Brushfire of Freedom
The Conservative Cowboy
The United States of America has been since its inception a mix of many different types of people from many different countries. This mix early on has helped shape the American culture into what it is today. This country has a culture that took different pieces of many different cultures and blended them together into our current culture. What is happening today, however, is a shift in that mentality; where a person’s origin culture is taking precedent over the American culture. This shift from a melting pot mentality is evident in many ways, evident in the many languages in the market place, evident in the many different businesses that cater to specific ethnicities, and evident in the laws that pertain only to protected classes. This is an issue that has many up in arms on both sides of the line. Is it unfair for Americans to expect immigrants to assimilate into our culture?
The very simple answer to the question above is absolutely not; an immigrant should be required to assimilate into the host countries culture, at least in the common places where interaction takes place. By no means should anyone tell immigrants what to do inside their home, but while out in society a person should want to blend in to their surroundings. In essence an immigrant that does not assimilate is further distancing themselves for the society in which they live. This causes a need for the laws that are in place to prevent discrimination, a need for bilingual signs, and different business practices. There is a common misconception that an immigrant that assimilates loses their own culture. What in fact really happens is the blending of two cultures.
The first big issue facing this country dealing with the assimilation of immigrants is a language barrier. In this country we have many immigrants right now from Mexico. These immigrants are so great in number and so highly concentrated to certain areas that they do not need to interact with anyone that speaks a different language. This causes the immigrant to not see a need in learning how to speak the common language of the culture, because they have basically transplanted their entire culture to another area of the world. This fact alone causes an alienation of that group of people; they cannot interact with other groups to learn new things. Society cannot grow because it is segmented. According to the 2000 census there are over 21 million people in this country right now over the age of five that do not speak English very well. That number is up from 6.6 million in 1990 that means that the amount of people that do not speak English in this country is rising at a rate of 1.44 million per year. If the rate continues in next year’s census there would be over 35 million people in this country that do not speak English.
This language issue is much bigger than many people think; first of all there is the alienation factor that was brought up previously. What this language barrier also causes are lost jobs for the people that currently live in this country. Personally I have seen many job listings that have as a requirement that you must be bilingual to even apply. That has a very direct relationship to the people that currently live in this culture. People perhaps have a job that previously could be performed by someone that could only speak English. Now that job interacts with more people that do not speak English and thus that person has two options. The company has to train the current employee on the new language. Or the company fires this individual and hires a new employee that can speak both languages. Both of these options cost the company resources. This is all necessary because immigrants do not want to assimilate.
This issue is far too complex for just one blog so think of this installment as part one.
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