immigration assimilation essay

What history tells us about assimilation of immigrants

Immigration has emerged as a decisive — and sharply divisive — issue in the United States. Skepticism about whether new arrivals can assimilate into American society was a key concern in the 2016 presidential election and remains an ongoing theme in the public debate on immigration policy. This controversy is not new. The U.S. has experienced repeated waves of hostility toward immigrants and today’s concerns echo alarms sounded often in the past. Both today and in earlier times, many in this country have viewed immigrants as a threat to the integrity of the nation’s culture, fearing that foreigners among us somehow make America less American. Consider the following statement: Immigration “is bringing to the country people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and who do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.” The speaker was not Donald Trump on the campaign trail but Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge in 1891.

The immigration debate raises a fundamental issue: Are immigrants able to successfully integrate into American society by adopting the economic, social, and cultural norms of native-born Americans? Or are they likely to remain an alien presence inside our borders long after they settle here? This argument typically generates more heat than light. Many people have opinions on the subject, but relatively little empirical evidence is available on how fully and quickly immigrants assimilate into U.S. culture.

Leah Boustan of UCLA, Katherine Eriksson of UC Davis, and I have tried to fill part of this gap by looking at immigration during the Age of Mass Migration from 1850 to 1913, when U.S. borders were open and 30 million Europeans picked up stakes to move here. By the early 20th century, some 15 percent of the U.S. population was foreign born, comparable to the share today. If we want to know how today’s newcomers will fare, we can find important clues by examining what happened to those who arrived on our shores during the greatest surge of immigration in U.S. history.

In our previous work on immigration, my co-authors and I looked at occupation data of immigrants who arrived during the Age of Mass Migration. [1]  The classic narrative is that penniless immigrants worked low-paying jobs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, eventually reaching equality of skills and income with natives. We found that story to be largely a myth. On average, long-term immigrants and natives held jobs at similar skill levels and climbed the occupational ladder at about the same pace. We did find considerable variation though. Immigrants from richer countries, such as England or Germany, often worked in higher-skilled occupations than natives, while those from poorer countries, such as Italy or Russia, often were in less-skilled occupations. But, regardless of the starting point, the initial gaps between immigrants and natives persisted throughout their lives. These findings provide useful data on the experiences of immigrants in the U.S. labor market. But it’s important to stress that even immigrants who lag economically may successfully assimilate into American society.

Measuring cultural assimilation is a challenge because data on cultural practices—things like food, dress, and accent—are not systematically collected. But the names that parents choose for their children are collected, offering a revealing window into the cultural assimilation process. [2]  Using 2 million census records from 1920 and 1940, we constructed a foreignness index indicating the probability that a given name would be held by a foreigner or a native.

For example, people with names like Hyman or Vito were almost certain to be children of immigrants, while youngsters with names like Clay or Lowell were likely to have native parents. In this respect, children’s names are signals of cultural identity. Giving a child an American-sounding name is a financially cost-free way of identifying with U.S. culture. Thus, we can trace the assimilation process by examining changes in the names immigrants gave their offspring as they spent more time in the U.S.

Our key finding is that for immigrants who arrived in the 1900s and 1910s, the more time they spent in the U.S., the less likely they were to give their children foreign-sounding names. Figure 1 shows that after 20 years in this country, half of the gap in name choice between immigrants and natives had disappeared. The shift in name choice happened at a roughly equal pace for sons and daughters and among poor and rich families.

However, the pace varied significantly depending on country of origin. Immigrants from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were among the quickest to adopt American-sounding names, followed by Italians and other Southern Europeans. Russians, including many Russian Jews, and Finns had the slowest rates of name-based assimilation. This convergence of names chosen by immigrant and native populations is suggestive evidence of cultural assimilation. But the fact that immigrants didn’t fully adopt native naming patterns suggests that many valued retaining a distinct cultural identity.

Having an American-sounding name was a badge of assimilation that conferred genuine economic and social benefits. We looked at census records of more than a million children of immigrants from 1920, when they lived with their childhood families, through 1940, when they were adults.

Children with less-foreign-sounding names completed more years of schooling, earned more, and were less likely to be unemployed than their counterparts whose names sounded more foreign. In addition, they were less likely to marry someone born abroad or with a foreign-sounding name. These patterns held even among brothers within the same family. The data suggest that, while a foreign-sounding name reinforced a sense of ethnic identity, it may have exposed individuals to discrimination at school or on the job.

Other measures reinforce the picture of early 20th century immigrants gradually taking on American cultural markers. By 1930, more than two-thirds of immigrants had applied for citizenship and almost all reported they could speak some English. A third of first-generation immigrants who arrived unmarried and more than half of second-generation immigrants wed spouses from outside their cultural group.

These findings suggest that over time immigrants’ sense of separateness weakened and their identification with U.S. culture grew stronger. The gradual adoption of American-sounding names appears to have been part of a process of assimilation in which newcomers learned U.S. culture, made a commitment to build roots in this country, and came to identify as Americans.

Some may have arrived with a strong desire to assimilate, but little knowledge of how to do so. They may not even have known which names were common in the U.S. Others may not have cared about assimilating at first, but eventually felt the urge to blend in. In both cases, as time went by, they may have started to navigate the dominant culture with greater ease. Their children may have attended schools with children from other cultures and have spoken with American accents.

What does this tell us about the assimilation process? We can imagine that after many years in the U.S., immigrants, like natives, become baseball fans, eat hamburgers, and watch fireworks on the Fourth of July. To be sure, their connections with their countries of origin are not obliterated. Instead, they may come to see themselves as hyphenated Americans, but Americans nonetheless.

