Where do you see the following newly arrived immigrant groups in America in the future? (fit in, home)
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So first we had the Irish arrive here, they went from being disliked to being highly respected in the US. Italians went through suffering at first by being badly stereotyped but not they are well off.
How do you see the following immigrant groups being viewed in America in the future? (say a decade or two from now)
1. Filipinos
2. Chinese (Now I know they were here way back too but recently a lot have started to arrive in larger numbers)
3. Indians
4. Mexicans
I had a tough time googling and finding new immigrant groups so bare with me, those are the four I could come up with, if I missed any, then add them and let me know what you see for them in the future.
25 years from now the boom in Mexican immigration will be long over and their children and grandchildren will be fully assimilated and considered "normal" Americans. That has always been the cycle of immigration. 100 years ago the most prejudiced and racist things imaginable were said about Irish and Italian immigrants and now their descendants are considered as average American as you can get.
I think it'll be mostly like previous waves of immigration. About the only thing I can think of that's different about this wave is the people are more identifiable by appearance. With 2nd and 3rd generation Italian/Irish Americans, people usually think of them as simply "White" and find it hard to distinguish them from Germans and English. An Asian American is still Asian in appearance and racists are still likely to target them. But racists aside, I don't think people will view these groups as any different from any other American group who came in the past.
25 years from now the boom in Mexican immigration will be longer over and their children and grandchildren will be fully assimilated and considered "normal" Americans. That has always been the cycle of immigration. 100 years ago the most prejudiced and racist things imaginable were said about Irish and Italian immigrants and now their descendants are considered as average American as you can get.
I dunno about that. San Antonio has gone more towards a Spanish culture than towards assimilation. I was speaking to an 80 something year old american born mexican woman in SA a couple of years ago. She said SA has always had a huge Mexican population, but she said when she went to school there was none of that hispanic thing. She said they were either white or black and all spoke English. She said they fit in better and were not as negatively stereotyped. She sounded really resentful of the newer arrivals because she thought they cast her in a light that they were not cast in before.
I am not sure if the Irish and the Italians were babied like the mexicans by having special Italian classes, Italian books, italian street signs etc. I highly doubt that when these waves came in they had special lines where they got service in their own languages. I doubt they could ever call customer service and press 3 for italian.
I mean in some cities it is almost impossible to get a menial job if you don't speak spanish. If Texas and California continue along this path, the cultures there would move towards a mexican culture rather than being assimilated. My friends family came from Korea to Texas. Rather than learning English they learned spanish (They live in McAllen). Some of them I can't understand at all because they either speak Korean or Spanish. All these Millions of people growing up speaking spanish, I don't think they are just going to just move towards english.
I have noticed that Indians and Chinese fit in well, and is assimilated with the first generation.
I am not sure if the Irish and the Italians were babied like the mexicans by having special Italian classes, Italian books, italian street signs etc. I highly doubt that when these waves came in they had special lines where they got service in their own languages. I doubt they could ever call customer service and press 3 for italian.
Of course not. But you have to remember that most of these changes were ones that businesses decided to implement in order to get the business of Spanish speakers. It's a business decision to get money or provide better costumer service. It's not a big conspiracy to prevent assimilation.
There are historic parallels where bilingualism persisted through many generations (including bilingual schools in the United States). In the Midwest, there were German groups that kept speaking German (and had German-language schools) up until World War I. There were French Canadian groups in New England that had French as the dominant language until the 1950s. Among current groups, 70% of 3rd Generation Hispanic Americans speak only English. That's a lower percentage than Asians, which is over 90%, but still a significant percentage.
There are reasons to be concerned, though. The past model was that immigrants would come over with little skills and no money and scrape by for a living. Their children would do better than them in terms of education attained and money made and their grandchildren would do any better. With Hispanic immigrant groups, this seems to be true of the 2nd generation (they fare little worse than children of other groups), however there seems to be a wall and the 3rd generation doesn't see the expected improvements to education and economic status. Whether or not this has to do with Spanish-language bubbles or other reasons, I'm not sure. Another area of concern is that only 48% of 3rd Generation Hispanic Americans identify themselves as American first (and Hispanic second, I would presume), although this is much higher (70%) among those making over $70K a year.
I'm not really too worried about the death of English any time soon. Miami is one of the cities where Spanish pretty much dominates (I joke that it's a Spanish-speaking place where you can get by with English). But even there, I knew children of Spanish-speaking immigrants who worked in retail (so, would realistically use Spanish daily) who had big gaps in their vocabulary. I could tell that their kids will probably only learn Spanish in school like everyone else. I worked with a guy from Georgia whose father was Puerto Rican, but his Spanish was worse than mine (and I only took two years in high school). I could tell in a few generations, English would become the dominant language for these people.
Now, Miami will still be predominately Spanish-speaking, but that's mostly a combination of high levels of immigration and natives moving out. It won't be because kids aren't learning Engilsh.
I know that in my area and in others in the Northeast and Midwest, there has been a recent wave of Burmese and Bhutanese refugees. Like other refugee groups in the area(I.e.- Southeast Asians, Bantu Sudanese and other Africa an groups from Eastern and Western Africa), they tend to settle on the city's North Side. There has been a bigger presence of Indians/South Asians, with many living on the East Side near Syracuse University. Same with East Asians too. It hasn't been easy, but most seem to accept them into the community, at large.
If it's any consolation, the flood of Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. has leveled off, and even started to reverse, with the economic recession (which affects the U.S. tourism/ hospitality business, and home construction business).
Furthermore, the birth rate in Mexico is now down to basically replacement level (or slightly over), which is a small fraction of what it used to be, a generation ago, when very large families were the norm.
If it's any consolation, the flood of Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. has leveled off, and even started to reverse, with the economic recession (which affects the U.S. tourism/ hospitality business, and home construction business).
I thought it was Mexican immigration that was reversing. Either way, I'm not a fan of decreased immigration to the U.S., but that's a topic for another time.
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