SAN DIEGO , California ( CNN ) -- You must know what 's really driving the immigration debate . It 's the culture , stupid . Ruben Navarrette Jr. : Some opponents of immigration , even the legal kind , fear changes in local culture . Immigration restrictionists -- and by that , I mean those who want to limit all immigration , even the legal kind -- like to pretend they 're so high-minded . Yet they ca n't help themselves . They always take the low road and harken back to the nativism that greeted earlier waves of immigrants . The restrictionists insist that what bothers them are merely practical concerns : that our borders are n't secure , that so many immigrants are coming into the country illegally , and that the new arrivals are burdening schools and draining social services once they get here . Really ? If that 's the extent of it , then why does the conversation quickly turn to the impact -- both real and perceived -- that immigrants have on American culture through everything from taco trucks to Spanish-language billboards . That seems to be the issue in North Dakota , where , according to a recent article in USA Today , towns facing tough economic times are nonetheless resisting a cultural transfusion that could save them . In Cooperstown , the locals opposed efforts to bring in a hog plant and a dairy , because those kind of dirty and hard jobs are likely to attract ... guess who ? American kids who work at Starbucks ? Nope . The article quotes Orville Tranby , a local community leader in Cooperstown , who says that some residents have told him `` face to face '' that such facilities might attract Hispanic immigrants who could change the local culture . You 'll find the same fear in Lewisburg , Tennessee . Not long ago , an employee at a local library came up with the radical idea of a bilingual story time where children could hear tales read to them in Spanish . Townspeople wanted no part of that . They demanded that all books purchased by the library , or even donated , be in English-only . These stories are ridiculous , but they 're also helpful . They illustrate what some people are really concerned about with immigration , and it goes well beyond words like `` legal '' or `` illegal . '' It 's the perception that the country is becoming more Hispanic , that Spanish is replacing English , that Hispanic immigrants are weakening American identity , and that Main Street is turning into Little Mexico . A leader of the vigilante Minuteman movement moronically called it the `` colonization '' of the United States . This sort of rhetoric is all about fear -- that those who thrive in the dominant culture are losing their primacy , that the mainstream is being polluted by foreigners , and that our children are going to live in a world where they 're going to have to work a lot harder to keep up . It conjures up the alarm bells that Benjamin Franklin set off about German immigrants in the late 18th century , who he insisted could never adopt the culture of the English , but would `` swarm into our Settlements , and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours . '' It popped up in the mid-19th century amid worries that Chinese immigrants were `` unassimilable , '' which led to Congress approving the explicitly-named Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 . And it helped welcome the 20th century when Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge warned that immigrants ( read : the Irish ) were diluting `` the quality of ( U.S. ) citizenship '' and others complained that Italian immigrants were uneducated , low skilled , apt to send all their money to their home country and prone to criminal activity . Where have we heard that before ? And when will we hear it again ? After all , Hispanics may be the latest group to find themselves in a culture war with nativists . But they wo n't be the last . Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist . You can read his column here . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer . E-mail to a friend .
Navarrette : Opponents see Hispanic immigrants as weakening U.S. identity . One town demanded all library books be in English , Navarrette says . Score: 7