What’s more, policies that attempt to force cultural assimilation on immigrants may backlash. Fouka (2015) finds that German immigrants in states that introduced anti-German language policies during World War I responded by choosing visibly German names, perhaps as a show of community support. [3]

Concerns about the economic effects of immigration go hand in hand with fears that immigrants will remain a culturally foreign presence in our midst. How immigration affects the income and living standards of natives and how newcomers contribute to the U.S. economy are hot-button issues. My research partners and I are in the process of investigating these questions. Based on the existing literature and our own research, we hypothesize that the economic impact of immigration today may be different from the effects during the Age of Mass Migration. [4]  In the early 20th century, foreign-born and native workers competed for the same low-skilled jobs and immigrants may have driven down wages of those born here. Today, the competition between immigrants and natives may be less important because immigrants tend to cluster in a limited set of occupations at the top and bottom of income distribution.

The historical evidence presented here should be considered with care. Today’s immigrants differ markedly in ethnicity, education, and occupation from those who came during the Age of Mass Migration. Over the past half century, the U.S. has experienced a second wave of mass migration with characteristics that set it apart from what took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The contemporary migration wave is highly regulated, favoring those with money, education, and skills and drawing migrants primarily from Asia and Latin America. Selection of immigrants today is often positive, meaning those who come here are more highly skilled than their compatriots who stay in their countries of origin. In the past, immigrants were sometimes negatively selected, meaning they were less skilled than those who stayed behind. Finally, legal immigration now is accompanied by a large undocumented inflow, which complicates efforts to study immigration effects.

Much work remains to be done to understand the cultural and economic dimensions of immigration and the differences between the past and the present. My research colleagues and I recently got access to California birth certificate records, which will allow us to compare immigrants from current and historical periods to see whether assimilation patterns are similar.

Overall though, lessons from the Age of Mass Migration suggest that fears immigrants can’t fit into American society are misplaced. It would be a mistake to determine our nation’s immigration policy based on the belief that immigrants will remain foreigners, preserving their old ways of life and keeping themselves at arm’s length from the dominant culture. The evidence is clear that assimilation is real and measurable, that over time immigrant populations come to resemble natives, and that new generations form distinct identities as Americans.

[1]  Ran Abramitzky, Leah Platt Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson. (2014). “A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration.” Journal of Political Economy. 122(3): 467-506.

[2]  Ran Abramitzky, Leah Platt Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson. (2016). “Cultural Assimilation During the Age of Mass Migration.” Working paper, and references therein.

[3] Vasiliki Fouka. (2015). “Backlash: The Unintended Effects of Language Prohibition in U.S. Schools after World War I.” Manuscript.

[4] Ran Abramitzky, and Leah Platt Boustan. (2016a). “Immigration in American Economic History.” NBER Working Paper No. 21882, and references therein.

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Do We Really Want Immigrants to Assimilate?

Subscribe to governance weekly, peter skerry ps peter skerry former brookings expert, professor of political science - boston college.

March 1, 2000

• 22 min read

A few years ago Nathan Glazer posed the question: “Is Assimilation Dead?” His answer was yes, more or less—certainly as a national ideal or policy objective, though he stressed that assimilation remains an ongoing social process. While I certainly agree with Glazer that assimilation persists as a social reality, I strongly disagree that it is dead as a national ideal or policy objective. To be sure, assimilation is moribund among many of our elites, especially ethnic, racial, and minority group leaders. But as an animating force in our communities and in our national life, assimilation is alive and well.

I base this judgment not only on the available social science evidence (some of which I will review here), but also on the views and opinions of ordinary Americans whom I encounter as I travel about the country. I would also point to Peter D. Salins’s widely noted Assimilation, American Style (1997). That Salins, an academic economist, wrote this book under the auspices of the Manhattan Institute and The New Republic attests to the persistence of the assimilation idea even among some of our elites.

Yet if assimilation endures as an idea, it is a very confused and muddled one. “Assimilation” has become part of the liturgy of our civil religion, and like any liturgy, we repeat it without often pausing to consider what we mean by it. I will argue here that when Americans say they want immigrants to assimilate, they may think they know what they want, but in fact they don’t understand the concept or its place in our history. Indeed, if Americans better understood the process of assimilation, they might well ask for something else.

This confusion is highlighted by the contradictory assertions we hear about the assimilation of newcomers. Immigrant leaders and advocates claim that America is a racist society that will not allow “people of color” to become part of the mainstream of American life. Alternatively, it is argued that the assimilation of such individuals into that mainstream is an insidious process that robs them of their history and self-esteem. No one ever bothers to explain how both claims can be true.

Echoing immigrant leaders, nativists and restrictionists also argue that today’s newcomers are not assimilating. Yet as I will argue here, there is abundant evidence that they are. How can so many Americans be mistaken about such a relatively easily verified and fundamental aspect of our national life?

What I propose is to scrutinize what is typically understood by the term assimilation and then contrast it with a more adequate conceptualization of the process. I will be particularly concerned to highlight how assimilation has been bowdlerized such that we conceive of it as a benign step toward social peace and harmony, when in fact it generates new social problems and strains.

If you were to ask the average person on the street what is meant by “assimilation,” he or she would say something about immigrants fitting into American society without creating undue problems for themselves or for those already here. In Assimilation, American Style Peter Salins presents a considerably more thoughtful, though in my opinion incorrect, version of this common sense view of assimilation. Salins argues that an implicit contract has historically defined assimilation in America. As he puts it: “Immigrants would be welcome as full members in the American family if they agreed to abide by three simple precepts”:

First, they had to accept English as the national language.

