Migration and Integration

As most of us know, immigration reform is back on the table. Whether something gets done depends on whether a sufficient number of our members of congress can come to terms with a bill and then overcome that vocal but stubborn minority which will stop at only mass deportation and wall building.
Although immigration is a raging issue, Gregory Rodriguez, writes today in the LA Times about what happens when immigration has reached its peak and we begin to move to the next stage of life experience. Apparently, for the first time in decades the city of Los Angeles has seen the percentage of foreign born residents decrease. The question is, what happens in the second generation, the ones born here and educated here, who have feet in both worlds and yet are ethnic-Americans not immigrants.
In recent years great efforts on the part of the media, business, and religious groups have been devoted to providing resources that are ethnically/language related. But what happens as integration happens. I know from listening to my son who is an ethnically diverse high school there is discussion within communities about how to maneuver through American culture.
Rodriguez offers this assessment of how 2nd generation people make the transitions:

Often bilingual, this second generation tends to play the role of mediators for the first. While less-educated immigrants can spend their lives acclimating to this country, the second generation actively negotiates the gap between their parents' home culture and the American mainstream. Raised on Britney and Buffy and schooled in English, it is this cohort that begins to go beyond the cultural enclave. They are not immigrants but ethnic Americans. And for all the talk of trans-nationalism, they wouldn't quite fit back in Sinaloa, Uttar Pradesh or Surat Thani.

In other words, if the second generation that is coming of age today is anything like previous children of immigrants, they will not settle for outreach but will increasingly demand full inclusion in their country of birth. This will require us all to develop a more holistic notion of diversity, one that incorporates rather than segregates difference and emphasizes cross-ethnic ties over group-specific appeals. The rise of the second generation should remind us that "community" doesn't just refer to ethnic and other minority groups but to the people who live together in any given geographic location. It is a sense of solidarity and common purpose among neighbors that we now have a greater chance to rebuild.

The column is intriguing and important to consider as part of the broader conversation about who we are as a people and as a nation. So, click here and read!

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