In chapter 8 a main topic of discussion covered by Huntington was immigration. At the start of the chapter he brings up an interesting statistic, basically saying that between 1820 and 1924 the main majority of immigrants coming into the United States were European. These immigrants who decided to stay were almost all assimilated into American culture. Their children and grandchildren were usually all the way assimilated into the United States society and culture. What this assimilation usually entailed, from a general sense, was the full acceptance of America’s culture and the willingness to be a part of our society. An example of this would be an immigrant joining a certain organization or group that fought for positive changes in US society. Another simpler example would be an immigrant marrying an American born citizen.
Huntington then moves on and makes the point that between 1965 and 2000 the majority of immigrants came from Latin America and Asia. As diversity in immigrantion became relevant so did the question of, “Is assimilation benefitting America’s growing diverse population?” Huntington seems to think that assimilation does have a positive effect on the US. He says that historically it has added a very talented and ambitious group of people to our population. He believes that these assimilated immigrants who accepted the United States as their own are a main reason we are so powerful in global affairs.
In more recent years a major problem with assimilation has been dual citizenship. Immigrants decide to migrate to America for better lives but aren’t willing to accept all the countries cultural values. This unwillingness from immigrants to fully assimilate will eventually cause problems for America in the near future. It can lead to less of an eagerness to better society from America’s very diverse population. Even though it is probably impossible to fully assimilate every immigrant that enters the country, what are ways that this problem can be partially resolved?
2 replies on “Chapter 8 ERA”
I agree with many of your ideas and the importance of immigration, particularly the issue of assimilation. As you mention, this issue has been evident in recent years and often becomes a problem because of dual citizenship. When immigrants do not assimilate themselves, it can cause issues in the United States, such as divisions within the nation. However, I believe there are some possible ways to hopefully resolve, or at least help with this problem. A possible suggestion is to emphasize to immigrants that they can and should maintain some of their values from their other culture. Despite this, they still need to prioritize American culture and values, which would hopefully allow immigrants to be happy by maintaining values but also become part of the nation and ultimately fully assimilate themselves. While this idea could hopefully work, there is no real way to force immigrants to fully assimilate themselves when entering the country. Therefore, this is a problem that may be able to be resolved, but much of it is up to the immigrants and whether they want to adopt American culture and values.
On the issue of assimilation of new immigrants to American ideals and values, I believe that it is not necessary for immigrants to fully assimilate and that maintaining pieces of ones previous culture helps to make America a more diverse and better place. Abiding by American values may be beneficial but I do not think it is necessary for immigrants to function in American society. With America being so diverse having all people assimilate to one set of values takes away from what makes America such a unique place filled with different opportunities.