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Matthew Campbell, Washington THE year is 2100. America is
in ferment. The second civil war has ended in defeat for English-
speaking whites, encircled in their heartland in the Midwest.
The southwestern states of California, Arizona, New Mexico
and Texas have broken away from the union to form provinces
in the new, Hispanic country of Aztlan.
Unlikely as this vision of the future may seem, the break-up of
the United States within the next 100 years is regarded by
some people as an entirely plausible consequence of a new
wave of immigration.
The speculation has been prompted by startling population
estimates published last week. Within the next year,
demographers say, whites will no longer form a majority in
California, a state that until 1970 was 80% white. Within 100
years, the Hispanic population of America will have exploded
from its present 32m to 190m, just 40m behind the white
population. It will leave black Americans, at an estimated 86m
in 2100, in the dust.
To advocates of the great "melting pot", the arrival of 1m legal
immigrants a year in a country of 250m is no cause for
anxiety. From the Europeans who poured into the country early
in the last century to the Koreans and South Americans who
followed, immigrants have traditionally been happy to swear
allegiance to a noble ideal - that America's strength is unity in
diversity.
Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, is a
notable symbol of the "American dream" in which an
impoverished immigrant can scale any height - other than the
presidency, for which an American birth certificate is required.
She arrived in New York from Czechoslovakia as a little girl. "I
looked at the Statue of Liberty," she recalled last week, "and
my eyes filled with tears, my heart with hope."
Yet increasingly in today's America, the "melting bowl" may
have its limits. "These days they want us to see it more like a
salad bowl," says Ward Connerly, the black chairman of the
American Civil Rights Institute. He argues that, instead of
being persuaded to integrate themselves into one happy family,
ethnic minorities are being to encouraged to cling to their roots
- with potentially disastrous consequences for the vision of
national unity.
Education policies under the administration of President Bill
Clinton are largely to blame, he says. Hispanic immigrants are
entitled to be taught in Spanish in most states. They can even
opt for separate graduation ceremonies at universities, as can
black and Asian students.
Not only that. Ethnic groups are encouraged to pursue "ethnic
studies" to fortify their sense of cultural identity. While blacks
are encouraged to delve into the tragic history of ancestors
sold into slavery and to press for reparations from white
government leaders, Mexican Americans can sign up for
"chicano studies".
The course is credited with instilling a militant belief in young
Mexican Americans that California and other southwestern
states - once known collectively as "Aztlan" - were stolen from
Mexico and will one day be reconquered.
The emphasis on ethnic identity risks encouraging what has
been called the "Balkanisation" of America - a reference to the
rivalries that plunged the former Yugoslavia into bloody ethnic
wars in the 1990s.
"Many of these ethnic studies programmes are more political
than scholastic and tend to Balkanise us rather than bring us
together," says Connerly. "I don't quarrel with the idea that
people should be able to maintain allegiance to ethnic
background, but there's a fine line between pride and
prejudice."
Some Californians are pessimistic about relations between
ethnic groups, despite evidence of rising intermarriage. "We're
being colonised, essentially," says Glenn Spencer, a white
activist lobbying for tougher immigration controls. He points to
inflammatory statements by Mexican American politicians to
support his thesis.
Mario Obledo, president of the California Coalition of Hispanic
Organisations, is cited as an example. "California is going to
be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn't like it should
leave," he said.
Even Gray Davis, the non-Hispanic Democrat governor, has
raised eyebrows with some of his rhetoric. "People will look at
California and Mexico as one magnificent region," he has
proclaimed. A blurring of political borders between California
and Mexico seemed to have occurred last week when a Los
Angeles resident became the first person living abroad to be
elected to the Mexican Congress.
Peter Brimelow, a British immigrant and author of Alien Nation,
a book advocating immigration reform, argues that America
should close its borders, at least temporarily, if it is to maintain
social harmony and national identity. He predicts that the
present course will lead to the break-up of America.
"People will begin to question the union again," he said,
foreseeing the creation of a whites-only "heartland" in the
Midwest and a breakaway Hispanic region in the southwest.
"We'll see huge population shifts. The component parts of
America will be as different as separate countries."
The process is already advanced in California and statistics
spell the decline of whites in the home of the Beach Boys,
Baywatch and Ronald Reagan: they account for about 75% of
the state's deaths, but only a third of the births.
In Los Angeles, whole districts sport signs in languages other
than English. The city has the largest population of Koreans
outside Korea and the greatest concentration of Iranians in the
western world.
The Hispanic community, however, is growing faster than any
other and is poised to eclipse the black population of 35m
nationally. The loss by Californian whites of their majority
status can be expected to be repeated within the next few
years in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida.
Already the political consequences have been felt. In California,
the surge in the Hispanic population has fuelled bitterly fought
initiatives by the disappearing white majority at the ballot box
to cut government services for illegal immigrants and to end
"affirmative action" on jobs and university places.
Hispanic voters have been registering as Democrats in droves,
complicating efforts by George W Bush, the Republican
presidential candidate, to make inroads in a state where his
credentials as a Spanish-speaking southerner with a Mexican-
born sister-in-law might be expected to serve him well.
A poll last week showed Bush trailing 11 points behind Al
Gore, the vice-president and Democrat candidate, in California,
the most important electoral prize. More significantly, Bush
was down by 39 points among the state's Hispanic voters, who
make up 14% of its electorate.
In his home state of Texas, Bush has always been considered
a strongly pro-Hispanic governor. His pandering to Hispanics,
say Republican critics, has involved turning a blind eye to the
1,000 illegal immigrants who flood over the Rio Grande from
Mexico each night.
Gore has been fawning just as energetically over the Hispanic
vote. "The government is afraid that if they do anything about it,
this 800lb gorilla known as the Latino vote is going to turn
against them," said Connerly.
Traditionally a Republican issue, the need to control
immigration is being ignored by conservative politicians at a
time of unprecedented economic prosperity and low
unemployment if only, says Brimelow, because "these
Hispanic immigrants keep 'country-club Republicans' supplied
with servants".
That could change, however, if the economy takes a downward
turn and Americans find themselves competing with
immigrants for jobs. Dan Stein, executive director of the
Federation for American Immigration Reform, said: "There is a
powderkeg of public animosity just below the surface." His
group is lobbying for an 80% cut in the number of foreigners
allowed in.
For his part, governor Davis prefers to look on the bright side.
"There's no question that a more diverse population creates
some potential discomforts and even potential conflicts," he
said last week. "But it also brings great strengths."
Future generations of American can only hope he is right.
