The long, productive life and recent death of audio equipment pioneer Amar Bose gives The Daily Maverick's J. BROOKS SPECTOR an opportunity to contemplate the impact of the children of immigrants on American life and society.

America's political universe is currently embroiled in an increasingly angry, anxiety-ridden debate over how - or whether - the country can eventually achieve a fundamental immigration reform policy.

In a nutshell, the key challenges for the politicians are to find a politically acceptable path to citizenship for the ten million or so illegal immigrants or undocumented aliens (depending on one's political position in the debate) who are already in the country; and then, to sort out the best way to manage the country's border control mechanisms to allow for effective policing and regulation of entry into the country.

In this debate, a number of Republican legislators are increasingly giving voice to charges about immigrants that, frankly, verge on an ugly covert form of racism.

The difficult irony for Republicans is, of course, that the future of Republican electoral success may well come to depend on attracting a growing share of Hispanic supporters (the group that is now the country's largest ethnic minority). A significant...