The Next America

Catholic Archbishop Gomez says enforcing immigration law reflects the 'cynicism of America's cultural elites'.

You cultural elites (AKA: white people) better learn to speak Spanish.   You will need it in the Next America.

As Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez writes in his new book, Immigration and the Next America:

“More than 5 million children [in the United States] are growing up in homes with one or more ‘illegal’ parents, and about 80 percent of these kids are American citizens, born in this country . . . We say we are worried about the long-term social costs of illegal immigration. If we are, then we should be looking for every way possible to integrate the undocumented into our economy so that they do not become a permanent underclass of dependent people. Our policy today, unfortunately, is only helping that underclass grow in numbers. The underclass grows every time we break apart a family by deporting a working father and leaving women and children behind in poverty. We [risk] creating, through our inaction, the very conditions that we claim to be afraid of – a generation of people who can’t assimilate, and who don’t have the education and skills to contribute to our economy.”

He makes a case for the urgency of deep reform now which he says must include a reasonable path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers now living in the United States.

“If immigration reform is to succeed – if the American dream is to be renewed – we need to reject the [cynicism of America’s cultural elites] and the careless disregard for American identity.

For Archbishop Gomez, “a civic framework built on a common American story” demands that we honor our Anglo-Protestant roots as a nation. But it also demands that we recover -- at long last -- the other, missing half of our story: the Hispano-Catholic legacy that predates the Thirteen Colonies by many decades. America’s real “first Thanksgiving” took place in Spanish Catholic Florida, not Puritan Massachusetts. “Two hundred years before any of the founding fathers were born,” the archbishop reminds us, “this land’s people were being baptized in the name of Christ. The people of this land were called Christians before they were called Americans. And they were first called this name in the Spanish tongue.”

“Immigration and the Next America: Renewing the Soul of Our Nation,” by Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, will be published in English (July 5) and Spanish (July 19)

Remember, the Spanish got here first.   They are just (illegally) bringing in a few million more of their cousins. 

They have English-speaking and French-speaking provinces in Canada.  So, why shouldn’t we break up our country also into English & Spanish states? 

I think that Gomez is Spanish for naïve.

Call me a cynical member of the cultural elite known as tax payers.