United States: The Day Jose Beat Joe

It had been predicted, and now the United States Census Bureau says that the moment has arrived: 50.4 percent of all babies born in the country are Latino, black, Asian or another minority. Calculations anticipate that by July 1, there will be 52 million Latinos (or Hispanics, as they are called in the U.S.) among the country’s 311 million inhabitants. This makes them the largest minority group, followed by the black population, who total 40.8 million people.

For quite some time in the United States, there have been more babies named Jose rather than Joe, which is the English equivalent of Jose. The late Samuel P. Huntington uses this statistic in his essay “The Clash of Civilizations” to illustrate the rapid growth of the Latino population in the United States. For Huntington, this growth is worrisome since “Mexican immigration poses challenges to our policies and to our identity in a way nothing else has in the past.” According to Huntington, this is because previous immigrants were inclined to adopt the United States’ national identity, but this is not true of the immigrants of today. In some cases, they are even hostile toward this national identity. Huntington advises that Washington should demand acceptance of the dominant culture on behalf of immigrants as a condition for granting citizenship. If not, Huntington predicts that “in the end, the United States of America will suffer the fate of Sparta, Rome and other human communities.” In other words, the US will fall victim to barbarians.

The rapid change in demographic trends is due to constant Latin immigration and high birth rates within their communities. However, in recent years, as a consequence of the financial crisis that began in 2008, the clandestine migration from the south has decreased significantly. (Before, a million people would migrate illegally every year.) It is estimated that 11.2 million undocumented people currently reside in the country. This workforce is important in a number of fields, since Latinos residing illegally represent 24 percent of agricultural workers, 17 percent in the cleaning services and 14 percent in construction.

Opinions are split regarding the impact of immigrants on the labor market. Some estimate that such workers supplement the local workforce by taking low-paying jobs that most people are not willing to perform. The unions have another interpretation. They argue that certain jobs are poorly paid because employers are finding people who are willing to work for less. As a result, they harm workers in the formal sector by lowering the expected level of pay.

For some Latin American countries, the closing of job opportunities in the United States would have an enormous impact. The consequences would affect economies from Mexico to Ecuador to the Caribbean. For Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and others, the main source of income is money sent from relatives who work in the country to the North.