I don’t believe Nativists have very much support to back up their argument; immigrants aren’t endangering the American way of life, they are helping to shape it! American culture, in my opinion, barely exists- everything we call American has most likely been taken from somewhere else. Let’s face it; we have always been, and will always be, a melting pot. We don’t really have anything that’s original or uniquely our own, but the fact that we are really the first and only country to be a little bit of everything is in fact, in a different way, original and unique.
Do we really want complete assimilation? Our culture almost depends on people not assimilating all the way. It is very difficult to measure if a person has assimilated or not, and thus there isn’t really strong evidence supporting either side for whether immigrants assimilate today. Many people believe that in the past immigrants have tried their best to “Americanize” themselves, but these days that is not happening. I, on the other hand, believe that the same amount of assimilation is occurring today as it did previously in history- the only difference is though that immigrants today are holding on to their own customs as well; they can balance both. For example, my grandmother grew up not even wanting to speak German, all she wanted was to be a “normal American”; in contrast, my best friend Payal, who is first generation Indian, said that “in a way I feel American because I speak a different language at home- I speak English to people who speak English, but I can also keep a part of me true to my heritage”. America is a mixture of a million different types of people, and I believe that we are starting to embrace that as actually a unifying factor. According to the article “10 Myths About Immigration”, two thirds of immigrants older than 5 years of age can speak English “well” or “very well”. Maybe instead of having their children only grow up speaking English, they’re also making it a point to have them be bilingual in whatever language they spoke in their homeland. Another good point in “10 Myths About Immigration” is that “the typical pattern of assimilation in the United States has remained steady”, it may have even sped up due to “public education and mass media”. I believe this because in order to be successful in the United States, people must assimilate to a certain extent. At the same time though, there isn’t nearly as much pressure to do so because our culture is becoming more mixed and thus more accepting, and our country really tries to accommodate everyone now. People are becoming capable of being both!
Nativists are also wrong because I believe diversity is a good thing. Do we really want total homogeny? When people are isolated from those who are different from them, that’s how bigotry is created. Conversely, by being exposed to differences, we learn about and understand other people better, and thus are able to live in harmony with them. We really don’t want immigrants to conform to what we want them to be! They help us by being different. America has become more and more tolerant and accepting of different cultures because of the huge amounts of immigrants living in our country. Pat Buchanan expressed concerns of the possible “balkanization” of the United States because of our huge miscellany of peoples, but I believe that by being so greatly mixed, we learn more about our similarities rather than our differences- our diversity unites us! Socially, immigrants, in my opinion, help America because they unintentionally make Americans more open-minded. Economically though, there is more than just my opinion to back it up; immigrants actually help the American economy! They keep prices low, take for the most part unwanted jobs (only away from high school drop outs, creating more motivation to attend college), and immigrants here illegally actually pay taxes, yet don’t get the benefits of doing so, and thus are just pumping money into the economy. Everybody wins! So, in my eyes, Nativists need to seriously rethink their position.
Grade: A+) Should we feel threatened by pluralism today? If we lived in Texas or California would we feel differently about pluralism than living in Sharon? Or does history teach us something else? Your ideas seem to favor the latter. A very well presented argument here. Although, shouldn't there be balance between pluralism and assimilation...the question is-are we imbalanced in favor of pluralism?
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