Mexicans are not assimilating: My friends tell me to not worry about illegal immigration because, while we see certain problems now, they are temporary because America has always successfully assimilated new people.

Well, one good indicator of assimilation is less and less involvement in crime. But the General Social Survey tells us that recent cohorts of immigrants from Mexico have been differentiating away from mainstream America. Eleven percent of first generation male immigrants admitted that they had been arrested before. Fine, that rate is not high. (They may be underreporting for fear of being deported). But the percent of men of Mexican descent born in this country who say they have been arrested is 35 percent--a huge increase! Studies put the country's number of Hispanic gang members at close to half a million, and most of them were born here.