Josh Green
San Francisco Chronicle

Lurking just beneath the surface of the immigration debate are several irksome questions about another topic that we may be afraid to ask.

Beyond long fences, paths to amnesty, guest-worker programs and the nuts and bolts of legislative proposals and politics, we want to know: Who are these new people, and will they adopt English and the American culture? What will our nation look like 50 years from now, once they have become U.S. citizens? How responsible are we for integrating them into mainstream society and seeing them become part of the middle class?

These questions of assimilation no longer reside on the horizon of a hazy future. The sheer numbers of immigrants who have entered the United States in the past three decades, combined with the political spotlight shining on 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, make it imperative that we answer these questions now.

READ MORE: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/29/RVL7UKGEU.DTL

---