Second, they were expected to live by what is commonly referred to as the Protestant work ethic (to be self-reliant, hardworking, and morally upright).

Third, they were expected to take pride in their American identity and believe in America’s liberal democratic and egalitarian principles.

Though hardly exhaustive, these three criteria certainly get at what most Americans consider essential to successful assimilation. But let me examine these more closely.

English as the National Language

It is not at all clear what Salins means when he insists that immigrants should “accept English as the national language.” He apparently opposes designating English our official language. Yet Salins seems to have much more in mind than immigrants just learning to speak English, which is what most Americans focus on. Unfortunately, he never really elaborates.

Perhaps Salins understands that one can speak English but nevertheless remain emotionally attached to a second language—even, or perhaps especially—when one does not speak it. For example, the evidence is that immigrants and especially their children learn to speak English (even if they don’t necessarily learn to write it). Yet battles over English acquisition persist. Why?

One reason is that English typically replaces the language of one’s immigrant parents and grandparents. As a result, linguistic assimilation sometimes fuels efforts to regain the language and heritage that has been lost. I am reminded of a young Mexican American I met in Corpus Christi, Texas. Having just completed his first semester at Yale, this young man was pleased to be at home for the Christmas holidays and eager to tell an Anglo visitor from back East about his Mexican heritage. Since he had grown up 150 miles from the Mexican border, I assumed this fellow was more or less fluent in Spanish. So, when I happened to inquire, I was surprised to hear him suddenly lower his voice. No, he replied, he did not speak Spanish, but he considered the language a critical part of the Mexican culture he fervently wanted to hold onto. For this reason, I was assured, he would see to it that his future children would learn Spanish before English. Shortly thereafter, we parted. So I never had the chance to ask him how he intended to teach his children a language he himself did not speak.

It’s easy to poke fun at this fellow, but efforts to recapture parts of a heritage that have been lost do not reflect mere adolescent confusion. Many Latino politicians and public figures grew up speaking only English, but have subsequently learned Spanish in order to maintain their leadership of a growing immigrant community.

A more subtle and intriguing example is the career of Selena, the Tejano singer who has emerged as a cultural icon among Mexican Americans since being murdered by a fan in 1995. The tragedy of Selena is that having conquered the Spanish-language Tejano music world, she died just as she was about to cross over to the English-language market. The irony of Selena is that she was raised (in Corpus Christi, it so happens) speaking English and had to learn Spanish in order to become a Tejano star.

Further evidence that English acquisition does not necessarily lead to the positive outcomes we expect, emerges from recent ethnographic research on the school performance of Latino adolescents. Several such studies report that although newly arrived students experience significant adjustment problems attributable to their rural backgrounds, inadequate schooling, and poor English-language skills, their typically positive attitudes contribute to relative academic success. Yet among Latino students born in the United States, the opposite is often the case. Despite fluency in English and familiarity with American schools, many such students are prone to adopt an adversarial stance toward school and a cynical anti-achievement ethic.

My point is obviously not that learning English is to be avoided. But insofar as it reflects assimilation into contemporary minority youth culture, English acquisition is not an unmixed blessing. In the words of a veteran high school teacher, “As the Latino students become more American, they lose interest in their school work…. They become like the others, their attitudes change.”

As for the Protestant work ethic of self-reliance, hard work, and moral rectitude, there is certainly evidence that some immigrants have been adopting it. A recent study by the RAND Corporation reveals that Japanese, Korean, and Chinese immigrants enter with wages much lower than those of native-born workers, but within 10 to 15 years these newcomers have reached parity with the native-born. On the other hand, Mexican immigrants enter with very low wages and experience a persistent wage gap relative to the native-born, even after differences in education are taken into account.

Now it is not at all clear why Mexican immigrants experience this persistent gap. The RAND researchers who identified it cite several possible causes: the Mexicans’ quality of education, their English language skills, wage penalties experienced by illegal aliens, and discrimination. The RAND researchers also cite “cultural differences in attitudes toward work,” which of course speaks directly to Salins’s concern with the Protestant ethic. Yet the fact is that we just don’t know why Mexican immigrants are faring much worse than others are.

Among immigrants generally, there are other trouble signs. For example, welfare participation rates among immigrants have been climbing in recent years, though overall those rates are currently about the same as among non-immigrants. Some immigrants are clearly involved in criminal activities, though to what degree is subject to dispute. Such indicators are indeed troubling. But along with the ethnographic findings about Latino adolescents cited above, they do indicate that immigrants and their children are assimilating-but not always to the best aspects of American society.

Salins’s third assimilation criterion-taking pride in American identity and believing in our liberal democratic and egalitarian values-has typically been a difficult one for immigrants to satisfy. But the problem has for the most part been not with immigrants, but with native-born Americans’ perceptions of them.

The assimilation of newcomers has long been characterized by the emergence of new ethnic group identities in response to conditions in America. The classic example, of course, is how earlier this century European peasants left their villages thinking of themselves as Sicilians, Neapolitans, and the like, but after arriving here gradually came to regard themselves as they were regarded by Americans-as Italians. Later, they, or more likely their children and grandchildren, came to see themselves as Italian-Americans. Yet the fact that such group identities were one stage in the assin-tilation process was lost on most native-born Americans, who condemned “hyphenated Americans” and considered such group identities as a fundamental affront to America’s regime of individual rights.

