July 24, 2006

Myth Debunked: Latin Conservative Tidal Wave Is Not Coming

Heather MacDonald offers this, which is sure to get the usual suspects and various Lysenkoists up in arms:

The myth of the redemptive Hispanic is finally cracking. For years, conservative open-borders advocates have touted Hispanic “family values” as a prime reason to increase immigration. Hispanic immigrants, these conservatives say, will save America from itself. At a time when Anglo and black families are disintegrating, when society is becoming increasingly atomized and alienated, Hispanics will bring the traditional values that the country so desperately needs. In a classic iteration of the theme, Larry Kudlow wrote on NRO last May that Hispanic immigrants would "become a much-needed churchgoing blue-collar middle class . . . that is crucial to a healthy America."

The truth is now supplanting the fiction. Last Friday, the New York Times ran an editorial, "Young Latinas and a Cry for Help," that laid out the real state of the Hispanic family. A quarter of all Latinas are mothers by the age of 20, few of them married, reported the Times. This out-of-wedlock teen-birth rate is three times that of white teens, and significantly more than that of blacks as well. The Hispanic dropout rate is also the highest in the country — the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene puts it at 47 percent...

Posted to Immigration at July 24, 2006 01:24 PM

Comments

That's some amazing conservatism, which can equate a 40-50% illegitimacy rate, and one that is oddly similar to what prevails in central america, with strong family values.
Doesn't a hispanic high school dropout rate approaching 50%, say something about those Bush family values, that don't stop at the Rio grande?
They must be just here to work on bringing our family values to their standard.

Posted by: John S Bolton at July 25, 2006 03:06 AM