America’s 43,000,000 person blind spot

A few weeks ago, I was zipping down the highway, the radio tuned to Silvia Pinal, the hot disc jockey from Zacatecas. Taco stands and bodegas lined the streets. I pulled into McDonald’s and followed the signs marked baños.

The stuff we encounter here every day, right? Except this wasn’t Mexico. I was back in the good ol’ US of A, home to apple pie, NASCAR and, oh yeah, 43 million Latinos. Yet, listen to the blather coming out of Washington these days, and you might think all those Mexican-Americans, Salvadoran-Americans, Guatemalan-Americans and so many other hyphenated Americans were invisible.

Back in Washington, however, the big minds of the day were speaking English-only, debating how to clamp down on the stream of Latin Americans infiltrating “our country.” Words like "aliens" and "amnesty" flew out of the capital dome, across the C-SPAN airwaves and onto front pages. Then came the dire warnings: if we don’t do something fast they are going to change our way of life.

The politicians – spurred on by an anxious middle class – seem to have missed that the US is a place where enchiladas are as ubiquitous in school cafeterias as they are in top-drawer restaurants. This is a country where credit card sales pitches, government services and the publicity for the fireworks display at Disney are all provided in Spanish.

In Long Beach, California, I met a young African-American entrepreneur who is fed up with the way US schools are approaching language barriers. He wants to know why immigrant kids are becoming bilingual, but white and black students aren’t being taught a second language.

“It’s crazy that not every child gets to learn Spanish,” he complained to me. “It is such an advantage.”

That’s when it hit me. America today is a nation in denial: a large majority is trying to stop what has already occurred. They have already changed our way of life, just as our Irish and Italian and Polish ancestors helped shape the nation we call home.

It isn’t just a border town phenomenon. Washington state’s Hispanic population grew 43% between 2000 and 2005, while North Carolina’s grew almost 50% during the same time, according to the Pew Hispanic Research Center. 

What’s the point in arguing over whether the US should let Latin Americans in, when we know we can’t stop them? Our government bureaucrats couldn’t prevent one lone TB-infected lawyer from entering the country. And as long as there’s the hope for a better life up north — and scads of US employers desperate for cheap labor — the stream will continue.

So you’d think the politicians would find a way to agree on some sensible immigration rules and strike a balance between keeping narco-traffickers out and letting hard-working, tax-paying families in.

Instead, many lawmakers were fanning the flames of fear, talking about fences and deportations. In the end, the Senate killed what was likely the last real chance at immigration reform until 2009 and the one leader paying the price is the man who tried to face reality. Poll after poll shows Arizona Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid is being crippled by his attempt to negotiate a compromise on immigration.

Of course, the one guy who deserves a big chunk of the blame is George W. Bush, the self-proclaimed “compassionate conservative” who won a record number of Hispanic votes in 2000 by professing to appreciate the value of immigrants.

Few doubt the president’s sincerity when he speaks of living along the border, developing close business and personal relationships with immigrants, legal and illegal. But if he cared so much about immigration, he should have hopped on the topic back when he was popular. (I know that seems longer ago than the Mexican Revolution, but believe me there was a time when many Americans liked the guy.) Instead, he let post-Sept. 11 security mania swallow up the border and immigration issue. Sorry, George, but no one has shown me that Al-Qaeda is using Ciudad Juárez as a gateway to El Norte.

Six years later, Bush’s belated attempt to promote immigration legislation rings hollow, as hollow, in fact, as the Capitol Hill rhetoric we’re suffering through and the blindness of a nation’s leaders to 43 million Latinos in the US — about 14 percent of the population. Their names may be Rodríguez, López and Quintanilla, but they’re Americans just the same.

Ceci Connolly is a reformed political reporter, on a leave of absence from the Washington Post.