The question of Americanization, which is at root what we’re talking about, is even more fundamental than Huntington says. The fact of Mexico’s contiguity and historical grievance against us is indeed unique; not to name-drop, but he wrote it up first for me. But it’s more fundamental than that, which gets to JPod’s claim about how the “nonsense” that I keep “spouting” simply represents a repeat of the past. But we’re not experiencing a repeat of the past — and the more important difference is not in the immigrants but us. America is a completely different place from a century ago and (as I explain in my book — coming this summer from Sentinel!) immigration is incompatible with a modern society. This is true with regard to economics, government services, security, but also assimilation — in the modern context of cheap and easy communications and transportation technology, and with an elite that’s unwilling to insist that immigrants conform to our norms, Americanization happens much more slowly, less thoroughly, and differently; as our own John Miller put it, “If the schools miss their chance [to inculcate American language and values], un-Americanized children grow up to become un-Americanized adults – at which point their Americanization becomes much more difficult and unlikely.”