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The Hispanic Challenge

By Samuel P. Huntington Page 1 of 12


March/April 2004

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 Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.

America 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 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; religious 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 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 low-income 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 Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking United States would disappear, and with it, a major potential threat to the country's cultural and political integrity.

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I don't think it is saying it is unique to Mexico.

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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 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.

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Pressures for further immigration restrictions arose from several quarters of American society. Advocates for American workers wanted to forestall competition from cheap foreign labor. The Boston-based Immigration Restriction League joined this chorus of alarm with calls to require a "literacy test" as a condition of entry into the United States. The League's proposal was given more credence with the publication of Carl Brigham's Study of American Intelligence, which cited the supposed low quality of army recruits of southern and eastern European heritage.

The sheer number of new arrivals troubled many U.S. citizens. In the late 1870's, the annual average number of immigrants fell just short of 150,000. By the turn of the century, that number had increased to almost 800,000, and in 1907 it passed 11/4 million. As the numbers of immigrants increased, eugenicists allied themselves with other interest groups to provide biological arguments to support immigration restriction.

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The resulting law, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, was designed consciously to halt the immigration of supposedly "dysgenic" Italians and eastern European Jews, whose numbers had mushroomed during the period from 1900 to 1920. The method was simply to scale the number of immigrants from each country in proportion to their percentage of the U.S. population in the 1890 census – when northern and western Europeans were the dominant immigrants. Under the new law, the quota of southern and eastern Europeans was reduced from 45% to 15%. The 1924 Act ended the greatest era of immigration in U.S. history.

Upon signing the Act, President Calvin Coolidge commented, "America must remain American." This phrase would become the rallying cry of anti-immigration sentiment until after World War II. The eugenic intent of the 1924 law and the quota system it established remained in place until they were repealed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. (emphasis added)

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The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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The difference is that there are enough hispanics that they can actually have nearly self-sufficient communities which allow immigrants to speak only spanish in almost all of their activities (buying groceries, car repair etc) which means they don't have to learn English.

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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 Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.

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My only problem with Hispanic immigrants is that I don't speak Spanish. That's my problem, not theirs. English isn't any better than Spanish.

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It's not that English is any better than Spanish. It's that this is an English-speaking country, and while there are plenty of people who speak other languages, the country as a whole is not bilingual. Nor should it be, IMO, but that's not my point.

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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 low-income U.S. citizens would improve. [Says who?] Debates over the use of Spanish and whether English should be made the official language of state and national governments would subside. [Just from stopping immigration? What of all the Latinos already here? Have they been deported in Huntington's dream scenario?]Bilingual education and the controversies it spawns would virtually disappear, as would controversies over welfare and other benefits for immigrants. [See my comment above.] 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 Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking United States would disappear, and with it, a major potential threat to the country's cultural and political integrity.

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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.

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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 Spanish-speakers fluent in English, thus making Spanish the equal of English and transforming the United States into a two-language country.

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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. 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.

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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 Mexican-born children (41.2 percent) identified themselves as “Hispanic,” and the second largest (36.2 percent) chose “Mexican.” Among Mexican-American 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.

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This is not "empirical evidence" of anything but loaded questions and alarmist writing. I'm sure these kids didn't realize that being Hispanic was mutually exclusive with being American, and that their whole culture would be judged by their responses. Huntington also fails to take into account that American culture trains kids to self-identify this way. On all the standardized tests, kids have to bubble in their ethnic background. "American" is not an option. You also cannot be Hispanic and White, or Hispanic and Black. In light of this, self-identifying as Hispanic would seem the most natural thing. It would also seem to me to be completely benign, and not at all evidence of an underlying disloyalty to the United States on the part of these children.

Speaking of fear tactics, I got a kick out of his referring to the Mexican immigration into the Southwest as a "Reconquista"! You better look out, Gringos, because this used to be our land! Now we're back, and we're pissed!

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By 2000, two thirds of Miami's people were Hispanic,

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. . . and more than half were Cuban or of Cuban descent.

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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.

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The Cubans did not, in the traditional pattern, create an enclave immigrant neighborhood. Instead, they created an enclave city with its own culture and economy, in which assimilation and Americanization were unnecessary and in some measure undesired.

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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 Spanish-language 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.

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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.”

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. . . 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.”

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They did indeed leave Miami. Because of their own prejudice. One of the reasons for my instinctive dislike of all things related to Broward County. But the fact that people feel threatened by blacks does not mean that blacks are bad, or that the threat is legitimate. Same goes here. And I remember that hate-filled bumper sticker. And this Cuban-American who learned English as a second language would be delighted to explain the difference between "bring" and "take" to any English-speaking Anglo Americans who aren't sure what it is.

One of the most annoying things about the article is how he waffles on the nature of the threat. MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS = UNSUCCESSFUL = A BAD THING. CUBAN IMMIGRANTS = SUCCESSFUL = A BAD THING. Well, he can't have it both ways!

Now, looking at some evidence, and some thoughts by other people . . .

Earl Shorris, in his book, Latinos: A Biography of the People (1992), contrasts the immigrant experience of Latinos with that of Europeans of the past two centuries.

According to Shorris, Europeans were welcomed with "the new social contract" which guarantees success for, if not the immigrant, then for his/her children (132). In the case of the Latino immigrant only a small percentage have been able to experience this "new social contract," but when this element is present:

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[T]he Latino family behaves in the classic immigrant pattern. The parents struggle; the children go to college; the family joins the middle class. Social mobility is understood as a clause in the new contract, the prophecy is self-fulfilling. (132)

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Interestingly, despite lacking a high school diploma, low-skilled immigrants still outperform native dropouts in the labor market. Low-skilled male immigrants are more likely to work, as shown by their higher labor force participation rates, and less likely to be unemployed.

