Pirate's Cove

This is one of those “well, duuuuuuuh!” posts

Immigrants to the United States are doing a good job of assimilating, with immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, and the Philippines leading the way in adapting to an American way of life, according to a new study. But the one group not assimilating well is Mexicans, apparently because so many of them are in the country illegally.

Excluding Mexican immigrants, the assimilation picture of the 21st century looks better than some might think, as the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank in New York City, documented in its report, Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States , released Tuesday.

Far be it for me to point out that illegal Mexicans should not be assimilating at all, since they shouldn’t be here in the first place, but, well, I guess I did.

The study author Jacob Vigdor of Duke University points out that all the other groups are assimilating very well in the 21st Century, even better then they did in the 20th. The study mentions how immigrants from all over the wold are doing well: they learn English, become naturalized, join the American economic race, and become part of American society.

Personally, I can attest that we have many immigrants in Raleigh, both legal and illegal. There are many from the west coast countries of Africa, and they work very hard to be a part of the USA. It is often hard to understand them as they speak English, but, they try. Many of them are still wearing much of their African clothes, but you still get the sense that they want to be part of American society.

The problem with the Mexican immigrants, though, both legal and illegal, is that they really do not try and assimilate and integrate; instead, they isolate themselves, create jobs and business that are Spanish speaking only, take jobs that do not require Spanish, and force companies (which doesn’t seem too hard to do) to integrate Spanish into their jobs. And the Mexicans then get upset that you, the legal resident of the USA, do not speak Spanish beyond the word “Hola!” when they have made almost no attempt to learn English. I was at a Jersey Mike’s the other day, and the girl putting the sub together barely spoke a lick of English, seemed to be getting upset that I didn’t speak Spanish, and it ended up with me pointing to what I wanted on my sub. Ridiculous!

Obviously, though, this does not apply to all Mexican immigrants, but, it sure appears to be the majority of them. From the report

Immigrant children born in Mexico are more distinct than immigrant children born in other foreign nations. This distinction is most obvious in terms of comparative naturalization rates, but extends to other dimensions as well. Mexican adolescents are imprisoned at rates approximately 80 percent greater than immigrant adolescents generally.

What you have is their parents never pushing the children to learn English and be part of America. They separate themselves intentionally away from the establish society. Not all of them are illegals, either. In my opinion, this attitude of refusal to become part of American culture, refusal to learn English enough at least enough to communicate, to separate themselves, and to get upset when Americans do not change to accomodate Mexicans, as well as forcing all these changes on Americans, are what causes the current friction and intense interest in stopping illegal immigration. The fact that it is the law, too.