A Book Recommendation From A Blog Reader

October 7, 2006

A reader writes that “for a different take on illegal immigration and multiculturalism, one that makes sense.” Check out the book MULTICULTURALISM, IMMIGRATION AND AZTLAN By Maria Hsia Chang (Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada Reno). Here is a description (not mine) of the book:

One of the standard arguments invoked by those in favor of massive immigration into the United States is that our country is founded on immigrants who have always been successfully assimilated into America’s mainstream culture and society. As one commentator put it, “Assimilation evokes the misty past of Ellis Island, through which millions entered, eventually seeing their descendants become as American as George Washington.” Nothing more vividly testifies against that romantic faith in America’s ability to continuously assimilate new members than the events of October 16, 1994 in Los Angeles. On that day, 70,000 people marched beneath “a sea of Mexican flags” protesting Proposition 187, a referendum measure that would deny many state benefits to illegal immigrants and their children. Two weeks later, more protestors marched down the street, this time carrying an American flag upside down. Both protests point to a disturbing and rising phenomenon of Chicano separatism in the United States — the product of a complex of forces, among which are multiculturalism and a generous immigration policy combined with a lax border control.

For more about the book, click here.

When claims are made about immigrant separatism, I always wonder whether the issue is separatism or exclusion from U.S. society that is the problem. For a discussion of such exclusion, see Michael Olivas’s new anthology Colored Men And Hombres Aquí: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering (2006), which discusses the 1954 Supreme Court decision that Mexican-Americans could not be excluded from jury service.