ASSIMILATING IMMIGRANTS

Huntington is the latest and highest profile critic of Latino migration. He believes that they will make America to a bifurcated country. This paper tries to reject his idea.
America is a country with mass migration. Each wave of migration during history has changed its culture. Experience shows that all the previous groups were finally assimilated to the new context however entering parts of their own culture to it. So American culture, as Huntington believes, is not a homogenous pure Anglo-protestant culture to be worried about in this new wave of Latino migration.
A historical survey shows this fact. For example, Scotch-Irish fit well into Huntington’s Anglo-Saxon model but the black slaves did not though converting to Protestantism.
Two million Irish immigrated to the United States in the 1840s, making ten percent of the whole population. Up to the 20th century they had remained in their enclaves but had also gained political power. They entered economy through public jobs. And finally JFK became the president. The assimilation process itself had made America partly Irish. Irish cop, Roman Catholic churches and St. Patrick’s Day became norms of the society.
Jews also made a wave of immigration to US after World War II; their Talmudic tradition led to a strong educational ethos helping their fast progress. They retailed trade in clothing and many other commodities, invented Hollywood and largely became teachers. Pop culture, literature, American politics; all were affected largely by Jews. They moved fast to the managerial and ownership positions. After all,the full assimilation for all groups took 80 to 100 years.
The new wave are Hispanics mostly Mexicans. The long border offers many illegal and legal crossing. Though the case this time is a bit different as they go to the service and labor jobs and their cultural and linguistic factors are largely entering the American culture, Americans shouldn’t worry as it is not a new procedure. In the past the same happened with the other waves of immigration but finally they were assimilated in the American culture.
On the other hand France has had little success in assimilating the massive Muslim immigration from Maghrib. Certainly the French did not allow their culture to adapt to these new-comers. France has to allow a major and continuing cultural exception or adapt its own culture. The current scarves-ban in public schools shows that French cannot tolerate other identities harming their secularism. The French policy also didn’t allow Muslims to enter the economic mainstream. It seems that France is moving in the opposite direction for the assimilation.
Finally, America provides the best headstock for assimilation as it is itself open to change. This flexible status has made new definitions and identities. Therefore, migration and immigration not only is not a crisis to America, according to his paper, but is the element of its elasticity, dynamism and continuity. These dual adaptations is necessary for assimilation and if a country likes France claiming to be the most democrat of the Europe does not adopt this rule will certainly lose.
However, still there's a big questionmark in front of the word "IDENTITY". Can this new American identity without any roots firm in the ground of history, culture, religion ... last for too long? Can it answer the essential inner needs of people it is protecting?
considering the case for Iran, as a country in which religion and ancient-deep culture are dominant, can we expect this kind of free adaptation to the other cultures? of course it is not possible in a large scale but we should prepare the ground to adapt the new and necessary elements in our established frameworks.

Assimilating Immigrants by Robert Levine