Similarly today, immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and other Spanish-speaking countries do not come to the United States thinking of themselves as “Hispanics” or “Latinos.” That is a category and a label that has come into existence here in the United States. Andjust as with European-origin groups earlier this century, Americans are troubled by this assertion of group identity and fail to understand it as one step in the assimilation process.

Still, there is one important difference between group categories like Italians earlier this century and Hispanics today. For the latter designates a racial minority group (as when we refer to “whites, blacks, and Hispanics”) that is entitled to the same controversial benefits-affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act—that black Americans have been granted. These are group-based claims of an extraordinary and unprecedented nature about which Americans have reason to be anxious.

But, once again, such group claims are in response to conditions here in the United States, specifically the incentives presented by our post-civil rights political institutions. To focus on one immigrant group-Mexican Americans-I would note that Mexicans in Mexico do not agitate for the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. Mexicans engage in such efforts only here in the United States, and they do so because our institutions encourage them to. Perhaps even more to the point, such institutions and programs, originally established in response to the demands of black Americans, have been crafted by our political elites in the name of the very same liberal democratic and egalitarian values that Salins invokes.

Assimilation Is Multidimensional

This commentary on Salins’s three criteria leads to three overarching points about assimilation. The first is that assimilation is multidimensional. This point was made more than thirty years ago by sociologist Milton Gordon in his classic study, Assimilation in American Life. Yet academic and popular commentators alike continue to talk about whether this or that group will “assimilate,” as if assimilation were a single, coherent process when, in fact, it has several different dimensions—economic, social, cultural, and political. Even when these different facets of assimilation are acknowledged, they are typically depicted as parts of a smoothly synchronized process that operates in lock-step fashion. In particular, it is typically assumed that the social, economic, or cultural assimilation of immigrants leads directly to their political assimilation, by which is invariably meant traditional ethnic politics as practiced by European immigrants at the beginning of this century.

But as Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed many years ago in Beyond the Melting Pot, what makes sociological or economic sense for a group does not necessarily make political sense. Certainly today, what makes political sense for immigrants is often at odds with their cultural, social, and economic circumstances. Take the situation of Mexican Americans, which term I use loosely to include all Mexican-origin individuals living in the United States. As I have indicated above, there is evidence that Mexican Americans are having problems advancing economically. Nevertheless, there are other indicators—of Englishacquisition, of residential mobility, of intermarriage—demonstrating that Mexican Americans are assimilating socially, culturally, and to some extent even economically. In other words, the evidence on Mexican-American progress is mixed and, as I have already suggested, our understanding of the underlying dynamics is limited.

In order to advance politically, however, MexicanAmerican leaders downplay or even deny signs of progress and emphasize their group’s problems. More specifically, these leaders define their group as a racial minority that has suffered the same kind of systematic discrimination as have black Americans. However regrettable and divisive, this political stance is hardly irrational. Indeed, it is a response to the incentives of our post-civil rights institutions, which have brought us to the point where our political vocabulary has only one way of talking about disadvantage—in terms of race. The resulting irony is that even though Mexican Americans are assimilating along various dimensions much as other immigrants have, their political assimilation is following a very different and highly divisive path.

Assimilation Is Not Irreversible

The second point to be made about assimilation is that it is not necessarily an irreversible process. To be “assimilated” is not to have arrived at some sociological steady state. Or to borrow from historian Russell Kazal, assimilation is not “a one-way ticket to modernity.” The assimilated can and frequently do “deassimilate,” if you will. I have already offered the example of language, of how linguistically assimilated Mexican Americans who speak only English may reassert the importance of Spanish in their own and in their children’s lives.

As sociologist John Stone has noted: “There is a dialectic of fission and fusion that marks the ethnic history of most eras.” Indeed, assimilation is not a simple linear progression, but one that moves back and forth across the generations. As historian Marcus Lee Hansen put it succinctly: “what the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” However flawed as a precise predictor of generational differences within specific ethnic groups, Hansen’s basic insight remains valid: the process of assimilation is a dialectical one.

A case in point is intermarriage. Social scientists and laymen alike point to intermarriage as one of the most-if not the most-telling indices of social assimilation. (I myself did so above, when highlighting evidence of Mexican-American assimilation.) Yet when we cite these data for such purposes, we make large and not always justified assumptions about how the offspring of such unions will identify themselves, or be identified by others. For example, we point to blackwhite intermarriage as an indicator of a desirable amalgamation of the races. And to be sure, in this spirit the children of some such marriages now refer to themselves not as black or white, but as multiracial. Yet their numbers are small, and the fact remains that most such individuals tend to see themselves, and are seen by others, as black.

Another example of the dialectic of assimilation can be seen in the findings of the Diversity Project, a research effort at the University of California at Berkeley. Project interviewers were particularly concerned to delve into how minority undergraduates identify themselves ethnically and racially before and after arriving at Berkeley. Despite evident differences across groups, it is striking how many such students describe themselves in high school as having so assimilated into majority Anglo environments that they did not think of themselves as minority group members. It is at Berkeley where such individuals begin to see themselves differently.