Because of this commitment to work and despite other disadvantages, immigrants assimilate and surpass income levels of like[i] natives after about 16 to 20 years in the United States.[emphasis added—[i]like natives refers to those of the same educational level. Since natives typically have a higher educational level than immigrants, this statistic should not be interpreted to mean that immigrants are surpassing natives at large.]

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Turning to the data, educational assimilation appears alive and well.
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Hispanic immigrants do much worse in general, but also improve the most. In the first generation, about 44 percent lack a high school diploma, this rate improves to 15 and 16 percent, respectively, in the second and third generations.

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So what of the melting pot? It continues to simmer successfully, much as it did 100 years ago.

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At first glance, this would seem to reinforce a conclusion reached by economists Jeffrey Grogger and Stephen J. Trejo in a 2002 Public Policy Institute of California study that progress “appears to stall after the second generation” among Mexican Americans. However, Grogger and Trejo come to this conclusion using a statistical method different from that used by Smith. While Smith compares successive generations – matching up immigrant fathers with their native-born sons and grandsons – Grogger and Trejo compare all first-, second- and third-generation Mexican Americans within the same 1996-1999 time period. As a result, their study does not measure the inter-generational progress experienced by earlier groups of Mexican Americans. Moreover, as Smith points out in a 2001 study, the relative “stagnation” experienced by Latinos in closing their wage gap with native whites began in the 1980s and also occurred among African Americans, suggesting it is related to changes in the U.S. labor market not specific to any one ethnic group.

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Contemporary Mexican and, more broadly, Latin American immigration is without precedent in U.S. history.[/url]

with HispanicVista's research:

[quote]The striking similarity between warnings issued by contemporary restrictionists about Latin American immigrants and those issued by their counterparts during the previous wave of immigration from Europe suggest that these concerns are more a matter of historical perspective than of substance.

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For instance, Representative Tom Tancredo (R-6th/CO), chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, declares that in the United States today the “vast majority of immigrants are low-skill, low-wage earners, and are a drain on this nation due to their level of poverty.” He asserts that “we are reducing the standard of living for millions of Americans. We are creating linguistic ghettos where millions of immigrants speak no English while replicating living standards such as those found in Haiti, Calcutta and poor nations.” Tancredo argues that “contrary to what has happened in the United States in the past in our history where immigrant families have come, labored hard, their children have then gone on to the next stage,” the children of Mexican immigrants “are dropping out of high school, never getting to college, and Hispanic Americans…are not moving ahead and achieving the same sorts of goals as immigrants of the past.” He warns that “Massive immigration in this country will determine not just what kind of Nation we will be, but whether we will be a Nation at all.”

In 1891, then-Representative Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) expressed similar worries about the wave of immigration that brought Representative Tancredo’s grandparents from Italy to the United States. He warned “that immigration to this country is increasing and…is making its greatest relative increase from races most alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races.” He was speaking principally of the Italians, but also the Russians, Poles and Hungarians. He observed that these immigrants, “half of whom have no occupation and most of whom represent the rudest form of labor,” are “people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.” Lodge complained that many of them “have no money at all. They land in this country without a cent in their pockets.” Of the Italians in particular he objected that many “stay but a short time in the United States” in order to “then return to their native country with such money as they have been able to save here.” He warned that these sorts of immigrants, “who come to the United States, reduce the rate of wages by ruinous competition, and then take their savings out of the country, are not desirable. They are mere birds of passage. They form an element in the population which regards home as a foreign country, instead of that in which they live and earn money. They have no interest or stake in the country, and they never become American citizens.”

The passage of time has since proven Lodge wrong concerning the upward mobility of Italian Americans, as Representative Tancredo can attest. Many observers, when confronted by large numbers of first-generation immigrants who have not yet begun to climb the socioeconomic ladder and master English, fear that these newcomers and their descendants never will rise above their humble beginnings. But this fear owes much to the difference in perspective inherent in experiencing a wave of immigration while it is occurring as opposed to studying it a hundred years after the fact.

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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 Mexican-American 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.

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Nearly nine out of ten Hispanics feel it is important for them to change so that they blend into American society. Nearly nine out of ten Latinos also feel it is essential for them to maintain their distinct culture, according to a study conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, and Harvard University. The Hispanic stance on assimilation is, therefore, a true paradox. The question is whether Latinos can simultaneously integrate into America and preserve their Hispanic identity.

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No one does it better than Icarus.

I have to confess that I find the issue of hispanic immigration and the coming minority status of wasps to be a far more interesting and, dare I say, vital topic than gay marriage. Even if the impact is a totally positive one, I think the impact of immigration on the future will be much more strongly felt than letting gay people marry and adopt. That is to say, I'm not sure that in one sense I disagree with the overall thrust of the article that hispanic immigration isn't going to have a large impact in some fashion on what it is to be American. I think what that impact will be is worthy of discussion.

While I understand and respect the fears of those who oppose gay marriage ('they're' going to make our kids gay), you basically find the same fears in this article (they're going to turn the country/my kids into Mexico/Mexicans). And I think that's the word that should be used and, I'd like to point out, Icarus did use--'xenophobia'. I think the article is more accurately a potrait of fear and concern about the future than bigotry and hate. With all due respect to Icarus and every other hispanic on this board, I think the fears of those who oppose, or are ambivalent about, immigration should be listened to and addressed rather than summarily dismissed as 'bigoted' as many people in this thread did (though they may very well be). No one has anything to contrast a point of view with until someone puts up an opposing view point complete with facts, as Mr. Icarus did.

I don't know if anyone besides Icarus got to page 12, but it was tremendously fascinating:

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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, anti-black, 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.

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