i've been reading fred's essays for years and he has yet to disappoint while he entertains'

America’s racial circumstances, its lightning demographic transformation unimaginable a half century ago, runs apace, not just with Latinos filtering across the southern border, but with the federal government inexplicably importing people from Somalia and Afghanistan and, apparently, trying to intensify racial division. It is an astonishment of a high order, the best show in town. How, why, and whither?

A surprising number of people seem unfamiliar with the figures. America is about thirteen percent black, eighteen percent Latino, and something like six percent Asian, whatever that means. Over half of children eighteen and under are not white. Thus in an uncertain but small number of years, America will mostly not be white. This, like sunrise, is going to happen no matter what anyone thinks about it. Wow.

The southern border is largely open. Immigrants pour across the frontier, chiefly Central American, badly educated or actually illiterate, sometimes speaking only Indian languages. Mr. Trump once said that “Mexico is not sending its best.” This is true of all Latin American countries. Cardiac surgeons and systems programmers do not swim the Rio Bravo to pick oranges in Florida. While the influx of Mexicans has decreased with the improvement in the Mexican economy, the Central Americans arrive in droves. Along with them come Haitians, various Africans, and Afghans, groups even less qualified to become American. This seems likely to continue, at least during the administration of Biden.

So how does the racial map look? Latinos concentrated in the Southwest, where they seem certain to become the majority. In California they now outnumber whites. New Mexico, aptly named, seems poised to follow. These states were wrested from Mexico in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, so in a sense they are just returning to their origins. Some call it poetic justice. Be that as it may, it is happening, and the concentration in a few states gives Latinos power that they would not have if spread evenly across the country........read more......