UNDERCLASS RISING
America is headed for more dropouts, illiteracy, crime and demands for government services
BY KEN WARD

Ken Ward is opinion page editor of the Press Journal in Vero Beach, Fla. A Las Vegas resident from 1990-2002, he was a freelance columnist with the R-J and assistant managing editor at the Sun. E-mail him at kenricward@juno.com  Other stories by Ken Ward

Do you know the Spanish word for "sex?" You can bet the Latina Lolita down the street does - and, in all likelihood, she's pretty proficient at it. The latest government statistics, once again, show young Hispanics topping the fecundity charts:

4 Six of 10 U.S. Latinas become pregnant at least once before age 20.

4 The birth rate among Hispanic teens is more than double the white rate and 40 percent higher than blacks.

4 Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate of any ethnic group.

Such behavior, of course, produces a continuing cycle of poverty among a growing underclass. With Latinos already counting for nearly one in five U.S. teens (and rising), there's plenty of breeding stock on hand.

In a trenchant treatise titled "Hispanic Family Values," Heather Mac Donald notes that America's Latinos are following African-Americans into deeper dysfunction. While Hispanic men still hold onto a relatively strong work ethic, the once-solid cultural foundation of faith and family is rapidly breaking down.

In fact, teenage Latinas are far more prone than other ethnic groups to have sexual intercourse with men who are more than five years their senior. This gives a whole new dimension to family values.

Mac Donald details several cases where an inseminator is actually the boyfriend of a girl's mother. That mother, who was herself a teenage mom, ends up raising the grandchild. As this vicious cycle plays out, demographers note the inevitable result: Future generations of girls who become unwed, teenage moms, and boys who are statistically more likely to end up in jail.

"Social workers report that the impregnators of younger Hispanic women are, with some regularity, their uncles, not necessarily seen as a bad thing by the mother's Hispanic family,'' Mac Donald relates. "Older men seek out young girls in the belief that a virgin cannot get pregnant during her first intercourse.''

This type of sexed-up stupidity helps explain why Nevada, with its metastasizing Hispanic underclass, leads the nation in teen pregnancy. Indeed, birth rates would be even higher if Hispanics weren't losing their Catholic moorings and heading to "family planning" clinics in record numbers; Hispanics have abortions at twice the rate of whites.

Naturally, recent news reports about America's record incidence of out-of-wedlock births (38 percent) danced around the racial component that drives it. Mac Donald observes: "This is a fascinating social experiment, one that academicians are - predictably - not attuned to.'' Yes, politically correct professors wouldn't want to delve too deeply here.

But social workers and public health centers know exactly what's happening. And they know that the ongoing minority population boom guarantees their job security.

As one foster-care supervisor in a heavily Mexican section of Orange County, Calif., said, "It's going to continue to grow until we can put birth control in the water." Did someone just say "eugenics"?

While our "democratic" system would never countenance such a Nazi-like solution, America is paying an increasingly steep financial, social and political price.

Hispanics and blacks who are procreating most, are, in vastly disproportionate numbers, at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Their persistently high illegitimacy rates virtually ensure that they and their progeny will remain there. This necessitates an ever-bigger welfare state.

When considering the early-and-often aspect of mestizo motherhood, remember that:

4 Two-thirds of teens who begin families before age 18 never finish high school.

4 A child born to an unmarried teen mother who does not have a high school diploma or GED is nine times more likely to be poor.

Yet this matters not to a young Latina. If she's in this country illegally, giving birth to a U.S.-born baby opens citizenship's door to her. Relatives follow, and America's diversity party rolls on: More babies, more Wal-Mart shoppers, more cheap labor, more voters for the Democratic Party.

There also are more dropouts, more illiteracy, more crime, more environmental degradation and even more demands for government services for the downtrodden. These are the prevailing features of Third World stink holes. And if this is all starting to look familiar, you may conclude that America is getting screwed. LW