United Satates of Hispanica
Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2010 9:27 pm
This year's US census is expected to confirm that Hispanics are now the largest minority in the country, thanks to rapid growth since the last census 10 years ago.
It's a headline that underlines their influence on the US society of the future.
Hispanics, or Latinos, are responsible for about half of US population growth since 2000. In three states with high Latino populations, whites are already a minority and it's widely predicted they will be a minority in the overall population by mid-century.
No wonder some commentators are concerned by what they see as the relative failure of Latinos to assimilate into US society.
But the picture inside the US melting pot is changing, as generations change.
The growth of the Latino population has been fuelled largely by the rise of a new second generation - the US-born children of a vast immigration tide from Mexico, Central and South America that started in the 1970s.
These children - who now make up half of the overall Latino population - have quite different prospects in life than their parents did, experts say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/latin_ ... 208781.stm
