At the Washington Post, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Harvard professor of public policy Robert Putnam have an essay entitled, A Better Welcome for Our Nation’s Immigrants. It’s an historically sound reflection on immigrants in America, with recommendations for public policy:
Immigration has always caused frictions and controversies: “On our national birthday, and amid an angry debate about immigration, Americans should reflect on the lessons of our shared immigrant past. We must recall that the challenges facing our nation today were felt as far back as the Founders’ time. Immigrant assimilation has always been slow and contentious, with progress measured not in years but in decades.”
Immigrants adopt English as their language: “Yet learning a language as an adult is hard, so first-generation immigrants often use their native tongue. Historically, English has dominated by the second or third generation in all immigrant groups. Most recent immigrants recognize that they need to learn English, and about 90 percent of the second generation speak English, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Research by sociologists Claude Fischer and Michael Hout published in 2008 suggests that English acquisition among immigrants today is faster than in previous waves.” (Emphasis added.)
There’s nothing unusual about immigrants living in enclaves of fellow immigrants upon arrival.: “Residential integration of immigrants is even more gradual. Half a century ago, sociologist Stanley Lieberson showed that most immigrants lived in segregated enclaves, “Little Italy” or “Chinatown,” for several generations. This segregation reflected discrimination by natives and the natural desire of “strangers in a strange land” to live among familiar faces with familiar customs.
Only with suburbanization, encouraged by government policy in the 1950s and 1960s, did the children and grandchildren of the immigrants of the 1890s and 1900s exit those enclaves. That many of today’s immigrants live in ethnic enclaves is thus entirely normal and reflects no ominous aim to separate themselves from the wider American community.”
Sadly, we’re less welcoming as a people than earlier American generations were: “One important difference, however, that separates immigration then and now: We native-born Americans are doing less than our great-grandparents did to welcome immigrants.
A century ago, religious, civic and business groups and government provided classes in English and citizenship. Historian Thomas P. Vadasz found that in Bethlehem, Pa., a thriving town of about 20,000, roughly two-thirds of whom were immigrants, the biggest employer, Bethlehem Steel, and the local YMCA offered free English instruction to thousands of immigrants in the early 20th century, even paying them to take classes. Today, immigrants face long waiting lists for English classes, even ones they pay for.”
There’s always the temptation — one well known to many communities, including Whitewater — to scapegoat immigrants or stay silent while others do so. It’s destructive and futile, but tempting. There’s no honorable capstone to a career to be had in victimizing immigrants, condoning others doing so, or staying silent.
H/T Radley Balko of Reason for the pointer.