Summary Of Mexifornia By Victor Hanson

The population of America is one of the most diverse. Millions of people have immigrated to the U.S. from countries such as Japan, China, Ireland, Poland, etc.. The chapters from, “Mexifornia” by Victor Hanson, touch on the immigration issue, especially in California. It is not too uncommon for towns such as Selma, California, where Hanson grew up, to be made up of so many cultures. Hanson uses this personal anecdote to set up his authority and credibility for his argument. Selma was a town of many cultures but Hanson explains that due to the mass amounts of Mexicans immigrating to the U.S. it became 90% Hispanic. This experience leads to his discussion on immigration itself. Hanson details that he never hears English spoken in Selma anymore

Hanson's strongest argument from these chapters is that Mexican immigration is significantly different from other immigration groups. Hanson’s personal anecdote on his experience growing up in Selma around many different kinds of immigrants establishes his overall persona as one that speaks from personal experience and later goes on showing his credibility as he uses facts and statistics to support his arguments. Before he dives into great detail on why exactly Mexican immigrants are different from the usual immigrants he says why they are similar, “…the mass arrival of millions of poor Mexicans is not all the different from the great influx of other groups who were poor and not northern European” as they seem to follow the patterns of two generations of poverty and degradation before finally seeing the shift into the middle-class and beyond. He uses the statistic that “between 1995 and 2000, Hispanic income on average grew 27 percent—a rate of growth faster than that of any other minority group” which helps prove his earlier claim and begins to

The mood shifts as Hanson uses another anecdote about his immigrant students to challenge this claim. He uses his second-generation Asian students, who have become assimilated into American culture, and uses rhetorical questions to ponder why his Mexican-American students have a different experience adapting to America. One of the biggest points of this argument is location. Mexico is close to the U.S. and in Hanson’s words it is, “only a short drive to the south rather than oceans away”. So, Mexican immigrants do not experience the same kind of homesickness or isolation immigrants usually feel. Immigrants from places such as the Philippines, China, Japan, Spain, etc., can only go home maybe every few months and thus have to “deal with Americans”. Hanson’s use of the word ‘deal’ in this sentence gives the connotation of the absolute inevitability that these immigrants must, in fact, assimilate within American culture as they cannot avoid interactions with Americans and not just other immigrants from