By next year, "Muhammed" will likely overtake "Jack" as the most popular name in Great Britain. The cultural transformation is startling. Imagine how Saudi Arabians would react to "Jack" overtaking "Muhammed" as the most popular name in their country. America is undergoing a change, albeit one not as dramatic as Britain's turn toward Islam. The Social Security Administration announced that "Garcia" is the eighth most popular surname in the United States. "Rodriguez" is the sixth most popular. "It shows we're getting stronger," reacted one Miami Hispanic. "If there's that many of us to outnumber the Anglo names, it's a great thing."

I am not defending illegal immigration...far from it. However, there are a couple of things wrong with the insinuation of this post. And I am feeling chatty today, so I apologize in advance for my lengthy post.

First off, the crisis of the situation in England is not mirrored by the situation in the US because the cultural differences between Hispanics and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are not as broad or as critical to liberty as are the differences between Brits and Muslims. To juxtapose these two statistics like this is designing and slippery, if you ask me.

Secondly, there is a significant percentage of people with Hispanic-sounding names who are in this country legally, and who have been here for generations. If they are on the Social Security register, they are not illegal. (One would hope?! If I am wrong about that I would like to know, because that is a whole-nother-ball game, as they say.)

Finally, you cannot assume that because someone's last name is Hispanic-sounding that they identify culturally with a Hispanic culture. My maiden name is Cruz. My extended families surnames, obviously, are Hispanic-soundings and would set off alarm bells on the Social Security register (though our origins are Spanish, not Mexican or central/south American.) But we are American, without a hyphen.

Plenty of people named Garcia and Rodriguez, like my family, have indeed assimilated, and do identify as American. Are we to be threatened by them because their name sounds Spanish? Is your post implying that there is something threatening about peoples' names, and no further investigation into their character is needed? This is fear-mongering, and not something I expect at Flynn Files.

If the problem in the US is a culture-clash, we can't use something as simplistic as surname counts to measure the crisis. To do so, frankly, sounds racist, and encourages people to think that all immigrants are here illegally, all immigrants are bad, etc. It's bad, divisive rhetoric.

No one can take American culture away from us. It only goes away if we stop practicing it (and/or stop having babies - which we have stopped doing; but this is not Hispanic immigrants' doing.) It is something practiced and perpetuated in the home, in civic organizations, in churches, and other private, voluntary associations.

What people are missing with this multi cultural erection that they're getting over the prospect that the social mosaic of the U.S. will change, is the fact that the reason that the United States is the great and powerful country that it is today is that our systems and laws are based on European standards from developed countries.

The problem for our country going forward is that most Non-European immigrants bring with them a little bit of the third world. Furthermore, many are not willing to conform to our standards and laws and wish to maintain social, political and cultural norms from whence they came.

Veronica: I understand your response, but I think you are reading in to the post a bit. Flynn doesn't mention _illegal_ immigration. Also, he does say that the cultural change here is less dramatic than the one going on in Britain. I'm with you that the change is MUCH less dramatic because the difference between Hispanic culture and America's Anglo-European-Mutt culture is not so great. Still, there are cultural changes happenning here, partly as the result of immigration.

Finally, regarding your Spain vs. Latin American complaint: I find it unfounded. The change is, of course, mostly driven by Latin-American immigration. Regarding your complaint that the discussion of sir names is simplistic and perhaps racist: it seems to me that sir-names are an imperfect and rough but still somewhat accurate measure of heritage and culture.

The question raised for me by the post is whether the best parts of our culture, already being attacked from within, are threatened by the patterns typical to Latin-American culture. I really donno about this one. It seems to me that in some ways the answer is yes. It also seems to me that some good things about their cultures can really bolster parts of our culture.

"What kind of name is that anyhow? Kumar? What is that five o's or two u's?"

Guttentag Uberfrau,
Re: your first paragraph, agreed. Though I question the reason for the pairing to begin with if Dan's post required that "albeit" statement. This is why I called it slippery.

Regarding your assessment of my Spanish/Hispanic point, I included that (as a parenthetical, even) as it pertains to me. But obviously the distinction pertains to others; there is no way to tell which culture is attached to a Hispanic sounding last name.

I am not here to attempt to persuade with anecodatals, but: a work colleague of mine whom I've never met is named Lynne Vasquez. I'd always assumed she was Latina but recently learned that her ethnicity is in fact Korean. She lives in Kansas and is on the forefront of advancing civic education in that state. I can think of many other examples of deceptive surnames among people I know...I don't know if on the whole they are "somewhat accurate" tools to determine heritage and culture.

The question you raise in your last paragraph is a good one, and I don't know the answer either. I do know that Hispanic culture, which is predominantly Catholic, has much in common with American culture, and shares much of our values.

The question is how best to begin the process of assimilating new immigrants, and allowing them to see that it is not us v. them; our common heritage is something they can rightfully claim as theirs without abandoning all the traditions of their original country. I don't know the whole and complete answer, but I do know that the answer does not include Spanish language classes, ATMs in Spanish, etc, etc.

This discussion is not necessarily about the minutiae of a specific surname and what that means to the social fabric of the United States but where owners of those surnames are from. It comes down to the differences between those who hail from developed countries and those who come from third world hell holes and the cultures that those two distinctively different societies construct.

I would expect a Rodriquez from Spain and the Rodriquez from Mexico to be two distinctly different kinds of people.

asdf gets it wrong. The question shouldn't be whether someone comes from the Third World or the developed world. Irish and Italian immigrants in the nineteenth century came from a place that was much "poorer" than most countries that supply our immigrants today.

