Why aren't immigrants assimilating like they used to?

Question

Who put out the fire under the melting pot? Its obvious that immigrants of today are not assimilating like the immigrants who came during the great wave. We would probably be speaking German right now if we treated todays immigrants the same as the immigrants from the 20's. I would have asked my question like this; Warum nicht die anpassenden Immigranten sind, wie sie zu verwendeten. It has been predicted that in 50 years the predominate language in the US will be Spanish. How could this happen if we held them to the same standards as immigrants from the 20's? If we did, there wouldn't be schools using bilingual education (Spanish and English), there wouldn't be multi million dollar tv stations like telemundo and univision, and we certainly wouldn't have towns like El Cenizo, TX that conducts all town business in Spanish. So why is this happening if we don't have a double standard? Who decided that we would give Hispanic immigrants this preferential treatment.

Answer 1

A great man once said:

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

-Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Answer 2

I agree that immigrants should assimilate, to some degree. However, because of many many years of "manifest destiny", basically forced assimilation, most of which affected the Native Americans, I think we have decided to go to the opposite direction. Instead of requiring assimilation, we have now become completely accomodating. And while that's OK up to a point, there also comes a point where the immigrants must take the initiative, and not just expect that everything will be handed to them on a silver platter as it is right now. But they are well within their freedoms to retain their heritage and traditions, including their language. If they truly want to get ahead, they'll come around and learn English. Otherwise, they'll be stuck in low-paying dead-end jobs since they'll be unable to move into management because of the language barrier.

You talk about all the bilingual English/Spanish education, but there's bilingual education everywhere, and in quite a few languages other than Spanish. The state of California offers bilingual education in a whole bunch of Asian languages as well. Anywhere there's a large population of Jewish people, there's probably English/Hebrew bilingual education. In the northeast near the Canadian border, there's English/French bilingual education. In the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, there are a few English/Armenian schools, since there's a large Armenian immigrant population there. Even in Reno, where I grew up, a couple of the high schools, and the university, offer Basque since there's a sizeable Basque population there.

As for Spanish being the predominate language in 50 years, that is almost numerically impossible. Mathematically speaking, for native Spanish speakers to make up more than 50% of the US population, almost 250 million native Spanish speakers would have to immigrate to the US. According to the 2000 US census, only 35 million of the 278 million Americans marked Hispanic (for comparison, 34 million marked black, 10.5 million marked Asian, 2 million marked Native American, and 192 million marked white). I also imagine quite a few of the Hispanics are 4th or 5th generation Americans whose first language is English anyway. And since Mexico's population from the 2000 census is only 100 million, they would also need most of Spanish-speaking South America to immigrate as well to even come close to the necessary 250 million.

Also, as long as there are immigrants from non-Spanish speaking countries coming here (as it stands, Asians as a whole are the fastest-growing immigrant group currently), that will make it even harder for Spanish to ever reach 50%.

Answer 3

It is because the immigrants of today think it is their right to be here and use our resources when immigrants at the turn of the century came here and really worked for everything they had there are many more laws protecting this wave of immigration and has made them a lazy bunch of leetches,that is why so many people want a major immigration reform I believe there should be a language tax on immigrants that must be paid until they have sufficiantly learned basic conversational english the tax will be to pay for their lessons once they have passed the course succesfully they no longer pay the tax, dont go to the class pay the tax till you can test out

Answer 4

No body decided. The same no body that decided to overlook the masses upon masses of illegals stealing openly into our country, raping, robbing and pillaging as they come.
When you allow a foreign force to enter your country and take all things from you, you lose the war.
America is/has lost the war. It's not over all together but unless some strong action (against all standard of our present administration towards the REAL benefit of general AMericans.) is taken, the invaders will persist and then take over.
It wouldn't surprise me this occurred but there is still time to save the beast.
All we can do is scream, blast and storm our leaders to turn things around. This failing, America will too.

America, one of the greatest powers in the world, given away by some whacky, weirdo hirees who don't know which way rain falls. I guess one could conclude that Capitalism and Democracy are false values. What else would or could allow this to happen the way it has?

Answer 5

I think that American citizens and legislators have been convinced to make exceptions and allowances for Hispanics because we've been gradually conditioned to believe that we NEED Hispanic immigrants, particularly illegals, to keep our economy afloat. We've become convinced that by doing menial jobs for sub-minumum wages, immigrants are keeping our prices low. Therefore, Americans are far more inclined to be forgiving toward those who wish to live here without respecting our culture, language, and traditions.

Never mind that none of these assumptions are accurate, or that the minimial discounts we get today could cause social and economic chaos tomorrow. Large companies are hooked on cheap, obedient labor and they've convinced this nation that if it's taken away, we'll all be paying five bucks for a single apple overnight. I, for one, believe that the whole policy is horse apples.

**On an historic note, during the immigration boom of the 20's, the majority of people entering this country illegally were Italians. The epithet "Wop" came to mean Italian, because when ship crews sorted the newcomers for entrance procedures, the WOP section was an acronym for "without papers." This area was mostly peopled by Italians, so they came to be known by that abbreviation.

Answer 6

The mass number of illegal aliens are the reason that a lot of legal immigrants aren't assimilating. They don't have any reason to.They have everything handed to them without having to learn English,or adopt the American ways.They can rent apartments,buy cars,go to school,find and work at a job,get medical care,obtain welfare and other entitlements all without learning English.
So there is no reason ,no incentive to have to learn as the previous immigrants from Europe had to.The mass numbers of illegal aliens stifle the legal immigrants need,ability or desire to assimilate.The mass numbers isolate and insulate the legal immigrant from assimilating into the American way of life.
This has and will limit the progress of the legal immigrants in combinations skills and thus their advancement in the work place.

Very interesting post caysdaddy.

Answer 7

I personally think that the stupidest thing a Mexican can do, is not learn English. It not only keeps them down in jobs, but it secludes them from society and secludes them from the next generation.

The US as it is currently set up has created a caste system where non-english speakers are treated like second hand citizens. I blame it on laziness and the 'I am only here until I can afford a truck' mentality that pervades the Hispanic community.

Answer 8

They are taking over America. They are wrongly taught that the U.S. belongs to Mexico. They don't know the U.S. bought the land from Mexico.

Many Japanese who move here know how to speak English before they come here. Most can already write English better than a large percentage of Americans.

Answer 9

First off, check your history. What is now Mexico once extended North including Texas & parts of Colorado(which is also a spanish word meaning color red). Which means that among the many, many indian nations that the american "settlers" came across, they also displaced many "Mexican" families...so in retrospect El Cenizo, Tejas might still be; as well as and among many others. Second, there are many towns and parts of big cities as well that conduct business in many different languages because the language of business is truly numbers; hence the multi-million dollar t.v. stations you mentioned.$$$. Third, last but not least, in reguards to assimilation in the 20's. Slavery was still LEGAL!! America's immagrant law was ship'em in & use'em.
So what exactly are you asking?
Simple answer for a simplistic question.
Maybe it's time you give a little thought to some assimilation yourself!

Answer 10

Are you reading some of this answers, I cant believe this people! Everything has to be about Mexico. NO! He did not say anything about Mexico he said Spanish which includes lower north American, south America and a small part of Europe. So whats wrong with some of you? oh and by the way English is not the official language of the U.S. they are trying to make it! Do not claim victory yet English speakers. And thats good that there is "Spanish channel" maybe they can learn about different countries isntead of talking bad about them. My final thought is that if people do not like immigrants they can just kill each other because the world is just made of immigrants and you cant stop immigration