San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sun Study sees ethnic shift

By mid-century, the U.S. will be considerably more Latino and significantly less white than it is now.

Mehlman said the population trends raise questions about the culture of the country and the assimilation process.

"When you have numbers that large, you run the risk of having parallel societies within the United States," he said.

Armando Navarro, an ethnic-studies professor at UC Riverside, said the numbers validate what he has been saying about the demographic transformation of the Southwest.

In California, the Latino increase will be even more pronounced, he said.

There are about 15 million Latinos statewide, roughly 37 percent of the population.

By 2025, Latinos will make up half the state's residents, he said.

In San Bernardino County, Latinos make up about 46 percent of the population.

That total will reach 50 percent by 2010 and 70 percent by 2025, Navarro said.

The implications of the demographic shift could be profound as disadvantaged minority groups compete for limited resources, he said.

"If things don't improve socioeconomically in this country, there's going to be increasing conflict and friction among the different ethnic and racial groups," Navarro said. "We're seeing that right now between blacks and Latinos."

The problems of poverty, unemployment, educational inequality, high housing costs and inadequate health care won't be solved by pitting one group against another, he said.

But some people blame the influx of illegal immigrants for the country's woes.

Raymond Herrera, a U.S.-born Latino who served in the Vietnam War, said he has been unable to find work as a carpenter because jobs are given to illegal immigrants who are paid lower wages under the table.

"I can't get on an American job site because they hire illegal aliens and the American tradesmen are completely blackballed," said Herrera, a 58-year-old Victorville resident and volunteer with the Minuteman Project.

Robin Hvidston, an Upland resident who serves as the Minuteman Project national rally organizer, said the key to keeping the population at manageable levels is to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants.

"If we enforce employer prosecution on a grand scale, the population coming to our country illegally will spiral downward," Hvidston said.

Elsa Valdez, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, said anger at the nation's roughly 12 million illegal immigrants is misplaced.

She said the problems facing Latinos - poor educational achievement, lack of quality health care and low-paying jobs - are not caused by illegal immigrants.

"The majority of Latinos are here legally and were born here and have large families," Valdez said. "If you were to going to make those undocumented immigrants disappear, we're still going to be dealing with the same issues and challenges. We need to look at the big picture and not play the blame game."