The Chicano movement, Ortiz said, was a way for people of Mexican origin living in the U.S. and coming of age in the 1960s to get a sense of identity.
“We were neither accepted as Americans nor accepted as Mexicans,” Ortiz said. “We were living in a twilight zone. It can be very confusing because you really don’t know who you are.”
All this is bovine excrement. These people have problems not because they don't have a sense of identity, but because they DO have a sense of identity -- and they do not "identify" as Americans. And they are not accepted as Americans because they don't learn to speak English, they don't act like Americans, and they don't make any particular effort to associate with Americans.
My late wife was from Chile. She absolutely refused to be classified as "Hispanic." She said she was from Chile, so she was a Latina and a Chilena, but she had never even been to Spain, so how could she be "Hispanic"? Through her we met an older couple (yes, even older than I am!) who came to the U.S. from Chile almost 40 years ago. They didn't locate in a Spanish-speaking ghetto and become residents of some "twilight zone" because they didn't know who they were. They knew. They became American citizens. They spoke English, they got real jobs, they bought a modest house in a respectable suburb, and they raised their three kids to be Americans. I've met all three of their children -- all of whom are now obviously adults, and all of whom have their own children who are adults or nearly so. None of the kids or grandkids has any trace of a Spanish accent. I don't think the grandkids even speak Spanish -- the only Spanish word I've heard from any of them is the word "Abuela" when speaking to the wife -- that's Spanish for "Grandmother."
That's the difference between a true immigrant and the illegals and their supporters. It would be unthinkable for our friends to fly anything but the American flag. They consider La Raza to be a joke. Coming from Chile, naturally they were Roman Catholics. I don't remember exactly why, but now they are Methodists, and have been since long before I met them. Maybe the same reason my wife became an Episcopalian. We attended the Catholic church in our town -- my wife didn't like the building, she didn't like the priest, and she found the parishioners to be very unfriendly. We ended up attending a Spanish-language mass at a church in a nearby town. We thought it was Catholic, and then discovered it was Episcopalian. My wife liked the Latino priest, so we continued. For a time we alternated with a Catholic church nearby, but when the priest of the Catholic parish was arrested for embezzling over $1 million to fund his gay affair with a younger dude in another state, my wife declared she wasn't a Catholic any more.
The problem too many Hispanic immigrants have (both legals and illegals) is the same that many middle easterners have. They want to come to the United States and receive all the bennies, but they expect America to allow them to continue to live by their home countries' rules and cultural norms. That's not how it works.
