BLOG POST: Immigrant Integration Starts with a Welcome
By Stephen Fotopulos
Posted Originally at the US Immigration Integration Network
“Immigration to this country is increasing...from races most alien to the body of the American people.”
“[These immigrants], half of whom have no occupation and most of whom represent the rudest form of labor," are "people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States...they have no interest or stake in the country, and they never become American citizens.”
;)
In Tennessee, you can turn on conservative talk radio any day of the week and hear these sentiments echoed. But the statements above were made by a US Representative from Massachusetts named Henry Cabot Lodge, and he said them in 1891. He was talking about the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, some of the very people who made their new homes in Tennessee a hundred years ago. We are a proud nation of immigrants, but there have always been those who sound the alarm when the newcomers look or sound too different. And people tend to listen.
Most Americans recognize the foundational role immigrants have played in building this country, but has immigration now been relegated to the tattered pages of history books? Does the immigrant experience continue to be a vital element in the character and strength of the nation? What do the immigrants of today promise for the continued prosperity of this country, and what do US-born citizens expect in return for sharing the American dream with newcomers? These are questions essential to the welcome we give today’s immigrants, and a community’s responses can determine the success and speed of immigrant integration.
