NewsBusters
Noel Shepperd

Eleanor Clift on Immigration: 'A Lot More Americans Are Going to Learn Spanish and That's a Fine Thing'

"A lot more Americans are going to learn to speak Spanish, and I think that's a fine thing."

So said Newsweek's Eleanor Clift Friday in the middle of a "McLaughlin Group" program devoted in its entirety to looking at how America is responding to a growing Hispanic population as well as an ongoing economic expansion in Latin America (video follows with transcript and commentary):

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLecBeTi ... r_embedded

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, HOST: Will the growing Hispanic population assimilate as readily into the American melting pot as earlier immigrant waves like the Irish and the Italians did? Yes or no?

PAT BUCHANAN: Took the Irish almost a hundred years to do it, John. I think that it's going to be more slowly because the culture…

MCLAUGHLIN: You do?

BUCHANAN: …much more different. Yes I do.

MCLAUGHLIN: Even though the United States today is multiracial?

BUCHANAN: The United States, people are moving into enclaves, John, by race and ethnicity, all over this country.

MCLAUGHLIN: “Irish need not applyâ€