In a recent post, I asked if assimilation was truly a positive goal, or if it is often used as a justification to push around new immigrant groups. I think the answer is that it’s a bit of both.
Still, let’s dwell on the positive aspects of this tricky, amorphous concept. Rates of assimilation are down among today’s immigrants, which has caused no shortage of alarm among many Americans.
September 1st, 2010 on 5:10 pm
The first culprit for the low assimilation rate is this horrific recession. The author of the report, Jacob Vigdor, says America’s economic doldrums have increased “the likelihood that immigrants now in the United States will return home.” As such, “the incentive for immigrants to learn English has declined” since they believe that they will soon cross back over the border.
And yet to hear “some” people tell it, the hordes have already swept through and conquered America. Is the reality of this recession so unbearable that they’d rather believe this is instead?
The report says the low rates of assimilation “may reflect the fact that the large numbers of Mexican immigrants residing in the United States illegally have few opportunities to advance themselves.”…However, one conclusion comes to my mind. It seems to me that if undocumented people from Mexico are given an opportunity to assimilate — for example, giving them a pathway to citizenship — they are more likely to become integrated into American culture.
But that would overthrow the Slavery 2.0 we’ve got going on. White America doesn’t want to solve problems, just create them, bitch about them, and finish off by wholly blaming them on someone else.
And if that is true, hunting down undocumented people in the futile hope of deporting all 12 million of them could backfire.
I remember listening to this frantic economist on NPR one morning on my way to work. He was urging listeners to abandon the notion of deporting all illegal immigrants because were America to actually do so, the entire economy would collapse, whether we were in a recession or not.
It amused me to no end.