After reading "The Hispanic Challenge" by Samuel P. Huntington

            The article titled, “The Hispanic Challenge” by Samuel P. Huntington gave the argument that Hispanic immigrants, mostly the ones from Mexico, are not like regular immigrants and refuse to melt into the normal America culture. He goes into key reasons as to why he thinks they are practically destroying America; however, his points seem to be more led by dislike of the people than actual facts or legitimate concerns. Three of the details that are skewing facts to seem like a thing are when he talks about contiguity, the Spanish language, and the re-conquest of the southwest and Florida.

            When explaining what he means by contiguity, he begins with what he thinks is the regular way people think of immigration which is people having to come through boat or plane across an ocean to get to Ellis Island. The fact that Mexicans need only to cross a determined line to get here and can keep in contact with their family is a problem. With phones, and all kinds of electronics, it is easy for anyone to keep in contact with their family so this does not seem like it would be difficult for any immigrant from anywhere to keep in touch with family.

            The second part of his contiguity argument makes more sense which is that the income gap between the United States and Mexico is higher than any other neighboring countries which is what led to the overflow of immigration. That is as far as he goes when he should explain how the overflow would be a problem. He did not go into the history of Mexican- American politics like the northern American free trade agreement which created huge inequality in Mexico’s income classes (Villarreal, 2010) as well as Operation Fast and the Furious which funded the biggest Mexican gangs with weapons (Wyler, 2012). The turmoil in the Mexican economy cannot all be blamed on The United States, but the fact that Huntington did not bring it up shows that he is not really looking at the whole issue or all the facts. He also, failed to mention any benefits of Mexican immigrants like the fact that they work for little money doing jobs that are usually hard to fill even with minimum wage. His lack of facts shows his lack of really getting to the truth of the matter and contiguity can be a problem but also has benefits.

            His second argument that seems to be unfinished is about the language. He claims that by the third generation, a normal immigrant’s family would have completely forgotten about their past language for English and Mexican immigrants just won’t give up on their language or ethnicity and even show a dislike for America and English. First of all, there are plenty of places where a group of immigrants refuse to forget their old cultures but rather combine cultures, like Chinatowns, Irish pubs, and other similar places where people have mixed cultures. Secondly, in those areas public places change to the needs of the people. In Chinatowns, I’m sure public schools will have Chinese to English language classes and forms are written in Chinese as well. That is the same on and around Native American Reservations who would also like to keep their language. Once again, Huntington is simply overseeing the state of the nation for his obvious dislike for Hispanic immigrants.

            On the same note, he talks about the re-conquest of the southwest and Miami. He states that they came and are coming, and took over the place with their culture. Again it can be argued that that is what immigrants do and they were simply extremely successful in Miami. He goes into much detail about the success in Miami without ever stating a reason for concern for that as if the details are what he is disgusted by. If people are successful, I do not understand the problem. This article is full of facts that a man has used, badly, to argue his view on losing his ‘normal’ America.

References

Villarreal, M. A. (2010, June 3). NAFTA and the Mexican Economy. Retrieved from Congressional Research Service: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34733.pdf

Wyler, G. (2012, June 20). Here's What You Need To Know About The Gun Running Scandal That Could Destroy Obama's Attorney General. Retrieved from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-fast-and-furious-2012-6