By John D. Fonte
Since its creation generations ago, the United States
has been a destination for immigrants looking for a chance to pursue the
“American Dream.” While this has not changed, the manner in which
foreigners assimilate into American culture has. John Fonte, a senior
fellow at the Hudson Institute, argues in the December
2000 issue of TAE that “ethnic consciousness”
is now promoted over “Americanism and individual rights.” This
is a dangerous trend, one that has negative consequences for those attempting
to live the American Dream, illustrated by a pronounced lack of patriotic
identity.
At any conference on immigration these days, someone will
typically rise and quote Henry James, Henry Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge, or
some other old Anglo-Saxon fuddy-duddy worrying circa 1900 that immigrants
would never assimilate to American life. The speaker will then ridicule
the designated Henry, remind us he was wrong, and declare, “We have
been through this debate before, but today’s immigrants will Americanize
just as they did in the past.”
This is good sport, guaranteed to get a few laughs. But
it is grossly misleading. For the fact is, today’s assimilating forces
are much different than those that prevailed in the early twentieth century.
To put things simply: It’s not 1900 anymore.
During our earlier immigration wave one century back,
we had self-confident patriotic elites in politics, education, business,
religion, and civic associations who insisted that new immigrants Americanize.
Now, we have diffident and divided elites who are either actively promoting
anti-Americanization policies such as “multiculturalism” or doing
little to encourage assimilation. In 1915, Democrat Woodrow Wilson and
Republican Theodore Roosevelt explicitly and forcefully called for the
“Americanization” of new immigrants. In 2000, Democrats and Republicans
alike talk mostly of “diversity,” rarely if ever of “assimilation”
or “Americanization.”
Back then, the federal government promoted Americanism
and individual rights. Now it promotes ethnic consciousness and group rights.
Group preferences in employment that were originally designed for black
Americans who had suffered historical discrimination now include special
treatment for most newly arrived immigrants from Latin America and Asia,
and for non-citizens as well as citizens.
Back then, the United States had control of its borders.
Now the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that every year
the number of illegal immigrants grows by 275,000.
Back then no foreign government (not Italy, not the Austro-Hungarian
empire) was on our border, or anywhere else, promoting bilingualism, biculturalism,
and dual nationality. Now the Mexican government openly undermines the
patriotic assimilation of our new citizens. Mexico is promoting dual nationality
for American children of Mexican ancestry, and in many schools in the Southwest,
American students of Latino descent are taught by Mexicans and Mexican-trained
teachers and use Mexican textbooks. The Los Angeles Times reported that
some American classrooms even fly Mexican, instead of American, flags.
Back then the Oath of Citizenship, in which newly naturalized
Americans promised to renounce all prior allegiances, was taken seriously.
Now the spirit of loyalty to the American Constitution embodied in this
oath is openly flouted. In 1998, a naturalized U.S. citizen, Jesus Galvis,
a city councilman in Hackensack, New Jersey, who had taken the Oath of
Citizenship renouncing all “allegiance and fidelity” to any foreign
state, ran for the Colombian Senate and planned, if elected, to serve both
“constituencies” and, apparently, to be “loyal” to
both the U.S. and Colombian constitutions simultaneously.
Back then we insisted the schools teach in English. Now
litigators ensure many Latino children are mostly taught in Spanish. Although
bilingual education has produced poor results in teaching English to immigrant
children, there is no serious support within our nation’s political leadership
for ending this flawed program (though the improved results seen in California—which
recently ended most bilingual classes after the citizenry passed a statewide
referendum—may erode this apathy).
Back then we conducted government business in English
and encouraged new immigrants to learn our language so they could fully
participate in American life. Now foreign language “rights” are,
as of this August, included as official “civil rights” in U.S.
law. On August 11, 2000, President Clinton signed Executive Order 13166,
which requires all programs using federal funds to “assure” that
“language barriers” do not “exclude” non-English speakers
from “participation” in all “benefits and services.”
This new directive does not simply apply to Spanish, but all immigrant
languages from Urdu to Khmer. Failure to comply, according to the Justice
Department, may be “invidious discrimination on the basis of national
origin and race.” This notion of a “civil right” to use
a foreign language in all federally funded activities has been established
with little or no resistance from either the current Congress or opposition
candidates.
Back then, ocean travel and long distance communication
were slow and expensive. Now, air travel and modern telecommunications
are fast and cheap. Leading sociologists tell us that advanced communications
at the dawn of the twenty-first century have resulted in a new “transnational”
or “postnational” world in which newcomers to America can no
longer be considered “immigrants” in the traditional sense, who
assimilate to their new country and become loyal Americans. Instead they
should be considered “transnational migrants” who move back and
forth between nations and cultures and retain their old loyalties, including
political ones, such as voting in their old homelands, as well as in the
U.S.
Back then we had a “muscle-bound” industrial
economy that needed factory workers. Now we have a “brain power”
dependent high-tech economy. Nevertheless, our immigration policy continues
to favor low-skilled workers. Whereas nine-tenths of native-born Americans
have a high school diploma, one in three legal immigrants do not.
Finally, back then immigration was ultimately slowed by
congressional action. Now high immigration (legal and illegal) may be,
as the new president of the American Sociological Association exclaimed,
“perpetual.”
