“…The connection between “E-Verify” legislation and the future of America may seem a laughable stretch. But baby steps are needed to correct the nation’s errant immigration policies and enforcement measures before they become entrenched past the possibility of reversal. ..”

America’s existential threat
By Gary Reese
Florida Insider

March 15, 2010 —

It’s been said that the future is like a foreign country – people do things differently there. That’s probably why the geopolitical forecasts of noted futurist George Friedman read so odd at first glance.

Friedman is no alarmist in his book, “The Next 100 Years: A Forecast For the 21st Century.” To the contrary. Sure, some of his scenarios read outlandishly – most notably an outer-space repeat of the Pearl Harbor attack at about mid-century. Even so, Friedman is dismissive of the current commentariat talk that America is in slow, fatal decline. He also has no partisan agenda, and believes political actors like Barack Obama and George W. Bush are all but irrelevant in the unfolding pageant of world history.

Friedman brushes off the current Great Recession, massive government bailouts and the federal debt as roads to doom. Ditto for the threat of China as the next world superpower. He also dismisses the dangers of global warming, Islamic jihad and Iranian nuclear weapons. All these problems, writes Friedman, will eventually bead up and roll off the shrugging shoulders of an increasingly stout America.

Eventually, however – perhaps 70 years from now, when today’s newborns are ready to retire – there will arise a truly existential threat to our nation, he writes. Here’s a hint on the foreign country the author believes may be America’s downfall: It’s both the most unlikely and the most obvious one of all – Mexico.

According to Friedman, Mexican immigration eventually will bring about a cultural and political point of no return for America. He writes that in 20 years or so, there will emerge such a labor shortage here that, instead of lobbying to halt the continuing high levels of illegal immigration from Mexico, business and political interests will start actively recruiting even more (legal) immigrants from south of the border.

Many years later, when that temporary economic crisis has passed, America will “suddenly” find itself a bi-cultural and bilingual nation, as Canada is today. Demographically, legal and illegal Mexican immigrants will have effected a sort of re-conquest of Texas, California and the other parts of the American West forcibly taken from Mexico in the nineteenth century.

Friedman posits a late-21st-century America primed to fall into the sticky slog of unending inter-ethnic conflict, like, say, the Arabs and Israelis of today. Such conflicts can’t be solved for the simple reason that genuine solutions don’t exist. When people feel threatened, their tribal instincts almost always get the best of their noblest sentiments of tolerance and egalitarianism. They circle the wagons.

Friedman doesn’t predict civil war between Anglos and Latinos in America. He writes that the situation instead will become a permanent state of smoldering conflict that could shackle America as a world power. He foresees elected officials with divided loyalties between Washington and Mexico City. ..

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