Posted on 07/24/2006 2:02:13 PM PDT by Mount Athos
The myth of the redemptive Hispanic is finally cracking. For years, conservative open-borders advocates have touted Hispanic “family values” as a prime reason to increase immigration. Hispanic immigrants, these conservatives say, will save America from itself. At a time when Anglo and black families are disintegrating, when society is becoming increasingly atomized and alienated, Hispanics will bring the traditional values that the country so desperately needs. In a classic iteration of the theme, Larry Kudlow wrote on NRO last May that Hispanic immigrants would “become a much-needed churchgoing blue-collar middle class . . . that is crucial to a healthy America.”
The truth is now supplanting the fiction. Last Friday, the New York Times ran an editorial, “Young Latinas and a Cry for Help,” that laid out the real state of the Hispanic family. A quarter of all Latinas are mothers by the age of 20, few of them married, reported the Times. This out-of-wedlock teen-birth rate is three times that of white teens, and significantly more than that of blacks as well. The Hispanic dropout rate is also the highest in the country — the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene puts it at 47 percent.
There is simply no way to square the facts about Hispanic family breakdown with the myth of the redemptive Hispanic. Talk to any social worker and she will tell you that illegitimacy has become completely normalized among her Hispanic clients. And the usual explanation for this epidemic of illegitimacy — an unresolved culture clash between young people and their traditional parents — is equally bogus. The mothers of teen mothers are themselves completely on board with single parenting, say the social workers, having often been single parents themselves. And they have no qualms about hooking their daughter and grandchildren into the public-benefits apparatus: “It’s now culturally OK for that population to be served by the welfare system,” says a case manager in a Santa Ana, Calif., home for teen mothers.
Far from exercising a brake on the erosion of traditional values, as conservative immigration advocates claim, the growing Hispanic population will provide the impetus for more government alternatives to personal responsibility. Advocates for young unwed mommies in the South Bronx are agitating for more day-care centers in high schools to accommodate the students’ children, reports El Diario/LA PRENSA. Demand for the 18 day-care slots at Bronx Regional High School, for example, far outstrips the supply, an 18-year-old Hispanic mother who attends the school told the paper. A bill has been introduced in Congress, the Latina Adolescent Suicide Prevention Act, to channel $10 million in federal funds to “culturally competent” social agencies to improve the self-esteem of Latina girls and to provide “support services” to their families and friends if they contemplate suicide.
For the New York Times, of course, the inevitable expansion of the welfare state is the glowing silver lining to this cultural catastrophe. With the usual melodrama that accompanies the pitch for more government services, the Times designates young Latinas as “endangered” in the same breath that it discloses that they are one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. “The time to help is now,” says the Times — by which it means ratcheting up the taxpayer-subsidized social-work industry.
It strains credulity to think that conservatives will fend off this push to meet social dysfunction with bigger government. Since the open-borders advocates have yet to acknowledge the facts of Hispanic family breakdown, there is no way of knowing what their solution to it is. One in four women in the U.S. will be Hispanic by the middle of the century, reports the Times — in states like California, they will be the majority. Unless Hispanic illegitimacy is stemmed, it is hard to see how the American family will be in a stronger state in future decades than it is today.
Conservatives, including open-borders conservatives, market themselves as the party of realism and common sense. A recent manifesto for immigration amnesty and liberalized entry rules in the Wall Street Journal bragged: “Conservatives have always prided themselves on acknowledging, in the words of John Adams, that ‘Facts are stubborn things.’” More stubborn still, however, is the unwillingness of open borders proponents to acknowledge social facts that undercut their cause.
...but they pay taxes right?
The search feature isn't working too well for me lately
"...but they pay taxes right? "
Your point being?
This author makes the same mistake that most Libs make when discussing this subject. Don't confuse the conservative values of a legal immigrant, who stood in line for years at an American Consolate until they could prove they had the means and the ability to make it in this country, with an illegal immigrant who flaunts all laws to sneak into this country illegally, work illegally, then demand social services.
In short, Latinos will more likely want a USA similar to the welfare state of Peurto Rico.
I am glad Heather wrote this. I see this in my own neighborhood and especially in Jackson Heights, Queens, where young Hispanic girls frequently have babies with whoknowswhatman. I am told that they show up at church but rarely donate and expect services. Jackson Heights has a terrible problem with overcrowding, drug dealing and prostitution. The middle class gains that the neighborhood has had are being destroyed once again. The schools are a mess.
No, the author didn't make that same mistake. She was pointing out that others had.
I've been saying this for years. Most Hispanics are NOT conservatives in any sense. In fact, their lifestyle is less conservative than that of most liberals. Alcoholism, illegitimacy, divorce, and adultery are rampant in Hispanic communities.
I think the conservative strategy is just to have parity with liberals on new Hispanics, or at least keep it 60/40.
"Conservatives, including open-borders conservatives, "
There is no such animal as an open borders conservative, period!
This article is more a discussion about culture than immigration. But, you go ahead and try to deflect the real reasons behind the article - the myth of the conservative hispanic.
You call Cuban Hispanics liberal? The premise of this essay is much too broad to paint all "hispanics" with the same brush.
There is a culture of perpetual poverty in the Hispanic community, I know, and it is very similar to the culture of perpetual poverty of the African Americans and the "ghetto".
The "barrio" mentality guarentees that this cycle will continue from generation to generation. The article points out all of the warning signs: That unwed pregnancies are no longer stigmatized, that it is acceptable to be on perpetual welfare, etc.
However, what is the root cause of this "barrio" mentality? The failure to assimilate into the "American" culture, instead relying on others in their own community due to their undocumeted status, and fueled I admit by biggoted Whites in their refusal to accept them. So instead they have turned inward and created their own subworld that has slowly morphed into what we have today.
Unfortunately the answer does not lie, as the author suggests, in more government programs, but instead in the Hispanic community itself changing the way they view education, self reliance, and responsibility. Unfortunately, for Hispanic leadership, like La Raza, victimhood is their only ticket to power, so since the change cannot be imposed from outside, and will not be adopted on the inside, things won't change.
The premise of "open border" and "amnesty" is what I was attacking. Did you not see those words in the last few paragraphs? The author was using the entire article as an argument against open borders and amnesty, which I agree, but not because Hispanics are inately "not conservative."
I didn't understand anything like that being suggested in the article by the author. Read it again, please, without speed-reading.
Unfortunately the answer does not lie, as the author indicates others suggest s , in more government programs, but instead in the Hispanic community itself changing the way they view education, self reliance, and responsibility.
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