Then, they were expected to become part of America, which included speaking our language, knowing our history and respecting our traditions.
Of course any one that thinks this is living in complete ignorance of American history.
Thank you Professor Foner. Will you next quote directly from Prof Zinn? (Eric Foner is a communist prof at Columbia who used to run the AHA and Zinn is a contributor to the Nation who wrote the most used textbook in America History. Both have made it their lifes work to revise American history to the specifications of the CPUSA.)
How is it that all the big cities in America developed these enclaves with names like: Little Italy, Chinatown, Little Havana, etc. The simple fact is the first generation of imigrants, since the original colonists that didn't mingle with the native population, have ALWAYS clustered together with their own kind.
1. The origional colonists were not immigrants, but colonists who were creating a new country. They did not want to join the Indian Nations. They wanted to take their land. Thank you for making a comparison that people on your side normally abhor: Third world immigrants are colonizing America.
2. It is undeniable that immigrants generally chose to live to gether in American cities or to go off to the same general areas of the frontier. However, most immigrants were part of distinct waves and we had a real fragmentation. Scots, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Swedes, etc were distinct groups. There was little cohesion between these groups and eventially all did become Americans. It took time and assimilation was sped up by the fact that immigration was always curtaled after a few years and because immigrants were expected to assimilate.
Never before in our history have we had so many immigrants who speak the same language. Moreover, we have never had immigrants from a neighboring country who believe that they are entitled to the land.
The closest we came were with the Irish and German immigrants from the 1840's to 1924. In both cases we had a large number of immigrants comming over generations. Both also came from countries that had real problems with Great Britain and these carried over to their relations to American culture, which was predominantly British.
This had serious reprocussions. It took a century to assimilate the Irish and Germans. Frankly, we also had loyalty issues during our wars. These occured right from the start with the San Patricos, who were Irish immigrants who defected to Mexico during the Mexican War. During the Civil War, we had the largest riots in American history with the Draft riots, which were essentially ethnic affairs. (Irish vs everyone else in NYC).
During World War 1 and 2 we had serious sabotage of teh war effort by Irish and German unions and even Americans who ended up volunteering to fight for the Germans.
I would also note that contrary to the line given by neocons and the left, there were real costs to America from the last great wave of immigration (1880-1924). We saw the importation of socialism to America. We saw the Northeast become bastions of the left, primarily due to a demographic change.
Frankly it was not until the 1970's that Irish and German America voted like other white Americans.
If the country is to survive, we need to assimilate all immigrants. To do this we must ensure assimilation by ending multi-culturalism, and see immigrant communities are not insular. We need to curtail future immigration so that we have manageable numbers.
Having 34 million immigrants (plus an indetermined number of illegals) and another million legal immigrants per year is simply unsustanable if we want to keep an American political culture even remotly resembling that of our founding.
Ron
PS. Before you start calling me a WASP nativist, please note that I am a first Generation America of Jewish decent. The facts speak for themselves. Go pick up Alien Nation by Peter Brimlow.