Issue date: 10/11/05 Section: News

Wade Barker - The Battalion Harvard professor Samuel Huntington speaks as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series at the George Bush Presidential Conference Center Monday night.

Samuel Huntington, a professor at Harvard University, said Monday evening that the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants could cause the United States to become a divided nation.

"Spanish seems to be joining English as the (dominant) American language," he said. "I don't see this as being the end of the world. It will be a different America when this happens - if it happens. We will be moving in the direction of a divided nation."

Huntington spoke at the George Bush Presidential Conference Center as part of Texas A&M's Distinguished Lecture Series.

In his introduction, David Prior, the executive vice provost of A&M, said Huntington is a top political scientist but that his lecture does not represent the views of A&M.

The Mexican culture merging with American culture could cause an unwanted change, Huntington said.

"If we move into the (direction) of a society with two sets of communities, two languages, two cultures - that is going to eventually have an impact on our culture because the difference between Mexican and American values is drastic, and this will cause massive upheaval and change," he said.

Huntington said the current wave of Mexican immigrants poses a greater threat to American culture because the immigrants speak one language, as opposed to previous immigrant waves in which the people spoke a multitude of languages. Mexicans are particularly resistant to assimilation due to their numbers, he said.

"Hispanics now outnumber blacks," he said. "They also have very high birthrates, and so the number of Hispanics have grown extremely rapidly."

Huntington said the increasing number of Hispanic immigrants to the United States will have adverse effects, including limiting anyone who does not speak English and Spanish.

"If we do have a nation of two languages, the people who are fluent in both languages will have a tremendous advantage," he said. "The people who only speak one - English or Spanish - will lose out to those who are bilingual."

Decreasing illegal immigration will cause corporations to increase wages for manual labor jobs previously taken by illegal immigrants, Huntington said.

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