On Monday June 18th I attended a special forum at MIT in Cambridge Massachusetts titled: The New Demography - Fourth Chapter of American History. The forum comes at the heels of the recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau documenting what many of us already knew, but no-one had made it official, that there were more babies of color born in the country than white babies.
Though that historic information of the country's shifting demographics did not make the top prime time news, I guarantee you that it had a whole bunch of folks throughout the country going hysterical. Imagine the thought of all those in Arizona trying to seal off the entire border with Mexico by fencing, blocking and now passing ridiculous anti-democratic laws to stop undocumented folks from crossing over to now learn that it's too late. No matter what they do to keep Latinos out the fact is that now they are being born right here in the good old U.S of A.
The issue of more babies of color being born in America that white babies is a very serious thing. Especially when the majority of those babies are Latino. This is the first time in the history of the country that this has occurred and it's not a fluke. This trend may continue for quite some time as Latinos are the a younger population than many of the others in America
Now think about this? This is something that the government and all sectors of society should be grateful for. Yes, grateful, because it is these young Latinos that will be the future workers, the catalyst to keep America from going the route of the many countries in Europe that have aged themselves out of being a productive economy and have to rely on immigrants. YES, immigrants invited to come to take the jobs that would go unfilled because there is no young work force to keep the economic engine roaring.
This will not happen here because of the Latino birth rate. That being said and if we can get folks to understand this reality and see what President Obama and a large number in Congress understand that Latino youth are the future of America the country will flourish. That is why the Dream Act was tolerated by some of the most reactionary of the Republicans knowing that the future of our country lies in the hands of the very people that many in their own party (and some conservative southern Democrats) want to kick out.
I'm sure that though this issue is not being discussed publicly it is a topic of serious conversation at different levels of government, major policy think tank organizations, the military and Homeland Security as this is easily a national security issue.
We Latinos should also make this issue a major conversation piece in all our communities. The forum at MIT was important and basically concluded with one major item: "If America is to Succeed then Latinos need to succeed."
I urge all my readers to circulate this very important issue and create discussions at your schools, community organizations, churches and political, or civic organizations. We need to understand the ramifications of this shift that is occurring in America and how our community needs to prepare now.
Let me know what you think. I also want to share the following video with you that can perhaps add more light to this issue, enjoy: