Samuel Huntington argues that the sheer number, concentration,
linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristic of Hispanic immigrants
will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language,
weaken the country's dominant cultural values, and promote ethnic
allegiances over a primary identification as an American. Testing these
hypotheses with data from the U.S. Census and national and Los Angeles
opinion surveys, we show that Hispanics acquire English and lose Spanish
rapidly beginning with the second generation, and appear to be no more or
less religious or committed to the work ethic than native-born whites.
Moreover, a clear majority of Hispanics reject a purely ethnic
identification and patriotism grows from one generation to the next. At
present, a traditional pattern of political assimilation appears to
prevail.Jack Citrin is Professor of
Political Science at University of California, Berkeley
(gojack@berkeley.edu). Amy Lerman is a doctoral candidate in Political
Science at University of California, Berkeley (alerman@berkeley.edu).
Michael Murakami is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at
University of California, Berkeley (mmurakam@berkeley.edu) and Kathryn
Pearson is Assistant Professor Political Science at University of
Minnesota (kpearson@umn.edu).