Ari, on Linda Chavez:

I couldn’t agree more. Fears of rampant cultural destruction are completely misplaced. If anything, this country needs a second language!

“You’re where you are from, and you incidentally happen to be an American”

I don’t think we say that. American culture is Americanizing such exotic locales as India and China – that Hispanic immigrants within America should somehow be spared its pervasive and encompassing reach is somewhat implausible.

“When you have ten different ethnicities in a city’s ghettos, you have competition for success. When you have *one* ethnicity in a city’s ghetto, you have an opportunity to avoid assimilation.”

Immigrants inevitably tend to cluster. When has there ever been racial competition in Chinatown? When was there competition in the Jewish section of the Lower East Side in the early 20th century? “Ethnic competition”? What do you mean? Besides, David, it’s not as though Mexicans are turning California into Mexico – illegal immigrants who speak only Spanish often cross the border just for work.

“as in, people with a cultural, social and even political identity to the country right next door, as opposed to the Ellis Island wave of immigrants, who had no choice but to leave the “old country” behind”

As I said, these people often don’t stay in this country. Those who do are no more malign than Jews or Chinese. There is no excess of Hispanics in America.