Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Authentic take on the issue. Appreciate the first hand viewpoint.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
Assimilation is much harder in the "old world" countries.
It's hard for me to say, go to China and "become Chinese." They will never view me as Chinese. I am not Chinese. I can get close. I can adopt their customs, learn the language and religion. Maybe marry a local. Have kids with locals and raise them in the local culture.
It's the same in Europe. A Chinese moving to Germany is never going to be German. Nationality wise, maybe. Culturally, ethnically, no. But, the Chinese can learn German. Have kids and raise them as Germans.
That's what used to happen in the US. It still happens, but much more slowly because now we coddle and accommodate where we didn't used to.
Muslim immigrants in Europe, however, resist assimilation. If you don't adopt local customs, don't let your daughters marry the local boys, don't raise your children as German/Belgian/Dutch... whatever.... maintain loyalty first to your culture of origin 2-3 generations out.... you're not an immigrant, you're a colonist. You don't deserve deference. You don't deserve "a place in society." You deserve to remain in your ghetto where you've chosen to be.
Host/receiving countries owe NOTHING to their immigrants. Period. Not the US, not Canada, not anywhere in Europe, not Japan or Australia. NOTHING. As the son of a an immigrant with an entire side of my family that are all immigrants, the best thing to happen to us was finding a country that expected assimilation. Doesn't mean you forget the culture and customs of the old country, but all of us 1st generation cousins are 100% American.
Rejection? Maybe expectation. Or neglect, by not having expectations that to be a Frenchman, an American - pick a country - requires adoption of certain social norms, cultural conventions, language, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tinytrump
assimilation be a lot easier --if we got rid of the REJECTION!
This thread is not about legal or illegal immigration. It is about the failure and threat of multiculturalism.
If an immigrant group remains outside of its new home country's culture and language, apart; then it will not become citizens that cherish, loves and embraces the ideals and culture of its new home country. In fact, those immigrant groups remain apart, resentful.
Immigrant groups who assimilate, though, adopting their new home county customs, while remembering and honoring its country of birth customs and traditions, make their adoptive country stronger, more vibrant.
It can and will, possibly already is happening in the U.S.
All of this can be said of any immigrant group that stays 'foreign' or true to their home country ideals and beliefs. Latino, Asian, Italian. It does not matter about country of origin.
There has never been a unitary US culture, language, or set of customs. The US has always been multicultural.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
Assimilation is much harder in the "old world" countries.
It's hard for me to say, go to China and "become Chinese." They will never view me as Chinese. I am not Chinese. I can get close. I can adopt their customs, learn the language and religion. Maybe marry a local. Have kids with locals and raise them in the local culture.
It's the same in Europe. A Chinese moving to Germany is never going to be German. Nationality wise, maybe. Culturally, ethnically, no. But, the Chinese can learn German. Have kids and raise them as Germans.
That's what used to happen in the US. It still happens, but much more slowly because now we coddle and accommodate where we didn't used to.
Muslim immigrants in Europe, however, resist assimilation. If you don't adopt local customs, don't let your daughters marry the local boys, don't raise your children as German/Belgian/Dutch... whatever.... maintain loyalty first to your culture of origin 2-3 generations out.... you're not an immigrant, you're a colonist. You don't deserve deference. You don't deserve "a place in society." You deserve to remain in your ghetto where you've chosen to be.
Host/receiving countries owe NOTHING to their immigrants. Period. Not the US, not Canada, not anywhere in Europe, not Japan or Australia. NOTHING. As the son of a an immigrant with an entire side of my family that are all immigrants, the best thing to happen to us was finding a country that expected assimilation. Doesn't mean you forget the culture and customs of the old country, but all of us 1st generation cousins are 100% American.
There is some truth to this, but I think it overstates the difficulties of the "Old World." Global commerce is denser than it once was. There are more links than there used to be between people in different parts of the world. Cities like Shanghai, London, and Berlin are full of people from varied backgrounds, both as residents and as visitors. And the natives of these places are more likely than in past generations to spend time overseas for school, business, or pleasure.
Your take on Muslim "colonists" is flat wrong. It is the virulent xenophobia preyed upon by the European far right. Europe's long embrace of neoliberalism caused borders to come crashing down. The immigration/asylum policy of the EU and its member states encourages internal movement--with concomitant effects upon "national" cultures.
America is different. It developed no unitary national culture over centuries (or millennia) of internal development. Rather, people from the ends of the Earth came to its shores in varied ways and for varied reasons. They brought traditions, languages, customs, and culture with them. Some of those disparate elements diffused to other immigrants, others faded with time, and still others remain to this day.
