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Many teens around the nation are wearing “traditional” gowns and formalwear showing off their cultural heritage and looking very stylish.
See the link below to the Yahoo.com article that shows beautiful pictures that reflect the pride and beauty of some of the various cultural styles that are making their way to one of the most important nights in a young person’s lives.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/da-culture-teens-embracing-heritage-prom-night-205541160.html
Geneologist Jennifer Mendelsohn disproved a common myth about immigrants refusing to assimilate into American Society. After a sad debate between immigrant basher barbie Tomi Lauren and Fox host John Kelly, Jennifer Mendelsohn researched Ms Lauren’s ancestors and found that they, too, didn’t speak english after immigrating to the US. While this won’t stop Tomi Lauren from bashing immigrants, it does prove that assimilation is not an instant gratification subject.
This generational process is actually very common with immigrants. The first generation usually sticks with their native tongue because learning a new language, especially one as complicated as English, can be daunting and if you do it poorly you can feel you are seen by others as either stupid, lazy or foolish. It is not easy to move to a foreign country. Why would anyone want to risk ridicule in their new home? An easy strategy is to be quiet, keep your head down and don’t make any problems.
When these first generation immigrants have children, the kids go to school and learn english like everyone else. They also speak their native tongue to communicate with their family members at home.
When these children have children, they mainly speak english at home and rarely take the time or effort to learn their old native tongue. The family is now so assimilated that their former nationality is almost forgotten, save for their older relatives and perhaps the pride they carry coming from a rich and beautiful country. This scenario has been playing out over and over again for hundreds of years in just about every country around the world.
Whenever someone talks badly about integration or assimilation, they are really just making an argument about immigrants without really knowing the facts. Most myths about immigrants or even about foreign cultures are blind ignorant gossip used for no other purpose than to keep the races or cultures separate.
Now who wants a country full of thousands of small communities who don’t communicate with each other, mistrust each other and blame each other for their problems? Sounds like a pretty crummy way to live if you ask me.
It is much better to let everyone assimilate into the country at their own pace, bringing with them the rich traditions, foods, fashions and cultures that make this world so interesting and flavorful, thereby enriching our country to the n-th degree. Where else on earth can you travel the world without leaving the country? For many of us, this will be as close as we get to world travel. We should be grateful.
Asking immigrants to accept self deportation after they arrive here without their greencard paperwork in order, while we sit comfortably in our living rooms knowing we dodged that bullet, is highly hypocritical. How many of our fore-fathers had their paperwork secured and approved before arriving on our shores? Self deportation is a new term never before brought up in our vocabulary for a reason; only within the last fifty- years has there been a situation for such a term.
We are so backlogged with current greencard applications that we take forever getting them approved, and often lose paperwork, or ask for new paperwork because the original green card paperwork we asked for is now expired. Should we just tell our undocumented and under-documented immigrants, “that’s too bad” and ask them to accept self deportation because we are unable to handle the backlog for our current demand?
Speaking of legal and illegal immigration, I wrote a series of articles on the language of hate. I like to keep abreast of new articles that are created by some of the more prominent hate groups parading as concerned American citizen organizations. Below is an example of the kinds of things they write about in order to enlist more followers. Obviously they are trolling the waters for the ignorant or misinformed. This sentence really jumped out at me:
“Legal immigration is people exchanging a culture of corruption for a culture that honors the rule of law.”
This is a definition of legal immigration that really defines the length to which these organizations try to stretch the truth in order to justify their message. Nowhere in that sentence is there any room for an honorable immigrant.
Are all other countries corrupt?
Is the US the only one that isn’t?
Remember Enron? Arthur Andersen? Goldman Sachs? Lehman Brothers? Countrywide Home loans? Freddie Mac? Yeah, we sure honor our rule of law– after we get caught. Until then we fly under the radar and pray we don’t go to jail. (Sound familiar?) The difference here is, and it’s a big one, the people accused of this hateful group’s crime are just coming here to better themselves by circumventing a policy that is out-dated, confusing and extremely lengthy. Immigrants are often faced with rejection due to documents needing to be re-submitted because of a confusing and lengthy application process. As for the Americans that destroyed our economy (twice) in recent years; they knew they were doing very bad things.
The blog post also carries this theme further:
“Illegal immigration is people bringing the culture of corruption of their home countries with them.”
So, if I understand these two sentences correctly, the process of filling out an application is all that’s needed to save someone from corruption vs bringing corruption with them. Nice.
Since we all are products of immigrants, is this a confession that their forefathers brought the corruption of their home countries with them as well? Maybe that explains where we got our corruption from. According to them we could not have manufactured any corruption on our own. Perhaps we should all go back to where our ancestors came from and leave this land as pristine and corruption-free as we found it. I’m sure the native Americans would appreciate it.
Hate speech often shows up in the form of a supposedly logical argument. Sometimes, like the following, it is just plain racist.
illegal immigrants arriving in this country in large numbers won’t be unable to effectively assimilate into our society-
There are many variants to this theme such as, “they make us conform to them instead of them conforming to us” and “why should we have to learn their language, they should have to learn english” and “if I went to their country they’d make me learn spanish” and on and on.
This is really code for- “So many foreigners will come here they will take over our country.”
This has been an ongoing theme in the United States for well over a hundred years and is a driving force in the argument against immigration. Although a majority of white’s do not subscribe to this belief, this is a purely white myth, used to stir up other white’s into taking action in order to keep this country a white ruled U.S.A. It’s called protectionism and the white people who use this phrase are trying to protect our nation from the threat of mongrelization that they feel will occur once the throngs of immigrants get here, breed and take over their country. Then it won’t be the good ol’ white United States of America any more. Paranoid much?
How to combat this- Whenever you read or hear this, you will know the people communicating this are acting out of fear of people who are not like them. This is a wholly racist argument and talking rationally with these people is pointless. You can point out that this hasn’t happened throughout the entire history of the United States, even after several rounds of immigrant recruitment drives* in our past, but it won’t stop them from continuing to say or write it. The only good you can do when you confront someone like this is purely for the benefit of anyone else who hears it. Giving other listeners a more intelligent and rational point of view so they won’t be left with just that one misguided opinion is a worthy cause. It also counters the effect of not saying anything and making it appear that that phrase is unchallenged and therefore correct by default.
For more information see the report on assimilation of immigrants.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/11/assimilation_tomorrow.html
* Immigrant recruitment in U.S. history
Americans from the industrializing Northeast pursued their recruitment policy even more vigorously after independence in 1776, seeking to lift European barriers to exit that were commonplace at that time. After independence, the new republic campaigned vigorously in the name of freedom to bring about an “exit revolution” throughout Europe.
From the 1830s on, railroad and shipping companies actively promoted emigration from northern Europe, and, in many cases, the multiplying US consulates functioned in effect as labor-recruiting and land-selling agencies, eventually reaching all the way to remote Norway. Simultaneously, American entrepreneurs enticed newcomers from across Western Europe by way of private missions.
These are just a couple of examples of the U.S. aggressively recruiting immigrants in our history.
Source: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=401
I am the author of, "America Needs A DREAM, and the novel, "The Dishwasher's Son." I am a husband and step-father in a multi-national family, and I've been seeking to unite my family under the citizenship of my home country (USA) for over 6 years. Read More…