The question should be "Are immigrants ready to hold to their social heritage but recognize that the political and economic institutions they brought with them have failed?" If not, they will be much harder to assimilate and we must slow down immigration to allow a longer time for assimilation.

Multiculturalism often blames the U. S. for the failures of other nations and, so, poisons the well of good will toward American institutions that past immigrants brought with them. Too many now come to exploit the opportunities in the U. S. without feeling the need to understand why those opportunities are here, and are not in the place they left.

Unlike the past, today so many native born Americans don't understand our institutions that having a large immigrant minority with no affection for those institutions, and no feelings of deference towards them, creates a great danger that we will lose what remains of those institutions.

Veronica: Don't you think that the recent spike in hispanic surnames indicates, in a non-exact way, a recent increase in people influenced by hispanic cultures? This doesn't involve any statement about any particular person.

Doc: social heritage, ok, but political and economic heritage must be rejected...? I think this is too simple. Our political and economic heritage needs to be cleaned up, and lots of social problems exist in their countries, too. The question, rather, is whether we can harness the good things about where they are from and minimize their bad habits, in order to strengthen our good points and help them heal our bad points. But social/political/economic can't be, and shouldn't be, separated so easily here.

I think immigration can be handled by just asking whether or not the prospective immigrant will make this country better, on basically a case by case basis. This means far less immigration than we have and a controlled border. Then you screen applicants rationally w/ the concern for the common good of American citizens the only concern. If we are accepting say 100,000 applicants a year then the bureaucracy wouldn't be too unseemly even.

Issues of national origin and mores, etc., can be dealt w/ in the screening process. No need to even worry much about quotas this way. But we have an imperial government and the special interests hold court. So a rational immigration process is unlikely to be created.

“If not, they will be much harder to assimilate and we must slow down immigration to allow a longer time for assimilation.”

That’s right. And most will not. In fact many don’t recognize the United States at all.

I think we’re pretty close on this but I disagree that a person’s perspective is not affected by what country they hail from. And there is a big difference between coming here from a developed country as opposed to an undeveloped country. How could it not be?

Also, wasn’t the world in the nineteenth century in general “poor” by today’s standards? That doesn’t mean that poor people coming from poor but relatively developed countries in the 1800’s were not conditioned to similar laws and living conditions as those of the United States at that time. Most could at least recognize institutions and social structures in the U.S. that were very similar to the same from where they came.

It doesn’t seem to be a valid comparison to use as an example the differences between peoples separated by two centuries of time and different continents.

I'm with you Batman. And I would venture to say that the specifics in the topic of this post that the emergence of a particular surname in the U.S. has nothing to do with new legal immigrants from Spain.

uberfrau,

You make a good point. There are some social cultural heritages which would be incompatible with our institutions and could not be harmonized. But, in general, the immigrants coming into our country do not have such social cultural norms. It is unclear whether Europe can say the same thing.

Our traditional political and economic institutions are able to accomodate a wide variety of social cultures, but not all of them.

Doc,
You put into words exactly what I was thinking and feeling, thanks.

I won't live to see it, but it's sad that in fifty years or less, our children will be living in a third world banana republic all because the people we elect to protect us won't.

Uberfrau -

Veronica: Don't you think that the recent spike in hispanic surnames indicates, in a non-exact way, a recent increase in people influenced by hispanic cultures? This doesn't involve any statement about any particular person.

Yes, I don't mean to deny that in an overall sense. But what we do with this statistic? What should we conclude from this fact alone? "Influenced by" is a pretty loose term, wouldn't you agree? And again, presenting it in the context Dan did, by juxtaposing it with the issue of Islamic immigrants in England, is disingenuous. It's not the kind of idea I expect on this blog.

asdf,

I never meant to imply that the rise is due to Spanish immigrants alone. But they make up a part. Have you ever been to S. Florida? The Cuban immigrants who came here in the late 50s have completely assimilated. They live mainly in Broward County or north. But go down south to Dade county and you'll see people who came from Cuba later, including the Mariel Boatlift and more recently, who don't even remotely consider themselves American. Something in our culture changed to make us more permissive and accepting of the immigrant who refuses to assimilate. Multiculturalism is largely to blame. But the bottom line is that we can't make all these assumptions about people just because of their last name. That is the crux of what I've been saying and what no one has been able to refute.

Veronica,

I don't have an issue with certain ethnic names. Only with what kinds of cultures the owners of those names might come from. However, I have to admit that the ethnic majority of them does raise a flag.

Mostly I have an issue with people who, once here legally, refuse to become Americans. And many happen to come here from poor third world countries so culturally they're already at a disadvantage.

Many use our country for its generous benefits and high standard of living but continue to pledge allegiance to the socially and morally corrupt countries that they came from.

So what I see as the issue is the quality of immigrants that come here. Poor, uneducated and socially deficient (thank you Ted Kennedy!). You would think that those coming here today would want to do everything they could to assimilate as quickly as possible. And as with everything here, it's not that difficult.

But you are correct that the leftist/socialist boondoggle that is 'Multiculturalism' has caused many to not only hold onto their heritage but to maintain the beliefs formed in their countries of origin that the United States is somehow inferior and corrupt.

I think the Cuban example is an interesting one as what you see are immigrants who had a relatively high standard of living in their home country but due to social and political fiat were forced to emigrate. By all appearances, it seems that they had an easier time assimilating and adopting their new homeland.

Agreed on all counts, asdf.

I did think of something else - the British example in Dan's post is one of given names, while the US one was surnames.

I am more likely to believe in a parents' choice of their child's first name as an indicator of cultural influence, unlike last names which may be merely the sign of a marriage somewhere down the line that did not result in the adoption of that side of the family's culture.