Thread: Open-Borders Advocates Wrong About 'Hispanic Family Values'

Open-Borders Advocates Wrong About 'Hispanic Family Values'

by Ivy J. Sellers — 11-29-2006 @ 04:46 PM
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Hispanic family values in today's world aren't as conservative as many would think.

An insightful article in the City Journal by Heather Mac Donald sheds light on the rapidly increasing out-of-wedlock birth rate among the hispanic community within the U.S. -- an alarming issue with multi-faceted social consequences.

Here's an excerpt, the numbers are fascinating:

The government social-services sector has already latched onto this new client base; as the Hispanic population expands, so will the demands for a larger welfare state. Since conservative open-borders advocates have yet to acknowledge the facts of Hispanic family breakdown, there is no way to know what their solution to it is. But they had better come up with one quickly, because the problem is here—and growing.

The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate—even more than unbounded levels of immigration—will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades. By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by mid-century, twice the current ratio. In states such as California and Texas, Hispanics will be in the clear majority. Nationally, whites will drop from near 70 percent of the total population in 2000 to just half by 2050. Hispanics will account for 46 percent of the nation’s added population over the next two decades, the Pew Hispanic Center reports.

But it’s the fertility surge among unwed Hispanics that should worry policymakers. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country—over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for every 1,000 unmarried white women, 22 for every 1,000 unmarried Asian women, and 66 for every 1,000 unmarried black women. Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent of white births and 15 percent of Asian births. Only the percentage of black out-of-wedlock births—68 percent—exceeds the Hispanic rate. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.

As if the unmarried Hispanic birthrate weren’t worrisome enough, it is increasing faster than among other groups. It jumped 5 percent from 2002 to 2003, whereas the rate for other unmarried women remained flat. Couple the high and increasing illegitimacy rate of Hispanics with their higher overall fertility rate, and you have a recipe for unstoppable family breakdown.

And so, as Mac Donald points out, Mexican immigrants aren't exactly bringing the traditional family values that open-borders advocates often hold up as one of their main arguments for leaving the borders unsecured.

"Conservatives who support open borders are fond of invoking 'Hispanic family values' as a benefit of unlimited Hispanic immigration.," she writes. "Marriage is clearly no longer one of those family values."

http://humanevents.com/rightangle/index.php?p=18441

I have seen this myself. Parents, devout Catholics, come to the cities of sin... like Chicago. When they come and their children grow up in the ghetto, most catch on the ways of the culture already established. This also happens with second and third generation Hispanics who keep living in the same area. At least that is what I have seen. Even my younger siblings who are Americans are swept away into the madness of the inner city because, well, that's what's "in". I never caught onto it because I happened to mature more quickly than the average teen.