President Bush won the election in Florida by only a few hundred votes. However, if millions of illegal aliens are granted amnesty and later become United States citizens, how many new voters will we see in future elections? Naturalized citizens can also petition for extended family members to immigrate to this country. In the meantime, children born in the United States to all newcomers are American citizens and can become voters when they reach 18. Is this what former Mexican President Zedillo had in mind when he affirmed in Chicago in 1997 that “the Mexican nation extends beyond its territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important, a very important part of it”?;

Meanwhile, many Mexican American leaders at the state and national levels have publicly stated that it is only a matter of time before Latinos will control California, the Southwestern United States, and the entire United States For example, Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of HUD, said in 1995: “As goes the Latino population will go the state of California... will go the United States of America... the stakes are big, this is a fight worth making ...” Mario Obledo, former California Secretary of Health and Welfare, said on a national radio show in 1998, “... Eventually, we are going to take over all the political institutions of California...” Furthermore, Hispanic Prof. Charles Truxillo, who teaches Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico, publicly predicted in early 2000 that the Southwest secession into a new, sovereign Hispanic nation is an “inevitability” due to continued high immigration.

Indeed, the 2000 census shows that 58.5 percent of this country's 35.3 million Latinos have Mexican origins and are predominantly concentrated in the Southwest. California, New Mexico and, possibly, Texas are already minority-majority states with Hispanics being the fastest growing group. If the United States population continues to grow as it did during the last decade as shown in the 2000 census, mathematically, Hispanics could be the majority in California by as early as 2020 and in the United States by the middle of this century. (By that time, the United States population could be half of today's India.) Presently, many bills seeking to grant benefits to illegal immigrants are being pushed in many state legislatures. If passed, those laws would undoubtedly encourage higher illegal immigration. Undoubtedly, higher immigration rates from Mexico for years to come would only be politically advantageous to leaders like Fox, Cisneros, Obledo and Truxillo.

Most Latinos in the United States are good workers and have no political agenda. However, explosive Hispanic population growth in numerous states, mobilized by ambitious political activists, could have severe social and political consequences. In fact, Prof. Samuel P. Huntington, chairman of the Harvard Academy for International Area Studies and a former White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council, wrote : “... The invasion of over one million Mexican civilians [per year] ... would be a comparable threat to American societal security, and Americans should react against it with comparable vigor...". African-American Prof. Cobie Harris, who teaches ethnic studies at San Jose State University, even suggested that “Kosovo can happen in America.” Prof. Maria Hsia Chang, who teaches political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, believes that massive Mexican immigration will undoubtedly lead to political instability. In fact, Mario Obledo has publicly said that those who don't like Mexicans “should go back to Europe."

Even in the absence of social and political turmoil, current levels of immigration from all countries, the driving force behind the United States population growth, should be substantially cut across the board. If this country's population continues to increase by 33 million users of energy and social services every 10 years, as it did in last decade, how can we effectively address key concerns of all Americans? Since most of the United States population growth is immigration-related and because public schools in many states are swamped with children speaking little or no English, President Bush cannot substantially improve this nation's education by promoting immigration.

For the sake of our national unity and racial harmony, leaders in Washington should reject Vicente Fox's demands and instead adopt a time-out from mass immigration. This moratorium would at least allow timely assimilation of newcomers already here.

Yeh Ling-Ling is the Executive Director of Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, a national non-profit organization. She can be reached at (510) 835-5017.