I took a look at your blog this morning and then went into the living room to watch Meet the Press, with Tim Russert. This morning he had Bill (Richardson) Lopez on and Russert put him through the candidate interview paces. One comment from Russert caught my attention.
Russert said:
“But let’s go through the resume a little bit. First, there’s governor of New Mexico. As you well know, they rank states in a whole variety of categories from one being the best, 50th being the worst. This is New Mexico’s scorecard, and you are the governor. Percent of people living below the poverty line, you’re 48. Percent of children below, 48. Median family income, 47. People without health insurance, 49. Children without health insurance, 46. Teen high school dropouts, 47. Death rate due to firearms, 48. Violent crime rate, 46. You’re the very bottom of all those statistics of all 50 states, and you’re the governor for five years.”
I was not aware that New Mexico scored across the board awful in so many (there could be more) social welfare indicators. They could not break out of the bottom decile for even one of the cited indicators. Why is this significant? Because New Mexico is the most Hispanicized state in the nation (Hispanics 40% of the state population, the rest are “Anglo”-white. Hardly any blacks or Asians), more than that, of any Hispanic population group we would expect New Mexicans to be the most assimilated, the most like the American norm (and in a way, they are). Why is that, one may ask? Because Hispanic New Mexicans do not identify strongly with Mexico or any other Latin American nation. Their identity is wrapped up with their perceived Spanish Colonial heritage. They believe themselves to be sons of Hidalgos. Too, they have lived in this area for hundreds of years. They are as assimilated as one could be to a locale. And politically, judging by their elected leaders, they are in fact moderate. I would characterize them as a little right of center.
Furthermore, over the past 30 years the large wave of Hispanic immigration has largely bypassed New Mexico. Very few Hispanic migrants have come in. There are no sprawling barrios of newly arrived meso-Americans, spouting irredentist sentiments as there are all over southern California. Lastly, they are white. They identify as white. And we would recognize most of them as white. This is part of the reason why they are wary of Mexicans (and American Indians, too).
And yet with all these advantages going into the assimilation project they have created a society that runs neck to neck with Mississippi as the worst performing, as demonstrated by social indicators.
This is the BEST performing Hispanic demographic!!
If Bush’s immigration plan goes through, the United States as a whole won’t even resemble New Mexico’s demographic breakdown. It will be worse, because the majority of Hispanics will be meso-American, Andean-American, afro-Caribe-Latino, and other…..And does there exist even a shred of evidence to indicate that these other Hispanic demographics will outperform the white Hispanics of New Mexico?
I would like to see Chavez and Michael Barone address this sterling example of assimilation to the American norm. Barone is always saying that we have to give it time, it took the Irish and Italians 100 years to assimilate….Well, the Hispanics of New Mexico have been around for far longer than that. The results are in, D-.
There is something deeply dysfunctional about Hispanic society. I don’t know why this is so and I don’t care to discover the reasons for this. I want to protect my country and society from the disaster that will surely befall us if we become in any way a hispanicized society.
We are on the precipice of a nation-ruining disaster. A disaster wrought by man.