Not sure how you reach that conclusion. Ancestry does not prevent assimilation. The term melting pot describes exactly the 'melting pot' concept of assimilation. To form something new and different. How many Schmidts, or Jindals, or Hondas (Mike), are recognizable and thought as German, Hindi, or Japanese any longer? Yet their ancestral names remain. In some cases the ancestral does not remain due to intermarriage.
To become part of a culture in which the adopted culture becomes dominant, absorbing yet being changed in incremental ways is another way to view assimilation. Even when one's birth culture remains, it becomes sublimated, becoming a minor part of who one is, describes assimilation; to become indistinguishable to one degree or another from the adopted and now dominant culture.
Where is proof that that happens? The dominant culture changes because of immigrant "assimilation".
Aside from the question regarding the Democratic Party, (which I believe the answer is No--that is not who they are describing) I agree with you. I also notice nobody is responding because they can't just pile on with negative comments.
I linked to this article in another post, and it is 10 years old, but backs up your opinion. It is why assimilation works so much better than stigmatizing and isolating.
Not unitary. Never said that. Our history is one of country that absorbs immigrants and as a result some of their culture become a part of not apart from the overall culture. The apart from is what the Europeans are seeing the fruits of and are finally acknowledging that they have stood by instead of insisting on, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
There has never been a unitary US culture, language, or set of customs. The US has always been multicultural.
There is some truth to this, but I think it overstates the difficulties of the "Old World." Global commerce is denser than it once was. There are more links than there used to be between people in different parts of the world. Cities like Shanghai, London, and Berlin are full of people from varied backgrounds, both as residents and as visitors. And the natives of these places are more likely than in past generations to spend time overseas for school, business, or pleasure.
Your take on Muslim "colonists" is flat wrong. It is the virulent xenophobia preyed upon by the European far right. Europe's long embrace of neoliberalism caused borders to come crashing down. The immigration/asylum policy of the EU and its member states encourages internal movement--with concomitant effects upon "national" cultures.
America is different. It developed no unitary national culture over centuries (or millennia) of internal development. Rather, people from the ends of the Earth came to its shores in varied ways and for varied reasons. They brought traditions, languages, customs, and culture with them. Some of those disparate elements diffused to other immigrants, others faded with time, and still others remain to this day.
Assimilation is much harder in the "old world" countries.
It's hard for me to say, go to China and "become Chinese." They will never view me as Chinese. I am not Chinese. I can get close. I can adopt their customs, learn the language and religion. Maybe marry a local. Have kids with locals and raise them in the local culture.
It's the same in Europe. A Chinese moving to Germany is never going to be German. Nationality wise, maybe. Culturally, ethnically, no. But, the Chinese can learn German. Have kids and raise them as Germans.
That's what used to happen in the US. It still happens, but much more slowly because now we coddle and accommodate where we didn't used to.
Muslim immigrants in Europe, however, resist assimilation. If you don't adopt local customs, don't let your daughters marry the local boys, don't raise your children as German/Belgian/Dutch... whatever.... maintain loyalty first to your culture of origin 2-3 generations out.... you're not an immigrant, you're a colonist. You don't deserve deference. You don't deserve "a place in society." You deserve to remain in your ghetto where you've chosen to be.
Host/receiving countries owe NOTHING to their immigrants. Period. Not the US, not Canada, not anywhere in Europe, not Japan or Australia. NOTHING. As the son of a an immigrant with an entire side of my family that are all immigrants, the best thing to happen to us was finding a country that expected assimilation. Doesn't mean you forget the culture and customs of the old country, but all of us 1st generation cousins are 100% American.
actually you can't "learn" the chinese language. why? because they have many dialects that locals use most of the time. these dialects are oral languages ,not necessarily comprehensible to one another, even to the chinese. this is why they have a designed universal language of mandarin. but if you don't speak the dialect, you aren't local.
this is how deep the old world is and how difficult it'll be for immigration. in the same way that you are not a native american, and you can't easily assimilate to their culture.
Assimilation isn't possible. You can change your language, religion, culture, beliefs, but you can't change your ancestry. And intermarriage is not assimilation either. Two different things added together do not equal any of the original parts. They equal something new and different from its predecessors.
Assimilation pretty much means melting into the main culture. Kinda like a German can be of any heritage, including Black Nigerian but; especially if born and raised there with his parents getting German citizenship, our "Nigerian" IS German under international law. Especially if he speaks correct German and so on.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
