Immigrant assimilation

Immigrant Assimilation (a subset of cultural assimilation) is a complex process in which an immigrant fully integrates himself or herself into a new country. An immigrant converging to the American life and becoming part of a community and social network would be an example of immigrant assimilation. Social scientists rely on four primary benchmarks to assess immigrant assimilation. These measurements are socioeconomic status, geographic distribution, language attainment, and intermarriage. William A.V. Clark defines immigrant assimilation "as a way of understanding the social dynamics of American society and that it is the process that occurs spontaneously and often unintended in the course of interaction between majority and minority groups"..

Overview

Historically, sociology owes its birth to the desire to understand the great changes that our society underwent at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the most important social changes being immigration. The assimilation of immigrants in the nineteenth century and the twentieth-century has been a major focus in social research. It has been found that Between 1880 and 1920, the United States had taken in roughly 24 million immigrants. Over 1.8 million Jews (including some non-Jewish family members) emigrated from the Former Soviet Union..

3. Language Attainment is defined as the ability to speak English and the loss of the individual's mother tongue.

Policies on immigrant assimilation

When considering immigrant assimilation it is important to consider why immigrants migrate. One reason immigrants migrated was The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act(IRCA), which legalized 2.3 million formally undocumented Mexican Immigrants..Hatton argues that that specification of the earnings function should be improved in two ways. First, immigrants who arrived as children should be treated separately from those who arrived as adults. Second, specification of the earnings function should be better approximate to the true shape of age-earnings profiles.. Hatton points out that with these modifications , the patterns of immigrant earnings which have emerged make more sense with those of the 20th century and with traditional views on immigrant assimilation in the 19th century.

Owning a home and immigrant assimilation

It is believed that immigrants can move the up the ladder through hard work, which is in fact true for some immigrants but are all immigrants assimilating? Owning a home can be seen as a step into assimilation. William A.V. Clark explores this link in his book "Immigrants and the American Dream Remarking the Middle Class". Clark is aware that the process of assimilation is more than just being able to purchase a home. He argues that "homeownership" is one of the steps of assimilation, it is becoming part of the community and a neighborhood, and being a part of the daily activities that take place in a community.

Naturalization and immigrant assimilation

When immigrants are sworn in as citizens, they are undergoing one of the many steps of immigrant assimilation. Citizenship is one of the most significant dimensions of assimilation outside of marriage. The immigration debate focuses not only the number of immigrants who should be admitted, who should be allowed to be admitted but it is also looks at the processes of incorporation, and most importantly how citizenship should be extended and to who it should be extended to. For example, should it be extended to those who arrive illegally. Allowing for naturalization of immigrants can create tension in assimilation. On one hand, those who favor the admission of immigrants input that these new residents will help build and enrich the American democratic process. However others argue that the nature and legitimacy of the nation may be challenged and perhaps even threatened.

New immigrant gateways and immigrant assimilation
The 21st century has marked a change in immigrant settlement. Although it is changing, the overwhelming majority of immigrants still settle in traditional gateway states such as Florida, New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Massachusetts.. It has found that immigrants settle in traditional gateways where there are large populations of foreign-born people. Walters and Jimenez have illustrated the changes in the geographic distribution and the rates of growth of immigration in the United States. They show the number of foreign-born individuals in states where the foreign-born population grew by a factor of two or more between 1990 and 2000. Walters and Jimenez found that the largest percentage growth in the foreign-born population, was found in either the Midwest or the South in additional none of the traditional gateways were included in this large percentage growth. Walters and Jimenez noted that a reason these traditional gateways did not have an increase at the same rate of the new gateways was because, new gateways did not have many immigrants to begin with. Walters and Jimenez have argued that this new change in geography could possibly change the way researchers assess immigrant assimilation. They argue that these new gateways are unique and they propose that immigrant assimilation may be different from the experiences of immigrants in more traditional gateways in at least three ways. First, the long history of immigration in these established gateways means that the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies in these traditional gateways are more structured or established on the other hand these new gateways do not have much immigration history therefore the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies is less defined and immigrants may have more influence to define their position. Second, the size of new gateways may influence immigrant assimilation. Having a smaller gateway may influence the level of segregation among immigrants and native-born people. Third, the difference in institutional arrangements may influence immigrant assimilation. Traditional gateways unlike new gateways have many institutions set up to help immigrants which include legal-aid, bureaus, social organizations. Finally, Walters and Jimenez have only speculated that these differences may influence immigrant assimilation and the way researchers should assess immigrant assimilation.

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