Should Immigration Require Assimilation?
Image from Wikipedia (The Melting Pot)
In Should Immigration Require Assimilation? in The Atlantic, Tom Gjelten excerpts part of his new book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story dealing with immigrant assimilation. He poses the question as follows: Every year, unique people—each with their own cultural history—become new citizens of the United States. Must they leave their own heritage behind?
The alleged failure of assimilation of immigrants has often been offered at various times in U.S. history as a rationale for restricting immigration. Samuel Huntington in his controversial book Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (2005) contends that the large wave of immigration has not fully assimilated into American social life but behaves as a separatist bloc of sorts — maintaining a separate language, culture, religion, work ethic, etc. Click here for criticism of that kind of approach to immigration through the lens of Latino Americans.
KJ