On May 30 the BBC reported: “The Latinization of California is nothing short of a revolution. California will become a predominately Spanish-speaking state within the next few years. And as the majority population, there is really no need, or incentive, for them to assimilate into mainstream American society as their predecessors have always done. Whether Latinos decide to push for greater autonomy, to seek a political agenda of their own with closer ties to Mexico and Central America is very much up for grabs.”

Blunt speech from the foreign press. But is it still true, as columnist Charles Krauthammer recently claimed (BDN; June 17), “America’s genius has always been assimilation … taking immigrants and turning them into Americans.”?

Assimilation is a choice that immigrants make for themselves. We don’t make it for them. And the project is more complex than simply learning a new language, which is evident from the British born terrorists who bombed London. Assimilation concerns feelings and loyalties. It happened in the twentieth century because conditions were very different from today. During the Great Wave , coming to America was an arduous challenge that required immigrants to cut ties with their native land. To quote Woodrow Wilson in l915, “And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you, bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulder and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them.”

In the past, there were many reasons immigrants wanted to become Americans and form deep ties with their American communities. They could not call home, e-mail relatives, fly back and forth, wire money, and maintain connections to their native land to extent they can today. They did not have education and social services in their native language. Our government now provides a host of documents in multiple languages, and virtually all the same rights and privileges of citizenship, such as voting, applying for benefits, SSI, housing, drivers licenses etc. can be obtained by immigrants in their native language. Our schools, hospitals and courts provide free interpreters. And finally, where immigrants used to be required to swear loyalty to this country, and this country alone, we now tolerate dual citizenship.

None of these benefits were available to those who arrived during The Great Wave who subsequently chose to assimilate, learn our language, adopt our history as their history, and become proud and loyal Americans. Because of their willingness to assimilate, we escaped the ethnic rancor which divides and destabilizes so many nations.

But the most im-portant difference between The Great Wave and mass immigration today is the fact that the great wave ended with World War I. In the first decade of

the 20th century, we averaged 900,000 immigrants a year. It was a dark period, characterized by xenophobia, racism, huge income disparities and anti-Semitism.

From the early l920s to l965, however, we averaged only 178,000 immigrants a year. It was during this period of low immigration that those who had arrived during The Great Wave finally got a chance to enter the middle class. Their wages increased; they moved out of urban ghettos, learned English, and we intermarried. Assimilation took place predominately after the Great Wave ended, not before. But today, we face a tidal wave of new immigrants, legal and illegal, with no end in sight.

Historically, immigrants of the past were a very diverse group. No ethnic nor linguistic group dominated. That is not true today. Hispanics now account for 50 percent of our population increase.

And Mexico is a special case. In 2001 Mexico’s National Population Council predicted that Mexican migration flows were “inevitable” (with no explanation), and that America would be accepting at least 400,000 Mexicans a year for the next 30 years. The current wave of Mexican immigration is unprecedented in many respects. In the past no foreign government deliberately promoted mass emigration of their citizens into the United States, as a means of solving domestic problems, like unemployment and poverty. No other foreign government lobbied Congress on behalf of their immigrant populations, as Mexico has lobbied for continual amnesties.

Immigrants of the past did not have powerful political organizations, like La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, which are lavishly funded by corporations. And finally, no other immigrant group has had leadership which claimed that parts of the United States belonged to them and that Mexican immigration was a “reconquista” of these lands. On July 27, l997, then President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo told the National Council of La Raza in Chicago: “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important – a very important – part of it.”

Similar views are expressed by Mexican American politicians and academics, but are rarely reported in our news. (See “Mexican Immigration and its Potential Impact on the Political Future of the United States”; The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Vol 29, no. 4)

Will our newest immigrants assimilate the way immigrants have in the past? Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington, Chairman of the Harvard Academy for International Area Studies recently wrote in Public Policy Magazine: “the persistence of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two people, two cultures, and two languages. … The United States ignores this challenge at its peril. … Demographically, socially, and culturally the ‘reconquista’ of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well under way.”

If assimilation is important to our future cohesion and stability, then immigration must be limited, controlled and legal; as it was in the past. Immigration policy is currently dominated by business interests, cheap labor lobbies and the Mexican government. It won’t change, until Americans demand it.

Jonette Christian, of Holden, a member of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy, can be reached at jonette@acadia.net