The situation of Mexican-American students at Berkeley is particularly instructive. Though predominantly from working-class backgrounds, they typically speak no Spanish and are described as products of “sheltered secondary education.” One undergraduate, who did not think of herself as “a minority” or “a Mexican” before Berkeley, recounts her surprise when she got introduced as a classmate’s “Mexican friend.” Another such student reports that she was not familiar with the word “Chicano” when growing up in a predominantly Anglo community in San Luis Obispo. Another student complains to the Berkeley researchers that the student body at his Jesuit high school in Los Angeles was “pretty white washed,” that most of the Chicano students there spoke “perfect English,” and that he and they were “pretty much assimilated.” One other undergraduate, referring to his identity as a Mexican American, describes himself as being “born again here at Berkeley.”

I am struck that the rapid assimilation experienced by these students parallels what I have found in my field research throughout the Southwest. In the impoverished Rio Grande Valley, right next to the Mexican border, a prominent Mexican-American physician and Democratic Party activist expressed dismay that his grown children “think like Dallas Republicans.” In the barrios of Los Angeles, a persistent complaint is that Mexican grandmothers who speak little English have a hard time communicating with their grandchildren, who speak no Spanish. I have heard young Mexican Americans repeatedly criticize their parents for raising them to be ignorant of their Mexican heritage. Contrary to much of what we hear today, for many, though hardly all, Mexican Americans social and cultural assimilation are so thoroughgoing and rapid that the result is often a backlash, especially among the young and well educated who, like the Yale student from Corpus Christi, want desperately to recapture what they have lost-or perhaps never even had.

Assimilation Is Conflictual

The third and final point I wish to make about assimilation is that it is fraught with tension, competition, and conflict. I offered a glimpse of this when I earlier focused on the emergence of ethnic groups as part of the assimilation process. Whether we’re talking about Italians yesterday or Hispanics today, such group identities in part signal the efforts of immigrants and their offspring to secure their place in America. Such efforts have in our history almost always been contentious. It is difficult to imagine that they could be otherwise.

Stanford sociologist Susan Olzak provides systematic evidence for this assertion. Based on her study of 77 immigrant-impacted American cities from 1877 to 1914, Olzak rejects the conventional view that intergroup conflict is caused by segregation. Instead, she argues that intergroup competition and conflict resulted from occupational desegregation. In other words, tensions are caused not by the isolation of ethnic groups but by the weakening of boundaries and barriers between groups. Olzak’s perspective is consistent with the findings of Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab in The Politics of Unreason. In that study of right-wing extremism, Lipset and Raab report that anti-immigrant nativism in the United States has had as much to do with the social strains of urbanization and industrialization as with anxieties associated with economic contraction. For example, both the Know-Nothings of the 1850s and the immigration restrictionists of the 1920s flourished during periods of prosperity.

Thus, it is during periods of growth when individuals have greater opportunities to break beyond previously established group boundaries. But opportunities for more interaction also lead to opportunities for more conflict. The sociologist Kurt Lewin made this point many years ago about the consequences of advances made by Jews. The historian John Higham has similarly noted that the remarkable economic advances made by Jews in post-Civil War America resulted in the harsh social discrimination they then encountered. More recently, political scientists Bruce Cam and Roderick Kiewiet point out that while claims of economic discrimination decline steadily from first- to second- to third-generation Latinos, claims of social discrimination increase. Apparently, Latino economic advances lead to increased social contacts with non-Latinos and hence more occasions for friction. Once again, we are reminded that assimilation is a multidimensional process in which gains along one dimension may not be neatly paralleled by progress along others.

Cain and Kiewiet’s cross-generational finding should remind us that much of what drives the tension and conflict associated with assimilation concems the varying expectations of first, second, and third generation immigrants. A virtual truism of the immigration literature is that the real challenges to the receiving society arise not with the relatively content first generation, who compare their situation with what was left behind, but with the second and third generations, whose much higher expectations reflect their upbringing in their parents’ adopted home.

Thus, economist Michael Piore, a longtime student of migration, traces the labor unrest of the 1930’s to the aspirations and discontents of second-generation European immigrants to America. And this dynamic is hardly limited to foreign migrants. For Piore also points out that it was not black migrants from the South who rioted in Northern U.S. cities during the 1960s, but their childrenthat is, the second generation. In light of the foregoing, Peter Salins is profoundly wrong when he asserts: ‘@The greatest danger looming for the United States is interethnic conflict, the scourge of almost all other nations with ethnically diverse populations. Assimilation has been our country’s secret weapon in diffusing such conflict before it occurs …… To be sure, in the long term Salim is correct. But in the short and medium term he is wrong. As should be evident by now, the assimilation of newcomers and their families into American society has typically resulted in group competition and conflict. Moreover, today’s post-civil rights political institutions transform the inevitable discontents generated by assimilation into divisive racial minority grievances.

Assimilation or Racialization?

We Americans seem to have a very difficult time grasping the contentious nature of assimilation. There are several reasons for our collective obtuseness on this point. On the one hand, immigration restrictionists focus exclusively on the strife occasioned by mass immigration throughout our history. Indeed, restrictionists are so obsessed with this aspect of immigration that they overlook that immigrants did assimilate and the nation survived and even prospered.

On the other hand, immigration enthusiasts go to the opposite extreme. They focus exclusively on the successful outcome of mass immigration and totally ignore the discord and dissension along the way. For example, reading Salins one would never know that our history has been marked by nots both by and against immigrants. For that matter one would never know that Catholic schools, which Salins correctly argues promote assimilation today, were nevertheless originally established in the nineteenth century by churchmen eager to thwart the assimilation of Catholics.

