replacement level, the impact of this new wave of immigration is exceptional in US history. Without immigration, the Census Bureau projects, the population will stabilize somewhere around 300 million. But with current immigration it will rise by 2050 to 400 million, perhaps even 500 million.

And because the 1965 reforms instituted a perverse selection process that skewed immigration, not merely towards the unskilled but towards the Third World, the decade of 2050 is the point when American whites, 90 per cent of the population in 1960, will become a minority.

Children, Grandchildren Of Mexican Immigrants Fail To Close The Education Gap

Importing A New Underclass: More Evidence

Mass Immigration Eats Through The Melting Pot

Time For Operation Wetback II

2050 - Minority Boom