ABSTRACT
Migration should be viewed as a bridge between two nations that are destined to come closer despite their governments' worst intentions. Latin America is the largest single source of legal and illegal immigration into the United States. The effects of so vast a flow of immigrants from Latin America are prodigious and diverse. Coupled with high Hispanic fertility rates, the flow is transforming the ethnic structure of American society, above all in the states of California, Texas, Florida, and New York. The flow is significant in a cultural and economic sense for the sending countries, particularly Mexico, as well as for the United States. The immigrants also develop a more objective, probably more favorable view of the United States than what they may have learned in their country of origin. The perpetuation of the traditional values and attitudes will tend to reproduce in the United States patterns of behavior that evoke the political, economic, and social pathologies of Latin America.
