Assimilation

Starchild had this interesting comment on my earlier immigration post “Wretched Refuse":

Good comments, I largely agree. I also favor open borders, as well as ending the welfare state. But you also say you want to increase the societal pressures on immigrants to assimilate, and here I’m not so sure what you have in mind. Cutting off benefits would not guarantee cultural assimilation. You say you personally know a family that you say exemplifies the kind of non-assimilation you find objectionable. Do you have anything particular in mind besides not speaking English? If you mean his political views, have you asked him *why* he wants California to become part of Mexico again? Perhaps it’s simply because if it were part of Mexico, he wouldn’t have to worry about being branded as “illegal” and deported! Obviously, repealing the dumb immigration laws would solve this problem. But if you want people in the U.S. pressured to speak English or assimilate in other ways, you as an acquaintance of this family and someone who is apparently bilingual, seem to be in an ideal position to exert the kind of pressure you speak of. Have you done anything to exert this pressure? If it’s not going to come from people like you, who do you expect to do the job? Personally I don’t see any great need for everyone in America to speak English, but if you want them to, what are you doing about it in the case where you could make a direct impact? I’d love to hear more about this family and your interactions with them.

Starchild raises several interesting questions in here, but especially this one: exactly what is “assimilation” as I meant it in the earlier post?

I had to put the ponder to work on this one for a while, to find a way to express what seems so clear in my own mind. Fundamentally, what I come down to is this: “assimilation” is what happens as a consequence of an immigrant wanting to become an American, to live here permanently — as opposed to wanting to exploit America. Often, those in the latter group have no intention of staying in America — they expect, someday, to return “home", and “home", for them, is not America. In other words, assimilation (in the sense that I mean it) isn’t some defined process an immigrant goes through; there’s no 12-step plan leading to the perfectly assimilated immigrant. “Assimilated” is how you might describe an immigrant who wants to be an American, and who works hard at achieving that.

I can also observe that immigrants learning English often falls into the same category: those immigrants who want to become Americans tend to want to learn English. It isn’t that I see learning English as some sort of requirement for immigrants, it’s that I observe a strong correlation between the desire to learn English and those immigrants who want to become Americans, not exploit America. That correlation isn’t a perfect one, and I have myself noted some exceptions — most especially amongst older immigrants, where, most likely, learning a new language is a more difficult challenge.

With regard to increasing societal pressures: here I mostly mean changing our country’s programs, policies, and attitudes about immigrants and what we expect of them. One form of pressure is the requirement to work, to contribute, and to pay your share of the cost of running America (taxes). The programs and policies we have in place now — and the attitudes you can infer directly from them — directly contradict this ideal. Today we tell immigrants (to be blunt): please come here and mooch from us. We will, however stupidly and senselessly, make it possible for to come here and exploit us — and we’ll make sure you’re safe, comfortable, and well-fed while you’re doing it. Oh, and we’ll pay for your medical care, and educate your kids, too. And if you happen to accidentally commit some crime (say, murder), you can just go back to Mexico, where you’ll be safe from our police. These are examples of the opposite kind of societal pressures I’d like to see put in place. So, for example, I’d like to see the elimination of the vast array of free support programs that are in place today: for food, shelter, medical care, education, and so on. This is not because I don’t want to support immigrants, it’s because those programs, as currently constituted, act as lures for those immigrants would would exploit America. If a way could be found to help only those immigrants who actually want to become Americans, without incurring all the problems of the welfare state, I would be all for it. In my view this is very similar to the welfare program issues that led to welfare reform in the '90s; similar solutions would be solutions that I’d support.

Have I done my bit? With the family I previously mentioned — the unassimilated immigrants who live in our valley — I have made it clear to the father that I do not approve of his behavior and his attitude. I’ve also made it clear to him that he will get no work (he’s a “handyman” always looking for the odd job to do) from me so long as he and his family are so clearly not on a path to becoming American citizens. But I am not confident that he actually understood anything beyond the fact that I had no work for him, and that I was unhappy about something; his English is very rudimentary, and my Spanish is non-existant. However, this much is crystal clear to me, from several conversations with him: he is here (in America, I mean) because of all the freebies we hand out to him and his family, none of which are available to him in Mexico (his home country). He is completely open about his plan, which is to save the money he makes on odd jobs, while surviving on welfare and having his childred educated for free. When he has enough saved to retire, he’s heading back to Mexico with his family. He’s an expert on all the various benefit programs we have, and on how to bend (or break) the rules when a rule would otherwise impede his sucking at the teat, and how to avoid fees and taxes. I’ve learned more about the welfare programs available from him than from many years of reading the lamestream media…

On the question of why my immigrant neighbor wants California to become part of Mexico — I have asked him this. As best I understand his answer, it is simply that he believes the transfer of wealth from California to Mexico would benefit Mexicans, and therefore he and his family. He seems to believe that Mexico is intrinsically poor, that there’s nothing Mexico could do itself to change its sad economic state. Consistent with the foregoing, he seems to believe that California is intrinsically wealthy, and that transferring California to Mexico would automatically make Mexico wealthy, even with the Mexican government running it. Another element in his attitude seemed clear as well: he didn’t have any firmly held beliefs about the “rightness” of transferring California to Mexico — it’s simply that he’s Mexican, and transferring California to Mexico would be good for Mexico, so therefore he supports it. It seems to really be that simple-minded an “analysis” for him. This is basically the exact opposite of someone who is assimilating into America.