Many of us speak of the assimilation of new immigrants into our society, but what is assimilation? It is simple. Assimilation is the absorption and integration of people, ideas, or culture into a wider society or culture. When thousands of people enter a country from a foreign land, it takes considerable time for them to understand our culture. We have gone through this process several times in the history of the USA. Each time, it was difficult for us, but more so for the newcomer. It is they who have to learn a new language and new customs. We on the other hand have to tolerate the migrants old ways as they slowly evolve into the American way. During my lifetime I have witnessed several waves of immigrants entering our society. First was the wave that bought my parents here in the nineteen twenties and long before I was born in the nineteen thirties. I grew up in a neighborhood populated by Americans, Hungarians, Italians, Ukranians, and Polish. I’m certain I left some of them out, but time has a way with dealing with memories.
My father’s assimilation began when at age seventeen he joined the Illinois Central Railroad as a laborer. His sponsor was his sister’s husband, who had arrived a few years earlier than he did. Uncle John Yusko most likely helped him learn the language on the job. Also, many of his supervisors were the sons of immigrants who knew the language and could communicate in Hungarian when English failed. Gradually, my Dad began speaking in English, but never at home. He and Mom spoke in the familiar language of their birthplace. As children, my older brother taught me and our younger sister to talk English while he learned from the Nuns at school. Many of the local businesses were run by immigrants and they too learned from and taught their customers. The best assessment I can make is that assimilation takes time and patience. My dad had a fairly good command of the language even into his nineties, but reverted to Hungarian when he didn’t have the English word. It was hilarious when Mom and Dad while speaking Hungarian slid an English word into the sentence. In my mother’s case she reverted more to Hungarian as she aged.
The second wave of immigrants I encountered was after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against the Russians. My mother paired me with the nephew of our Pastor’s housekeeper. He was about the same age as me and a genuine Molotov cocktail-throwing rebel who fled for his life. We were inseparable; he challenged me to speak Hungarian, and I urged him to speak English. We were inseparable for about a year, and then I left town to go to college. The next time I saw him, he was on leave from the army. He had joined up to assimilate faster. He sure did. He returned on leave speaking excellent English with a hefty Alabama accent. He went to school on the GI Bill and became an engineer. He assimilated.
The next round of migrants I became aware of came from Viet Nam. My cousins in California helped them through their difficulties for at least ten years. The hardest part of assimilation is getting employment. These poor people struggle with life and do their best to make a living. After that, I lost track of any other migrant infusions, but I have witnessed an awful lot of Central Americans cutting lawns in the neighborhood. I even convinced myself to hire one to do my lawn chores. It is the best decision I ever made to assist with assimilation.
This morning, I researched how the Israelis infused so many people into their country. They devised a process called the Kibbutz. As new immigrants arrived, they were assigned to a Kibbutz, which is nothing more than a farm with a formal name. The newcomers worked the land to raise vegetables and livestock for their consumption and the markets. Any profit made was distributed equally between members of the Kibbutz. That sounds a bit Marxist to me. Many of these enterprises have evolved from agriculture to manufacturing, depending on the individuals’ capabilities. I think this concept appeals to me and is one that we could propose here. Why not divide these people into manageable groups, assign them to some land and basic tools, and let them have at it? The problem with my idea is the government. We have so many swamp creatures inventing regulations and work rules that a Kibbutz in the Israeli sense would be unlawful.
Back when my parents arrived, there were no unions, children were allowed to work, OSHA wasn’t yet an idea, and workers could take chances on the job. It was a working economy. However, employers tended to overdo things. Working conditions became difficult, and the people felt like slaves. When our most revered president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, became president and worked to ease people’s suffering by inventing new laws and regulations, he called it the New Deal, but inadvertently created the Swamp. The various Bureaus have been left unfettered to make rules that are as strong as laws, except they aren’t laws written by Congress and voted in. They are regulations that are imposed upon us whether we like them or not. Because these Bureaus are not controlled by ‘We the People’ they have gone on their merry way and have continued to dream up countless ways to make our lives better than we can. Since the nineteen forties they have grown and spent trillions of dollars on too many things that don’t really make our lives better, but they do make our lives more expensive.
The current government’s approach to assimilation involves two policies: The first is to fly or bus people by the hundreds to various parts of the country and let them loose. The second is to do nothing and allow the immigrant himself to find a way to live. The first is to spread the population without regard to the immigrants or the cities where they are dumped. Cities nationwide have seen this invasion and are remiss about handling housing, clothing, meals, and, more importantly, jobs. The result is that we see communities of tent cities popping up in urban areas all around the country.
When the country encouraged a large population of immigrants to come in the early twentieth century, it needed labor to do work. The current administration has no clue what these people will do when they arrive. Should I hire a gardener, a housemaid, and a cook and provide them a place to live while they work for me? I could be okay with hiring help, but I cannot afford that, a life with my family and Uncle Sam, too.
I’m afraid in the long run, I will end up paying these people to assimilate. Uncle Sam will finally wake up and realize he has created a human catastrophe. He will then begin implementing new social programs to assist immigrants. Two things will happen: 1. He will raise our taxes, and 2. He will print money to pay for the programs, thus increasing inflation and making life equally miserable for all of us. This flood of new immigrants smacks of the redistribution of wealth plan inaugurated by our Progressive, Liberal, Socialist, and Communist former President Obama. When does this guy go away?
Filed under: Biography, Conservative, Government, Immigration | Tagged: Assimilation, Bureaucracy, FDR, Immigrant Waves, Obama | 3 Comments »
