He Finds Fears of a Cultural Takeover Pretty Borderline

There are days when I’d love just to nod off and not awaken until the middle of the 21st century. Then, I’d find out once and for all whether Mexicans in fact had taken over California, imposed that country’s culture on the state and sent the former Anglo ruling classes to gulags in the Mojave Desert.

The scenario recurred after someone mailed a copy this week of the January newsletter of Voices of Citizens Together, a San Fernando-based group convinced that the sheer weight of Mexican immigration will transform American culture into Mexican culture. The group is not happy about the prospect.

If I thought only 10 people sitting in a bar held that view, I’d ignore it. But many, many people spend much of their waking hours worrying about just such a thing, and pretending otherwise doesn’t do much good.

Glenn Spencer, who runs Voices of Citizens Together out of his Sherman Oaks home, is 59, a former computer graphics man and utterly certain the scenario will come to pass.

“Mexico has wonderful resources, its people are wonderful, but the system is corrupt to the core,” he says. That partly accounts for the rush of Mexicans to California, Spencer says, “and unless we stop it, we’re going to lose control of our culture and ultimately our political culture in the Southwest.”

Spencer’s thesis is that increasingly large numbers of undereducated Mexicans will pour into the United States and find themselves competing with Americans for 21st century jobs. “Then, we’ll have a confrontation. [They’ll say to themselves], ‘I can either go out and compete one-on-one in this Western world, or I can demand that it adjust itself to my culture. I don’t assimilate, they assimilate.’ ”

I reminded Spencer that Irish immigrants of yesteryear were reviled by many Americans who feared they would lead the country to ruination and establish the papacy in Washington, D.C.

Spencer says today’s Mexican immigrants are different than previous European immigrants. “I believe that when [western Europeans] left their lands, they knew when they came to the U.S., it was like landing on another world. You broke your ties, you became an American, this was your country. This is not happening with Mexicans.”

The eventual Latino majority in California, driven by Mexican immigration, will simply find it easier and more convenient to displace American culture and language with its own, Spencer says.

I disagree, but like Spencer, can’t prove I’m right. So, I called for reinforcements in the person of Alex Nogales, chairman of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

He was eager to join the fray. “It’s just ridiculous, period,” Nogales began. “This country is made up of a lot of cultures: the Jews, Irish, Italian and many other European nationalities that came and have mixed to produce another culture--the American culture. Every immigrant group does that, and Latinos are putting their grain of sand into that.”

I raised Spencer’s opinion that the proximity of Mexico creates a different scenario than people who had to cross an ocean to get here. Doesn’t matter, Nogales says. “At the time people were saying these same things about the Irish, about European Jews, about Italians, they could see no end of the migration of those people into these shores.”

Many Californians today are reacting as did East Coast residents during previous immigration waves, he says. The common thread is fear of foreigners and of sharing political power, Nogales believes.

I asked Nogales if the subject insults him. “We need to discuss it, but as rational, reasonable people. The fact of the matter is that all immigrants living in the U.S. are going to be absorbed by American culture. But what is American culture? It is really a piece of everyone who has been here all these years.”

Spencer believes that current Mexican immigrants will act differently than their ancestors, who didn’t have enough numbers to rock the boat.

Nogales disagrees. “I’m first-generation born in this country. My parents came from Mexico in the 1920s, and this is exactly the same way people described my parents. They looked at them and saw they had half as much education as everyone else, weren’t dressed as well and were at the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder. They picked crops from the Imperial Valley to Northern California, and they are no different than the population coming in now. And in one generation, all four of their children have a college education.”

Nogales shares Spencer’s futuristic view on one count: that Latinos, primarily those of Mexican descent, will become a force in California and the Southwest.

“It’s not even a question anymore of whether the Latino community is going to have political power,” Nogales says. “It’s a question of are we going to elevate politics to a better standard or be just as bad as every other American of European descent has been. That is the question.”

Just as in generations past, this “culture” question generates some of human beings’ most unpleasant emotions--fear, paranoia, anger, resentment.

I can’t foretell the future, but I have this thought looking backward: How many Americans in generations past burned up needless energy over immigration, imagining ominous scenarios that never materialized? I wonder if they’d like to have some of those hours back.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.