MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 160

As a trade-off for such vastly reduced immigration from

Mexico, we would not worry so much about the multicultural-

ism taught in our schools. The fighting for inclusive standards

and worry over a watered-down, feel-good curriculum would go

on, but lose some of its intensity without the presence of millions

of illegal newcomers. The La Raza dinosaurs, along with other

separatists and ethnic chauvinists, might lumber on in theory, but

in fact would gradually die off as their habitat became depleted

of new clients and their landscape altered through the effects of

intermarriage and the assimilative youth culture.

Within twenty or thirty years, Mexican ancestry would be

comparable to Italian descent today. Cinco de Mayo would be

no different from Columbus Day. Chicano studies professors,

hobbling with canes and walkers, would scour the campus for a

handful of Mexican immigrants they could imbue with distrust

of America and its racist pastâ€"but for the most part encounter

a completely assimilated third-generation student body who paid

them little heed.

In short, we the hosts can either change our strategies

about assimilating the immigrant flood or, alternatively, remain

unchanged but dam the source of the deluge and do so under legal

auspices. Either choice would radically alleviate the present prob-

lem within a few years. A third, more radical and holisticâ€"and, I

think, wiserâ€"solution would be to adopt sweeping restrictions on

immigration and put an end to separatist ideology along with the

two-tier legal system for illegal aliens. In such a scenario, our pres-

ent problems would vanish almost immediately, while prices for

wage labor would steadily escalate.

There is, of course, a fourth approachâ€"the logical culmina-

tion of the present policyâ€"which leads to a true Mexifornia. If

we do not change by either adopting an assimilationist program

or insisting on metered and legal immigration, or both, we shall

soon see a culture in southern and central California that really is

a hybrid civilization, a zona libre not unlike what already exists in