One of the places I visited over the weekend was Ellis Island. I had never been there and considering that half of my ancestors came through there in the first two decades of the 20th century, it was about damn time.
As part of the tour, the Park Service ranger noted in the Q&A that because of the eventual implementation of quotas by the Republican Party in the middle 1920s, many Italians became registered Democrats. That is, the Italians who weren't sent back to Italy or who settled in Canada.
Flash forward to 2009. It's not difficult to predict which party America's rapidly growing Latino population will be registering with over the next several generations. It certainly won't be the party of Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh (or their successors).