This was something I’ve been thinking about as it occasionally comes up in various threads. It came up again recently in the following comment by @Axxowiz:
I completely agree. Sometimes people comment that new immigrants here become “American”. What the ■■■■ does that mean? There’s no agreed upon cultural definition of what an American is. Are we all getting together holding hands and singing kumbaya? The best we can do is simply provide a legal definition. And as @Axxowiz pointed out the overwhelming majority of new immigrants largely settle in places in which there’s people like themselves and largely associate with people like themselves. I would also be curious to know how many can even speak English. So maybe we don’t have the same kinds of issues that other countries have but I don’t believe it’s because of some false notion that the US has some unique process to assimilate people.
The entire op is simply based on failure to engage with immigrant communities. Walk through one and everything will come into view
There is no single American culture but there is something to being American. Yes immigrants tend to settle among their own but their kids also attend American schools, they work in offices where English is a requirement, many immigration centers offer esl to adults
It’s not a false notion because (and i will continue to use this as an example) look at how the Turkish immigrants act in the us and how they do in Germany
Here they speak English go to school become citizens become Americans etc
In Germany they riot, don’t speak German, have generational criminal histories etc.
Because one country embraces them and helps them assimilate while the other isolates
Stop using the internet as a source of information.
Don’t you live inJersey? Go to marlboro. Walk through a store . Look at all those Russian Jews who came here in the 90s speaking great English and driving luxury cars. Then go to South Paterson which has a little Istanbul area or freehold etc. or better yet go to Edison new Jersey which filled with Indians who speak English and whose kids are more and more American look at how those communities live. Talk to them.
I hate to break it to you, but Irish and Czech and German and Italian and Norwegian and Serbian and Chinese and people from any country have always settled into communities together here in the US and it’s part of what makes this country glorious. It is quite literally nothing new and nothing that needs fixing.
True and the people for never ending migration will just gloss over the failures. There is a school district where I use to live that was built around a community of people and served the public just fine for decades until an ultra wealthy developer put a 800+ apartment complex within the community.
They tried for years to fight off the building expansion but money prevailed. The school went from 90+% white to 3% white in five years. The reason being all the families coming over to take American jobs on H1b visas (for tech companies) was able to put their kids in the school.
Those kids that were there before their parents put them in private school. I am assuming the 3% who stayed family was either hard left or didn’t have the money for private school. That’s progress job well done in some people’s eyes, and the project keeps repeating across cities. I don’t think the majority are ok with this.
And there’s no way all those parents who pulled their child out of the school where all MAGA, just by the sheer number alone and a blue city that means democrats pulled their children out as well.
One thing I have learned is they are going to keep pushing this regardless of what it does to communities and the negative effects on American workers all for the greater good. They don’t think there is anything special or unique about being American, all are welcome if a parent moved their child they were racist anyways so they didn’t need them anyways. Rinse-repeat-destroy.
They do attend schoolbut they put them in preparatory classes that are often segregational classes instead of just esl plus regular classes like they do here
They also work but they often are forced to work for the books even as legal immigrants
Given your conclusions in your op may be these are things you should have known already
Well as noted in the OP, I’m not the only one with this view, as I was echoing similar sentiments expressed by @Axxowiz. Also when looking at these countries that have had problems with immigrants it’s much more the case that they did really stupid things, particularly throwing open their borders to large groups of people with no plan of what to do afterwards. Furthermore, there are plenty of other countries that have immigration right, do they all have major issues that arise? Clearly America has had a long history of immigration so it would be embarrassing if there were no process in place for helping people settle into the United States.
That being said I can understand your view. Sometimes two things can be true pending one’s perspective. Sure, by and large I would say that most people in America get along, but I don’t think that’s because we have this unique process to assimilate immigrants, but rather it’s more a function of the US economy being strong and because of our capitalist system and immigrants fitting into that. I also think the countries that have problems have more of a collectivist mindset whereas the people in the US have more individualistic mindset. Nonetheless one can still see that immigration in the US is not some idealistic big happy melting pot. It is the case that many immigrants in the US tend to congregate into communities of people who are culturally like themselves, and that is true in New Jersey as well. I could also bring up how many Muslim immigrants cheered on 9/11; or how Asian immigrants or Arab immigrants or Indian immigrants don’t want their children to date Americans who are not of their race; or how many immigrants feel a stronger allegiance to their country of origin than the US.
If you walk through Lower Manhattan, or Philadelphia’s south side, orthe equivalent in almost any city East of the Mississippi, you will find a “little Italy,” a Chinatown, a neighborhood that was mostly Irish, one that was mostly Polish, or Jewish, etc..
The immigrants of the Ellis Island era (1920s?) preferred, as many immigrants do today, to live in enclaves that share a language and a subculture. As late as the 1970s, the film “Rocky” could be set in a traditionally Italian neighborhood and Rocky could run through the Italian street market.
And the Jews . . . Oy vey.
Even as late as the 1970s (1980 made-for-TV film “Hardhat and Legs”), Italian mothers would nag their sons to “Marry a nice Italian girl and settle down.”
That said
They did learn the language
They did assimilate
They did not break the law to come here
They did not break the law to work here
They did not come here to take advantage of the social safety net.
They did not come here with a chip on their shoulders disliking the people who were already here
And they never ever ever stood atop a burning car, waving their homeland flag, protesting America because they hate this place in some weird attempt to make this place more like the ■■■■■■■■ they came from.
This is contradictory to your entire premise. If a system exists to allow immigrants to fit the economy then that’s a system and culture of assimilation
You are just missing the steps of how they are made to fit in.
I’ve watched the transformation over numbers of years from new immigrant to learning how to communicate with Americans to small business owner to gaining citizenship, the biggest deal of all and a cause for celebration. We truly are a melting pot and there could never be a “unique” process to it, that is a silly notion and I don’t belive anyone is saying that. It is a process and I’m helping someone in it now, though only tangentially, but definitely helping. It’s kind of scary for her right now, married to an American but with the orange nut in the Whitehouse she could be gone at the drop of a hat even though she is following all the rules. This is a dark period in American history and will be remembered as such.
The ‘always migration’ crowd are missing the big obstacles staring right at them. I have asked this question many times usually crickets or some response that isn’t feasible.
Why does a country need more migrants when automation and AI are setting up to wipe out 20-40% of all jobs? It’s not just the blue color work now with AI. Once you had to compete with the H1B slave labor which oddly people support but now you will also have to compete with super computers you will lose, we will lose.
And you want to see how we all just get along wait till there are few jobs left and they are only held by a few fields and H1b holders. Things that resemble the purge movies will happen. Since any resemblance of community has been shattered and everyones divided into their identity groups
If she came here legally
lived here legally
and worked here legally
the orange nut cannot deport her.
Even if she broke multiple laws
since she married and american, she
still has or had plenty of time to have all the law-breaking washed away and become legal.
Just like Eisenhower, and Clinton and Obama, and every other president except Biden) People who broke multiple laws are now FINALLY being treated like the rest of us.
—> No longer is one special class of person above the law<----
.
.
.
.
What has changed is not the policy in the White House.
What has changed is that the loyal opposition has gone completely nuts and cannot defend their insane ideas without an Orwellian rewrite of history.
“Little brown people should be above the law.” “Anyone who does what Eisenhower, Clinton, and Obama did is a nazi!”