Despite all these differences, we are assured assimilation
will occur more or less as it did in the past. In Michael Barone’s words,
“we’ve been here before.” One of the standard analogies for
this view is the idea that today’s Latinos are similar to yesterday’s
Italians. Thus Barone tells us the Italians of yesterday, like the Latinos
of today, were hard-working, family-oriented immigrants who initially distrusted
civic institutions, including schools and political associations, but eventually
assimilated. There is some truth in Barone’s Italian-Latino analogy, but
it stops short of thoroughly examining the crucial differences between
then and now.
Italy in the 1900s, unlike Mexico today, did not share
a contiguous border with us, did not send about 30 percent of all immigrants
to America, and did not supply textbooks, teachers, and national flags
to American classrooms. There were no employment preferences, bilingual/bicultural
classes, or foreign language “rights” that encouraged group consciousness
among Italian immigrants. And of course, the overall number of Italian
immigrants was reduced with the restrictionist legislation of the 1920s.
Whatever the defects in the discriminatory Reed-Johnson
Immigration Act of 1924 (which kept many of my Sicilian relatives out of
the U.S.), we must recognize that such legislation was an important factor
in fostering the successful assimilation of record numbers of immigrants
into the mainstream of American life (along with other factors such as
elite attitudes, the lack of a single dominant language group among immigrants,
an emphasis on individual not group rights, national self-confidence, etc.)…
In the end, the type of assimilation is crucial. No doubt
assimilation will occur in some form. American mass culture is a powerful
integrating force and will exert a strong influence, particularly on the
young. But newcomers could also assimilate into the mindset of group consciousness,
ethnic grievances, and perpetual victimhood that is fostered by contemporary
elites.
The crucial form of assimilation is not mass cultural,
or economic, but what could be called “patriotic assimilation.”
This means newcomers leave a previous people, join the American people,
and “adopt” America’s civic heritage “as though,”
in Lincoln’s words, “they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the
flesh, of the men who wrote the Declaration [of Independence], and so they
are.”
Unfortunately, the evidence of patriotic assimilation
is troubling. The best evidence we have is a long-term study from the mid-1990s
of 5,000 children of immigrants, conducted by Professor Rub=E9n Rumbaut for
the Russell Sage Foundation. The study began when the children were in
the ninth grade (around 13 years old) and concluded four years later, when
the students were around 17. After four years of American high school,
the children of Mexican and Filipino immigrants were 50 percent more likely
to self-identify themselves as “Mexican” and “Filipino,”
rather than as “Mexican-Americans,” “Filipino-Americans”
or just plain “Americans.” Overall, there were major decreases
in students identifying themselves as either Americans or hyphenated-Americans
and increases in students identifying themselves either by a generic ethnic
category (Latino, Asian) or by national origin (Mexican, Filipino). Thus,
“patriotic assimilation” actually decreased dramatically for
the children of immigrants during one of the most impressionable periods
of a young person’s life, the four years of high school.
Today, we need serious assimilation initiatives in politics
and civil society. Although there are major obstacles to patriotic assimilation
that did not exist in the past, especially among elites, strong evidence
shows the American people strongly support assimilating newcomers in the
traditional patriotic style. Public Agenda, the respected research firm
directed by Daniel Yankelovich and Cyrus Vance, reveals in its latest report
that Americans today, from all races and ethnic groups, endorse patriotic
assimilation.
Thus 87 percent of foreign-born parents, and 88 percent
of all parents, say “schools should make a special effort to teach
new immigrants about American values.” Parents were asked, “What
should be a bigger priority”: teaching students “to be proud
of being part of this country and learn[ing] the rights and responsibilities
of citizenship,” or focusing on “instilling pride in their ethnic
group’s identity and heritage?” By 79 percent to 18 percent, parents
of all races and ethnicities favored emphasis on “pride in and learning
about America.” By nearly identical margins (80 percent to 17 percent)
Hispanic parents preferred “pride in America” over “pride
in one’s ethnic heritage.”
Foreign-born parents overall preferred “pride in
America” by 73 percent to 23 percent, African Americans by 66 percent
to 29 percent. And by 65 percent to 26 percent, Americans said schools
should “help new immigrants absorb America’s language and culture
as quickly as possible, even if their native language and culture are neglected.”
Patriotic assimilation can be achieved today as it was
in the past. What is needed is an organized, realistic, tough-minded strategy
that considers the different circumstances of the twenty-first century.
Wishful thinking that assimilation will happen automatically will not do.
Civic associations, foundations, government institutions, and corporations
should celebrate and affirm the ideals of patriotic assimilation. Group
preferences and bilingual education (which hurts immigrant children) should
be ended. When given a chance to vote, the American people have rejected
both group preferences (passing Proposition 209 in California and I-200
in Washington State) and bilingual education (Proposition 227 in California).
The executive order on language rights should be repealed
either by the next administration or by Congress. Civic education in our
schools should affirm, not denigrate or ignore, our American principles
and our history. Immigration policy, both the overall numbers and criteria
(high skill versus low skill, etc.), should be re-examined in the context
of our national interest in patriotic assimilation, instead of the special
interests of different lobbying groups like the Immigration Lawyers Association.
If the civic integration of immigrants is to succeed in
the twenty-first century as it did in the twentieth century, the same amount
of money and time that activists, fund-raisers, and politicians put into
promoting tax cuts, free trade, and school vouchers must be put into promoting
the patriotic assimilation of newcomers to America.