It would be now if Hispanic turnout wasn't absolutely wretched, so who knows.
sort of true but Kerry only got around 54% of the Hispanic vote nationwide IIRC so it's not a solid a bloc as we think of it / as it should be. and Obama being black make prevent him from approaching Gore numbers (which was around 60%; plus McCain isn't a wingnut on immigration. he'll do considerably better among Hispanics than Romney would have.) but if the GOP keeps moving right on immigration it is only logical that the Hispanic bloc would begin to move away from them.
the other argument is that Hispanics will be viewed as 'White' within the next few decades, much as Irish and Italians were not considered white way back during the immigration waves but were assimilated. that's why this debate should be interesting.
Doesn't see why they would keep Spanish around. I know plenty of third-generation Puerto Rican and Mexican immigrants around here who only know what Spanish they learned in high school. The language is only retained when they live in Spanish-only ghettos in places like Texas and California.
NYC, in my experience, has a greater amount of ghettoization of minority groups than Texas (having lived in the Texas barrio and traversed the NYC one). I can't speak to Jersey.
The first-generation (not second or third-generation) Hispanics in the Texas barrio have to learn to partially communicate in English in order to be able to get jobs and advance in life. Their children (when born in the US) are highly effective translators. Once we get to third generation, they speak English as good as most Texans do.
...Which is apparently not very well
"Ghettoization" in New York City is a groos exaggeration, and you know this. Certainly parts of the city are starkly divided, but the very fact of close proximity makes interaction a fact of life, and there is no isolation for a group simply because a neighborhood is primarily Hispanic (or black or Jewish or Russian or Korean or whatever), at least in terms of the second and third generations (the former often leaves, and the latter almost always does).
This is much less true in El Paso or Los Angeles. In the latter, ghettoization is perfected to an art: because moving around within the city and its environs requires a car, many simply don't leave. The ghetto is also far larger than in New York, meaning that proximity to English-speaking neighborhoods is much rarer.
In El Paso, the vast majority of the population speaks Spanish, so the incentives to learn English are much weaker, and a second-generation immigrant may learn English in school but never reach proficiency because only Spanish is spoken in the home environment and general life. This is to some extent true in New York, but the interaction is there in NYC in a way it is not in El Paso--or in Los Angeles.
