A Latin conservative tidal wave is not coming.

July 24, 2006, 6:10 a.m.

Myth Debunked

A Latin conservative tidal wave is not coming.

By Heather Mac Donald

The myth of the redemptive Hispanic is finally cracking. For years,conservative open-borders advocates have touted Hispanic ?family values? asa prime reason to increase immigration. Hispanic immigrants, theseconservatives say, will save America from itself. At a time when Anglo andblack families are disintegrating, when society is becoming increasinglyatomized and alienated, Hispanics will bring the traditional values thatthe country so desperately needs. In a classic iteration of the theme,Larry Kudlow wrote on NRO last May that Hispanic immigrants would ?become amuch-needed churchgoing blue-collar middle class . . . that is crucial to ahealthy America.?

The truth is now supplanting the fiction. Last Friday, the New York Timesran an editorial, Young Latinas and a Cry for Help,? that laid out thereal state of the Hispanic family. A quarter of all Latinas are mothers bythe age of 20, few of them married, reported the Times. This out-of-wedlockteen-birth rate is three times that of white teens, and significantly morethan that of blacks as well. The Hispanic dropout rate is also the highestin the country ? the Manhattan Institute?s Jay Greene puts it at 47 percent.

There is simply no way to square the facts about Hispanic family breakdownwith the myth of the redemptive Hispanic. Talk to any social worker and shewill tell you that illegitimacy has become completely normalized among herHispanic clients. And the usual explanation for this epidemic ofillegitimacy ? an unresolved culture clash between young people and theirtraditional parents ? is equally bogus. The mothers of teen mothers arethemselves completely on board with single parenting, say the socialworkers, having often been single parents themselves. And they have noqualms about hooking their daughter and grandchildren into thepublic-benefits apparatus: ?It?s now culturally OK for that population tobe served by the welfare system,? says a case manager in a Santa Ana,Calif., home for teen mothers.

Far from exercising a brake on the erosion of traditional values, asconservative immigration advocates claim, the growing Hispanic populationwill provide the impetus for more government alternatives to personalresponsibility. Advocates for young unwed mommies in the South Bronx areagitating for more day-care centers in high schools to accommodate thestudents? children, reports El Diario/LA PRENSA. Demand for the 18 day-careslots at Bronx Regional High School, for example, far outstrips the supply,an 18-year-old Hispanic mother who attends the school told the paper. Abill has been introduced in Congress, the Latina Adolescent SuicidePrevention Act, to channel $10 million in federal funds to ?culturallycompetent? social agencies to improve the self-esteem of Latina girls andto provide ?support services? to their families and friends if theycontemplate suicide.

For the New York Times, of course, the inevitable expansion of the welfarestate is the glowing silver lining to this cultural catastrophe. With theusual melodrama that accompanies the pitch for more government services,the Times designates young Latinas as ?endangered? in the same breath thatit discloses that they are one of the fastest-growing segments of thepopulation. ?The time to help is now, says the Times ? by which it meansratcheting up the taxpayer-subsidized social-work industry.

It strains credulity to think that conservatives will fend off this push tomeet social dysfunction with bigger government. Since the open-bordersadvocates have yet to acknowledge the facts of Hispanic family breakdown,there is no way of knowing what their solution to it is. One in four womenin the U.S. will be Hispanic by the middle of the century, reports theTimes ? in states like California, they will be the majority. UnlessHispanic illegitimacy is stemmed, it is hard to see how the American familywill be in a stronger state in future decades than it is today. Conservatives, including open-borders conservatives, market themselves asthe party of realism and common sense. A recent manifesto for immigrationamnesty and liberalized entry rules in the Wall Street Journal bragged:

Conservatives have always prided themselves on acknowledging, in the wordsof John Adams, that ?Facts are stubborn things.?? More stubborn still,however, is the unwillingness of open borders proponents to acknowledgesocial facts that undercut their cause. ?

Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor to City Journal, where hermost recent article makes the conservative case for immigrationenforcement. National Review Online -

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzkxMDk1MTQ3Yzg2MzdjZDA0NmFkODhiOWI1NjhjNjE

Mike Harrison
www.electmikeharrison.com