The next generation will speak Spanish

The most important domestic issue in the United States today is that of Hispanic immigration. It will shape the future of the world's most powerful nation, a nation which just might become in 20 years time the largest Latin American country on earth. It is not quite science fiction to suggest that not long after the year 2000, the US might be facing its second great crisis, the first having been the Civil War between the North and South, and the second a struggle between the English speaking and the Spanish speaking citizens of the Republic.

It is widely agreed that "something must be done". Now a Bill is before Congress which is attempting to "do something". And yet what has happened? The Wall Street Journal, a conservative newspaper, has printed a leading article proposing that if Washington wants to "do something" it should enact the five word constitutional amendment saying "There shall be open borders."

The place to see it all most clearly is at San Ysidro, on the Mexican border. After dark they come over. The border patrol chases them with helicopters, search lights and horses. Those caught are invited to go back, which they do, and try again another day. It is a game because, as the horsemen say, what's out there beyond, to the east? What's out there is 2,000 miles of unguarded frontier. What are you going to do, they say, put up an electric fence? Build a Berlin Wall across a continent?

What is different about this new wave of immigrants? The difference is that by and large they are not adopting English as their native tongue, or, many of them, even learning much English at all. The old immigrants, to get jobs and also as a matter of pride, learned English. That was the melting pot. But the new Hispanics are determinedly sticking to Spanish.

Whether or not the Bill becomes law, the issues will remain. And so will the patriotic sentiments expressed by the Wall Street Journal. And what are the reasons of this Conservative journal for making this radical proposal? They are that people have always been America's greatest resource, and that her open door policy made her historically the envy of the world. That, implicitly, a free economy, with growth and opportunity, are the American virtues. That the issues of immigration and growth touch the fundamental character of a nation.

The old immigration will not return, the new immigration is of a different nature. There would be no point in an Ellis Island on the US Mexican border, because the new teeming masses would just walk round it.