The Core Reason People Fear Mass Legalization

By Marty Nemko

Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette claims that the main reason many Americans oppose legalization of our 12 million illegal immigrants (which the Heritage Foundation projects will become 100 million in 20 years) is fear that America’s culture will increasingly be replaced by a Latino one.

I think he’s right. And I share that fear. I wouldn’t fear a replacement by an Asian culture or European culture, but I do fear replacement by a Latino culture, and here’s why.

The current wave of immigration to the U.S. is different from previous ones not just because it is so large, not just because the immigrants are illegal and therefore unscreened for felonies or communicable diseases, but for a reason so sensitive that politically correct people dare not utter it: because those immigrants come primarily from Latin America, not from Europe, the latter which, for more than 1,000 years, has demonstrated its ability to-- despite a lack of natural resources--provide citizens with relatively good standard of living

At no time in the last 1,000 years, has even one Latin American country provided their citizens with a standard of living even close to that of European countries. According to a November 2002 study by the Commission of Economics for Latin America, 44 percent of Latin America’s population, over 200 million people, live in poverty. And poverty in Latin America is far more dire than poverty in the U.S.: Often, it means living in unheated, uncooled shacks with dirt floors, no or intermittent electricity or running water, and using animals as the main means of transportation. According to USAID, the average Latin American has just 5.4 years of education, and a 2002 article in The Economist said that in Latin America, “Teachers often receive only the barest guidance on what to teach, and little or no training in how to teach it.” In large cities, residents often fear for their physical safety, and bribing the police to get protection is common. Paulo de Mesquita Neto, Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo, reports that the average crime and violence rates in Latin America are the highest in the world. Drug abuse is rampant and government instability common—Latin America is notorious for military overthrows of elected governments.

Making this wave of immigration to the U.S. even more ominous, the people illegally entering the U.S. now are disproportionately Latin America’s poorest and least educated, and criminal. The latter is not surprising. After all, they were willing to break our immigration laws, and then soon after entering the U.S. an estimated 2/3 of them obtain fraudulent documents so they can steal U.S.-taxpayer-paid welfare services reserved for legal residents. It’s not surprising then that 65 percent of all felony warrants in Los Angeles County—the county in the U.S. with the most illegals--are for illegal immigrants for offenses other than immigration violations. Their crime rate is likely to increase further.

I believe that Americans are justified in worrying that mass legalization will devolve the U.S. into a third-world nation. Consider the likely impact of 100 million new legal immigrants, most from Latin America. Consider the effect on your children’s education, your health care, your neighborhood, your safety, and, yes, American culture. Do you still believe it’s wise to support mass legalization?