My point is that both sides of this debate ignore precisely what I am arguing—that assimilation and conflict go hand in hand. But there is another reason why we Americans have such difficulty confronting these conflicts. As I have already indicated, in today’s post-civil rights environment the problems and obstacles experienced by immigrants are now routinely attributed to racial discrimination. This racialization of immigration has fundamentally altered the contours of public discourse. On the one hand, because the accepted explanation for any negative response to immigrants is “racism,” many reasonable and fair-minded individuals who might otherwise be tempted to disagree with immigration enthusiasts have been scared away from the topic. On the other hand, because racialization posits a community of interest between black Americans and immigrants who are “people of color,” obvious competition and conflict between black Americans and immigrants (especially the sizable Hispanic population) have been downplayed, ignored, or simply denied. In other words, today’s post-civil rights ideology allows us to high-mindedly rule such group competition and conflict out of bounds—such that they are not topics suitable for serious inquiry.

What can be done about this situation? To begin, we need to get beyond the romance of immigration enthusiasts as well as the melodrama of immigration alarmists. We need to introduce a sense of realism about how we think about these issues and to face up to the turmoil and strains that mass immigration imposes on our society, particularly in this postcivil rights era.

I am reminded of Robert Park, whose research on ethnic and race relations pioneered the field of sociology at the University of Chicago earlier this century. Writing to a former associate in the wake of the 1943 Detroit race riot, Park commented: “I am not quite clear in my mind that I am opposed to race riots. The thing that I am opposed to is that the Negro should always lose.”

Here are the basic elements of Park’s “race relations cycle,” which took competition and conflict (and then accommodation and finally assimilation) as the inevitable outcomes of group contact. For all the criticisms that have been justifiably directed against Park’s perspective, it did have the singular virtue of realism.

By contrast, today we recoil in hand-wringing dismay when legal immigrants are deprived of welfare benefits. Or we cry racism when law enforcement officers ferociously beat illegal aliens. Such responses may be humane and generous-minded, but they are utterly lacking in the realism of which I speak. Do we honestly believe that millions of poor, disenfranchised immigrants can be introduced into a dynamic, competitive social and political system without their interests being put at risk? If so, we bear an uncomfortable resemblance to an enthusiastic but imprudent football coach who allows inexperienced players with poor training and equipment onto the field and then reacts with surprise and shock when they get injured.

More than just realism, Park affords us a sense of the tragic dimensions of immigration. William James, one of Park’s teachers, once wrote that “progress is a terrible thing.” In that same spirit, Park likened migration to war in its potential for simultaneously fostering individual tragedy and societal progress.

As in war, the outcome of the immigration we are now experiencing is difficult to discern. And this is precisely what is most lacking in the continuing debate over immigration—a realistic appreciation of the powerful forces with which we are dealing. We have heard much in recent years about the daunting experiment we have embarked upon with welfare reform. Yet our immigration policy is arguably a social experiment of even greater import—with enormous potential benefits, but also enormous risks. None of us knows for sure how these millions of newcomers will affect the United States. Easy answers about computer scientists and welfare cheats don’t begin to help us address the enormity of this issue. And neither do ill-informed notions about assimilation.

[Author note]

Peter Skerry teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College. His book, Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics , was recently published by the Brookings Institution, where he is a senior fellow.

Governance Studies

Dany Bahar, Ian Seyal, Greg Wright

June 14, 2024

Wendy Edelberg, Olivia Howard, Tara Watson

June 6, 2024

Accelerating “Americanization”: A Study of Immigration Assimilation

Executive Summary

Assimilation is essential for immigrants to succeed in the United States. And, at a time when the U.S. population is growing only because of foreign-born migration, it is more important than ever for native-born Americans and policymakers to be concerned about the success of immigrant (both authorized and unauthorized) populations in the United States.

This report documents how immigrants are faring relative to native-born Americans in several areas—including educational attainment, wage growth, occupational prestige, and marriage and family formation—and how states are competing for immigrants within the country. The findings suggest that there is space for both federal and state governments to “upskill” the existing immigrant population—making them more educated, competent in the English language, and economically productive—as well as future cohorts of immigrants who arrive in the United States.

I conclude the report with small changes that Congress can implement to make the U.S. immigration system favor more highly educated, entrepreneurial, and English-proficient immigrants, such as imposing minimum educational and language-proficiency levels on new immigrants in the family-based categories. Because immigrants constitute a significant portion of interstate migration, I also touch on how states might attract and retain more highly educated foreign-born residents, despite competition from other U.S. states, such as expanding access to English-language training and improving education.

Key findings on economic conditions:

• College-educated immigrants are economically better off than similar college-educated natives; the opposite is true among non-college-educated immigrant and native workers.
• Income inequality in the U.S. has grown in the last half-century, but to a much greater extent between immigrants than natives.

Key findings on English competency:

• The immigrant population of the U.S. has the greatest English proficiency since the U.S. Census Bureau began measuring the skill in 1980. Today, 57% of immigrants to the U.S. speak only English or English “very well.”
• Immigrants who have arrived since 2010, particularly those younger than 45, know more English and are better educated than any previous immigrant wave.

Key findings on education:

• Immigrants to the U.S. are the most educated they have ever been, and the share of immigrants with a college degree has matched that of natives since the 1960s.
• However, the share of immigrants who did not complete high school has fallen at a slower pace than among natives, suggesting that states can help this undereducated population of roughly 20% of immigrants gain more skills.

Key findings on family formation:

• While marriage rates have fallen steadily in the U.S., marriage rates among immigrants have done so to a much lesser extent.
• Lower birthrates are causing the family size among natives to fall. By contrast, family size of immigrants grew from the 1960s through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Only recently has the average immigrant family size begun to fall.

