What a Wall Can't Stop

Mexico, the poorer country, does not have the luxury of an appalled demeanor when the Atlanta couple transforms a beachfront property into a saltwater Tara or when senior citizens from Ohio park their retirement village in Baja.

And watch closely -- I implore you -- watch the eyes of Mexican busboys and waiters as they observe U.S. college students conducting wet T-shirt competitions on the beaches of Cancun. Do not believe, America, that you are alone in your reservations concerning this marriage.

President Bush is far more accommodating to the notion of a hemispheric America than other members of his party. In a film made for his reelection campaign in 2004, Bush put his arm around a brown child's shoulder and waved a small Mexican flag with his other hand. One cannot imagine Theodore Roosevelt in such a posture or, for that matter, Bill Clinton.

When I tell Mexicans I think their country is dying (as a vision and economic reality separate from the United States), they take my remark as an affront. They tell me Mexico will always be different from the United States.

But a recent poll taken twice (over several months) by the Pew Hispanic Center found that more than 40 percent of Mexicans would emigrate to the United States if given the opportunity. Twenty percent would be willing to emigrate illegally.

In the initial survey, 41 percent indicated they would leave Mexico if they had the means and chance. Three months later, the percentage rose to 46 percent. Included were people of the middle class: Around 35 percent of college graduates would emigrate from Mexico; 13 percent would be willing to enter the United States illegally.

A nation that cannot feed its young with dreams but cuts its milk with memory and sand is going to starve the future; it is going to die. The only place where people will continue to hold on to Mexico will be in the United States.

Because of the illegal immigrant, we are all entering the hemisphere. There are now too many Mexicans in "America" and too many "Americans" in Mexico for any of us to avoid the New World: the united states of Americas.

Richard Rodriguez is the author of "Days of Obligation," a book about Mexico and California.