Dec 23 Americanization Or Balkanization : Take Your Pick

Americanization, it’s important part of the immigration process…but the responsibility for it is apparently in dispute…

The United States must embark on an aggressive effort to integrate immigrants, including teaching them English and U.S. history, a federal task force recommended Thursday.

If this "Americanization" fails, the nation could see major problems in 20 or 30 years, with foreign-born populations detached from the larger society and engaging in anti-social behavior, said Alfonso Aguilar, who heads the U.S. Office of Citizenship.

Aguilar compared the potential strife to what is occurring in some Western European countries where foreign-born populations do not feel part of the larger society and are not accepted by many as full citizens.

"We should not be naive and assume that the assimilation process is going to happen automatically," Aguilar said at a news conference.

I won’t dispute that Americanization is an important part of the process. Actually you could fairly easily argue it’s absolutely necessary for long-term success. One could also make very credible arguments that it’s critical for national security, and using the past two years of virtually any European country as a perfect case study…although France and Britain would probably be your best examples.

Problem is that normally it HAS been automatic. In fact it was Teddy Roosevelt who said,

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

In the past while immigrants have been proud of their heritage, they’ve also been proud of their new home. After all, they came here for a reason. It was them that came here, not us that came there. Many saw Americanization as part of the path to success, and if they never quite learned English, certainly their kids did.

Somewhere along the line, and especially in the past generation, we appear to have forgotten many of these truths. Now we’re become so obsessed with diversity, and how “each of us is special and that’s okay!” Now immigrants are encouraged to resist the suffocating grasp of American hegemony. Americanization is now seen as “selling out” or “disgracing your ancestry”. The result is that not only are immigrants are no longer assimilating, they can’t even function in American society in some cases.

The long term and large scale effect of this practice of not assimilating is playing out in the suburbs of Paris, where riots and torched cars light up parts of the city where even the police dare not go. This obsession with diversity for the sake of feel-good liberalism, but at the expense of long term harmony, is stupid. Not only stupid, but it’s downright dangerous and will lead to our downfall.

So while Americanization is important to the country, a government program isn’t going to solve the problem. This requires a cultural shift. It means immigrants are going to have to embrace what it means to be an American. Presumably, since they came here, that idea should not be repulsive or offensive. That is not necessarily in opposition to being proud of one’s heritage either.

Where it is in opposition, well, I can’t help but recall another quote by Teddy Roosevelt

“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”

[H/T Mark Krikorian]

[Crossposted at EckerNet.Com, comments welcome]