Introduction

When new immigrants arrive in the U.S., to what extent should Americans citizens expect them to assimilate to American culture, habits, and ways of living?

Properly understood, assimilation benefits both natives and newcomers. By taking in or being absorbed into the cultural tradition of the native population, newcomers are better able to communicate and integrate into society and workplaces, as well as make better use of public services. For example, learning the language of a host community enables immigrants to form personal and professional relationships that will help them and their families live happier and more prosperous lives. Natives benefit from these new friendships and associations, too. They may be more open and helpful to immigrants who show an interest in assimilation, and everyone in the country may be better off with the increased economic activity and positive social and civic relationships.

In part, immigration is a hotly contested political issue because Americans now disagree over whether immigrants should assimilate—and what that process even means.

Some progressives consider any expectation that newcomers assimilate as anti-immigrant and provincial. By contrast, some conservatives view too much difference as a source of disunity. They view assimilation as a prerequisite to new immigration and a goal of public policy.

This divergence is important because how Americans think about immigration and assimilation matters significantly for public policy. In late 2020, a Pew Research Center poll[ 1 ] found that while 89% of Republicans and Republican-leaners thought that it was “very” or “somewhat” important to speak English to be “truly American,” only 65% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners did. Sharing American customs and traditions was important for 86% of Republicans, versus 59% of Democrats. Even though Pew found that large majorities of Americans want immigrants to assimilate through adopting the English language and American customs, this growing partisan divide of now 20+ points could signal problems for the future.

A summer 2023 poll from the Manhattan Institute can shed additional light on how Republican primary voters view assimilation.[ 2 ] When MI asked GOP primary voters in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire what factor should be the most important in determining whether someone should be allowed to immigrate to the U.S., eagerness to integrate into American society was second only to immigrants not relying on public welfare. These voters wanted to make immigration easier for two groups: professionals with advanced degrees in STEM areas; and immediate relatives of U.S. citizens—the two groups most likely not to rely on public welfare and to have an easier time assimilating.

Regardless of partisan disagreement, we should understand how current immigrants are assimilating in order to design immigration policies that maximize the assimilation of future immigrants and to improve the prospects of immigrants already in the United States.

This report analyzes several culturally and financially significant characteristics of immigrants—proxies for assimilation—and how the immigrants with such characteristics have changed over time at the national and state levels.

One key measure analyzed in this report is how much English immigrants speak and how quickly they learn the language. Another measure is their education level and how it changes over time and how it changes relative to that of natives. These two measures are tightly bound to another characteristic: the income that immigrants earn relative to natives. In addition, the report analyzes other, less discussed, measures of assimilation, such as marriage and family size.

Many of these measures will not reflect whether immigrants become more similar to natives over time, but rather how the type of new immigrant coming to the U.S. is changing and how foreign-born individuals move between states. States may desire to “upgrade” their immigrant populations by lowering barriers to education, jobs, and English learning. Alternatively, states may want to attract more highly skilled immigrants, add barriers for low-skilled migrants, and compete only for immigrants who will be net-taxpayers. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of immigrant populations by state, over time, is useful for investigating interstate migration.

Immigrant Population Size in the United States

As of 2020, the immigrant share of the U.S. population was approximately 13.8%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau ( Figure 1 ).[ 3 ] This is the highest immigrant share since the early twentieth century; previous historical peaks were in 1890 and 1910, when the foreign-born share of the population reached 14.7%.

The overall immigrant share fell after 1910 because of several factors. World War I made transatlantic travel more difficult and greatly reduced immigration from Europe;[ 4 ] Congress introduced ethnic immigration quotas in the 1920s;[ 5 ] and the Great Depression reduced job opportunities for foreigners and natives alike. In 1970, the foreign-born share of the population fell to an all-time low of 4.7%.[ 6 ] The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the ethnic quota system and increased total limits on immigration (but left in place country-of-birth quotas), and the Immigration Act of 1990 further expanded legal immigration.[ 7 ] Since then, there has also been a rapid increase in the number of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S., bringing the share of residents who are foreign-born to what it is today.[ 8 ]

But the increase in the immigrant share was not evenly distributed across the contiguous United States ( Figures 2 and 3 ).[ 9 ] In some states, the share even declined; at the same time, it more than doubled at the national level.

In the last half-century, the nation’s share of the population that is foreign-born increased by about 9 percentage points (from 4.7% in 1970 to 13.8% in 2020). Just seven states experienced a higher growth than the nation overall: California, Nevada, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia ( Figure 4 ). Five states even have lower foreign-born shares today than in 1970: Maine, North Dakota, Vermont, Montana, and Wyoming.

English Proficiency

The current immigrant population in the U.S. is the most proficient in English since 1980, when the census bureau began documenting this measure. Today, nearly 57% of immigrants speak only English or English “very well,” up from less than 50% in 2000 and 2011, and from less than 55% in 1980 ( Figure 5 ). The recent increase in English proficiency is not due to previous waves of immigrants learning more English once they arrive in the U.S.; it is mainly driven by new, younger immigrants who are already proficient in the English language by the time they arrive.

When we break down English proficiency among immigrants whose native language is not English by decade of immigration and age at migration, we can observe a pattern: younger immigrants know more English when they arrive in the U.S. than older immigrants, and they also learn English faster. Younger people generally have an easier time learning a new language; what is surprising is that the young immigrants who began arriving to the U.S. in the 2010s are the most English-proficient immigrant generation ever to be measured ( Figure 6 ).

