Almost 122 years ago, the nation of France gave America a very large gift. At the bottom of the gift, a plaque immortalizes the words of Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

But now a wall is going up to our south. Bilingualism has a backlash. Membership in racist groups is rising. Some argue that illegal immigrants should be “rounded up and sent back.”

Others aren’t so nice.

Why is illegal immigration such a hot topic in America today? In the new book “His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.” by Geraldo Rivera, you’ll see that it’s a mucho grande problema.

Born in New York to a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother, Rivera has seen his share of racism. In this book, writing as a Hispanic man, he examines the issues of race, illegal immigration, and American opinions.

Americans, Rivera says, are afraid that their identity will be changed if Hispanics are allowed to immigrate with impunity, meaning that Latino culture will overtake “American” ways. He says we’re afraid we’ll become a nation of people who don’t speak English. Some are concerned about terrorism, increased crime and disease. Others think Mexican mothers are coming here for the sole reason of “dropping anchor” for the free health care their newborn American citizen would get.

Rivera counters all these arguments with facts and statistics. Hispanic culture, food, and language has only enriched our country. Most second-generation immigrants speak fluent English, and few third-generation Mexicans in America speak the language of their grandparents. Hispanics don’t like crime any more than anybody else. And the truth about “anchor babies” is that their mothers work hard to stay here with their American-born children, paying into a Social Security system they’ll never have the right to tap into.

While much of “His Panic” is sound journalism and includes hard data from several authentic sources, I couldn’t help but believe that author Geraldo Rivera was up to his usual newsmaking tricks. He’s flippant and dismissive, dropping names with the wave of a pen, and his narrative smacks of stirring the pot and inciting more panic.

Do Americans “fear” Hispanics? In reading this book, I didn’t think so. Rivera makes sense on many levels, but from the venom in the e-mail examples he cites and from other examples he offers, it appears to me that Americans who “fear” Hispanics “fear” immigrants, period. It’s been happening since the Pilgrims stepped on the continent. Rivera even says it himself when he pokes fun at the idea of fencing the Canadian border, and when he recalls the anti-Irish signs and anti-Catholic attitudes in America in the early part of the last century and before.

This is a thought-provoking book, yet I can’t help but think someone more neutral should’ve co-authored it, to balance Rivera’s backhandedness. Yes, “His Panic” will open the floodgates to more dialogue on the issue of immigration. I fear it will also muddy the waters further.