But not how you think:
Central American immigrants adopt Mexican ways in U.S.
. . .
Rivera and thousands of other Central and South American immigrants have left their native countries only to arrive in an American city dominated by Mexicans, who comprise L.A.'s largest Latino group and have access to most of the jobs sought by immigrants. The metropolis drives many to Mexicanize, to degrees big and small, often before they start to Americanize.
. . .
"It's always Mexico, Mexico, Mexico," said Jorge Mendoza, a 42-year-old painter, one of a group of Salvadoran men who gathered recently at MacArthur Park. "I turn on the radio and all I hear is Mexican music. If I want to watch a soccer game, I have to watch a Mexican team play."
The same goes for Spanish newscasts, telenovelas, celebrity gossip — all dominated by Mexicans.
. . .
Alma Jimenez was fed up by the time she and her Mexican husband, Reynaldo Ortiz, faced off in the bunk bed debate.
Her traditional Salvadoran dishes had long been pushed aside by her husband's Mexican fare. She had seen her kids adapt entirely to her husband's Mexican way of speaking. ("I was born here. I wasn't born in El Salvador," 9-year-old Wendy Ortiz protests when her mother asks why she doesn't sound more Salvadoran.)
. . .
"We're all Latinos," she said. "The thing that brings us together is that we all speak Spanish. Everybody needs to just get used to it and get along."
Note that the daughter is saying "I was born here" (i.e., in L.A.) as a reason for her to sound Mexican. I guess this is what Tamar Jacoby and Linda Chavez and the WSJ crowd mean when they say assimilation is working out just fine.
