On the Integration of Immigrants in U.S. Society

There has been much talk about “comprehensive” immigration reform in recent years, with considerable debate about its various terms. A related question that deserves discussion has been virtually ignored, that is, the all-important issue of integration of immigrants into American society.

Some restrictionists claim that today’s immigrants “fail to assimilate” and therefore immigration should be dramatically limited. In my estimation, that policy outcome for many reasons is not realistic. But even so, it is not the only policy alternative to the perceived problem. Rather, we as a society can do better to promote and foster the integration of immigrants into American social life. In the 1990s, the blue ribbon U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform headed by the late Congressperson Barbara Jordan focused on the question and offered various proposals to promote the “Americanization” of immigrants. We as a society need to revisit this issue and consider concrete policy steps that would better integrate immigrants into U.S. social life. The truth of the matter that, whatever reform of the immigration laws that we have, we will need to promote integration because we still will have immigrants. We might consider promoting naturalization, English language acquisition (by, for example, providing funding for ESL classes, which are overenrolled across the United States), education (through the DREAM Act and other measures).

In this vein, the Task Force on New Americans has “Building an Americanization Movement for the Twenty-First Century” (Dec. 2008).  Download m7081.pdf This hopefully will be the beginning of a national discussion of the issue.

UPDATE: Immigrationprof reader Robert Gittleson wrote on the topic of assimilation of immigrants after comprehensive immigration reform failed in 2007.  The provocative article, “Xochilt’s Tacos: A Metaphorical First Step Towards Healing the Emerging Racial Rift In Modern American Society” is well worth reading.

KJ