It’s assimilation, nothing more

On one level, it is the nativist nightmare coming true. Yet in reality, it is just evidence that the growing Latino population is assimilating itself into the society of the United States.

I’m referring to the new study by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center, which took a look at the current Latino population and focused on the children – the generation whose lives will dominate the 21st Century.

THE GROUP FOUND that the percentage of immigrants’ kids who were born in the United States is on the rise. It’s 52 percent (just over half).

Which means that while some people want to demonize the parents who weren’t born in the United States and talk about how they should be deported and take their families with them, that isn’t practical.

Because the kids are U.S. citizens with the same rights as any other citizen of this country. Unless political people want to start taking actions that will be blatantly illegal (and will cause universal condemnation in the history books written a few decades from now), they’re going to have to accept the fact that these newcomers, whether they have all their papers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in line or not, largely are here to stay.

It’s not “amnesty,” as much as it’s just recognizing reality.

THE PEW HISPANIC Center figures there are about 16 million people under 18 in this country who can identify as Latino (that word is my choice, its appropriateness is the subject of a future commentary). Those 16 million make up about 22 percent of all children in the U.S. these days.

Yet the center did its own analysis, which claims that the number of “second-generation” kids is about to peak. The result will be a significant rise in the percentage of “third-generation” Latinos (born to U.S. citizen parents).

That figure currently sits at 37 percent, but could soon become the majority of Latino kids in and of itself.

And those kids are largely legitimate, when it comes to immigration status. The Pew study found that about 7 percent of the 16 million are not U.S. citizens, but two-thirds of those kids were from the 11 percent of the Latino youth population that are foreign-born (first generation).

OF THE SECOND-generation majority, about 40 percent of them have at least one parent whose immigration status is uncertain. These are the kids who get caught up in the partisan political battles over whether they “belong” in the United States.

But my point is that they are not the majority of Latino youth. The typical Latino kid has just as much legal right to be in this country as anyone else, and people are going to have to quit thinking of them as “foreigners” just because they might not fit some nitwit’s theoretical concept of what a U.S. resident should be.

In short, it is assimilation. The United States of the 21st Century is going to have a significant portion with a Latino complexion, and some people who now want to demonize such a thought had better come to accept it as fact.

Either that, or the psychologists of the future are going to be busy addressing Anglo patients with ethnic hang-ups.

AS OFTEN AS I use these commentaries to rant or harangue people who tout nativist beliefs, I have to admit I honestly don’t worry about them too much. In large part, it is because I believe their thoughts will die out. One day, the nonsense rhetoric we hear these days whenever immigration reform comes up will be the subject of laughter in school classrooms.

Kids of the future will be amazed we were ever pathetic enough to believe such nonsense.

It’s the numbers. It’s the fact. The Latino population is growing at a significant rate (even though some people want to celebrate the fact that the nation’s current economic struggles have caused a temporary drop in the rate at which people are coming from Latin American countries).

The fact is that the numbers are too large to be ignored. My home town of Chicago is expected to reach a point some time around 2020 where it will have roughly equal percentages of white, black and Latino people.

THE COUNTRY AS a whole could reach that point by mid-century, and the day will come when it is the communities without a significant Latino population that will be the exception (we’re already headed in that direction).

That actually is part of the premise of a book I recently read. Entitled, “The Next 100 Years” by George Friedman, he tries to predict what our world will look like by the year 2100.

A portion of his analysis focuses on Mexico and the fact that it will start to give the United States some competition for dominance in North America (which Friedman sees as the continent that will influence the world, despite attempts elsewhere to create an Islamic state).

As he sees it, the growth of a Latino population in the United States will be so intense along the border that any pretense that the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte offers a hard-and-fast division between the two countries will have to be abandoned (so much for George W. Bush's border wall).

HE SEES THE future border region as a mixture – even if the river is still used as a legal boundary, with significant Latino populations elsewhere in the U.S. Friedman argues the growing Latino population will result in government officials who can no longer push nativist policies meant to keep Mexico in check (unless they want to risk losing on Election Day).

That could be what allows Mexico to use some of its natural resources to develop its own economy and become a more stable neighbor to the south by the end of the century.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The latest Pew Hispanic Center study offers up more evidence of the growing influence (http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=110) Latinos will have in this country.

What intrigues me the most about George Friedman’s analysis is that he does not see a stronger Mexico (http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/books/38759852.html) by the year 2100 as being contrary to a strong United States.