Yet according to Gregory Rodriguez, of the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy, the most appropriate historical comparison is not with the confrontational politics of the 1960s, which sprang out of the squashing of racial minorities.

ECONOMIST: A lesson in how to count

Gregory Rodriguez, of Pepperdine University, has found that by 1990 more than half the households of American-born Latinos and about a third of those of foreign-born Latinos were middle-class, in the sense that they owned their own homes.

ECONOMIST: Enter the Garcias�� Own Party

Gregory Rodriguez, a researcher at Pepperdine University, argues that foreign-born Hispanics have three advantages which help them make up for their lack of educational qualifications: the highest number of wage-earners per family of any ethnic group, the highest participation in the labour force, and stable families.

ECONOMIST: Immigration