Dream Act

I remember reading once that most countries derive their social cohesion from community, from a sense of shared values and a common way of life. This may or may not involve racial solidarity although having the same language is certainly important. America has never been able to rely on either of these things. Today experts predict that Spanish may be as important as English in 30 years time. As for immigration, it is universal of course: France has Algerians, Germany has Turks; Russia has dozens of minorities. But in each of these cases, the incomers were grafted onto a big native population and in that way the dominant culture was preserved in a modified form.

America was special because it only had a small native population in the first place and that was soon utterly swamped by incomers. America today is largely the sum of its immigrant groups -a cliché because it is true. The only differences are between the oldest immigrants (Afro-Americans and those of English/Scottish/Welsh stock) and the more recently arrived ones, like Vietnamese. Yet seeing the Statue of Liberty or landing at LAX does not make you American. Many of the first generation immigrants retained the culture of their origins to the day they died, only making limited concessions to the new world. But the host culture began to perform it magic alchemy on the second generation - albeit with plenty of stresses and strains. The old language was soon forgotten. The sons and daughters of the pioneer immigrants became regular “guys” (a word which seems to be epicene today). In time they began to speak with a drawl, and the drawl was English, to drink Coors and drive a “Chevy” - although preferably not at the same time. (Thernstrom, 1980)

Now for a corrective, first, it is worth remembering that not all immigrants stayed the course. Some could not stand it and went back home. For them the whole enterprise became a “round trip to America” as one author has called it. Bankston deals with this briefly in the article, “Return migration”. Second, they often encountered levels of hardship, prejudice and even brutality which belied the promises on the steamship posters - hence the huddling together for protection in tight neighbourhood groups. They say that single streets on the Lower East Side corresponded to the individual towns in Europe from which the inhabitants had come. Third, if these ...