Nearly 50% of nonnative English-speaking young adult immigrants who arrived in the 2010s reported speaking English “very well,” compared with 30%–35% of previous generations who immigrated at the same age since the 1970s. This young adult cohort includes only immigrants who came to the U.S. after they turned 18 and were 25–34 years of age by the census year after their arrival.

English proficiency also increased among 35–44-year-old new immigrants from about 30% in previous decades to nearly 45% in the 2010s. New immigrants 45 and older didn’t see much change in their English proficiency relative to past immigrant waves of the same age.

To emphasize this drastic change in the language skills of immigrants over time, consider that new immigrants between 25 and 34 are arriving to the U.S. with greater English proficiency than those who arrived at the same age and have spent three decades living here and learning the language ( Figure 7 ).

Figure 7 displays how an immigrant cohort’s English proficiency changed over time, as recorded by the decennial census. For immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s, their first year tracked by the census is 1980; their second census year is 1990; and so on. Immigrants who arrived in the 2010s have been measured in only one census year: 2020.

The age groups are defined as immigrants who arrived in the selected decade over 18 years old and between the ages of 25 and 34 by the time of their first decennial census. For example, those in the 1970s cohort all immigrated between 1970 and 1979, were at least 18 years old in their year of entry into the U.S., and were 25–34 years old by the 1980 census. Therefore, the youngest migrant in this cohort would have immigrated at 18 in 1973 and be 25 by the 1980 census; the oldest would be a 33-year-old person who immigrated in 1979 and turned 34 before the 1980 census.

Readers might assume that this trend of greater English proficiency among arrivals might be driven by a greater share of immigrants from India, a populous nation where the native language is not English but English is nonetheless widely taught. But no: English proficiency of young immigrants increased among all regions of origin since 2010, and the greatest increase wasn’t among Asians but among Europeans ( Figure 8 ). Sixty-seven percent of young European immigrants speak English very well, excluding those whose native language is already English. About 65% of Asian immigrants and 25% of Latin American immigrants also spoke English very well.

When measuring the change in English proficiency by world region of origin, young Europeans today are nearly 30 points more likely to speak English very well than those who migrated in the 1970s; young Asians are 18 points more English-proficient than their 1970s predecessors; and Latin Americans are nearly 10 percentage points more proficient. But changes in immigrants’ world region of origin did not cause a rise in English proficiency; they slowed it down. Average English proficiency among new young immigrants finally increased in the 2010s, after Latin Americans increased their English proficiency.

Interestingly, since the 1970s, new immigrants from Europe and Latin America increased their English proficiency among every age group, while Asians did so only among those under 45 ( Figure 9 ).

Keep in mind that these data include unauthorized immigrants, who are overwhelmingly from Latin America. This is likely the reason that Latin American immigrants, on average, show lower English proficiency. However, there is evidence of increasing English proficiency even among unauthorized immigrants.[ 10 ]

Moreover, new young immigrants going to every census region of the U.S. are more likely to speak English “very well,” so the rise in proficiency is not driven by a change in the intended or actual destination of immigrants ( Figure 10 ). For the first time, most new young immigrants to the Midwest and the West of the U.S. speak English very well. And the former trend of reduced English proficiency for immigrants going to the South completely reversed in the 2010s.

Young immigrants also began to learn English more quickly in the 2010s, including those who arrived in the U.S. a decade prior ( Figure 11 ). This fact, alongside increased English proficiency being concentrated among young people from every region of origin, suggests that increased English proficiency is caused by a combination of domestic and foreign factors in American society after 2010. Especially after the fallout of the 2008 Great Recession, there was reduced demand for low-skilled labor while demand for high-skilled labor continued to grow,[ 11 ] attracting immigrants who were more likely to speak English and have higher educational attainment. Additionally, the teaching of English expanded all over the world, increasing the pool of prospective English-proficient immigrants.[ 12 ]

Educational Attainment

English proficiency isn’t the only measure by which new immigrants are assimilating. Immigrants today are also the most highly educated they have ever been. The share of immigrants and native-born Americans who are in their prime-age working years and have at least an undergraduate degree has been roughly equal every year since 1960 ( Figure 12, Panel A ). While about 9% of natives in this age group had college degrees in 1960, 38% do now. For immigrants, 9% of them had college degrees in 1960, and nearly 40% of them do now.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines prime working-age years as 25–54. This restriction is important because it excludes people too young to have a college degree and those who are old enough to retire early.

Although there is no gap in college attainment between the average immigrant and native, there is a growing gap at both the top and bottom ends of the educational achievement scale ( Figure 12, Panels B and C ). The share of prime-age natives who earned a graduate degree grew from 3.5% in 1960 to 14% in 2021, while the same share of immigrants grew from 5% to 18%. On the low end of the educational range, the gap between natives and immigrants favors the former. In 1960, 59% of prime-age immigrants did not complete high school, versus 50% of natives; now those shares have dropped to 18% and 5%, respectively. Therefore, the gap between the two groups is growing, even as immigrants are obtaining more education. The higher share of immigrants among those with lower levels of education is driven by unauthorized immigrants, beginning in the 1980s, who did not complete high school in their countries of origin.

These facts on the education of immigrants may paint a picture of a seamless assimilation into American society that has not changed over time. But they hide what is happening with newer immigrant cohorts.

What is driving increasing educational attainment among immigrants is a combination of greater educational gains of past immigrants already living in the U.S. and more highly educated new waves of immigrants ( Figure 13 ). As with English proficiency, new young immigrants are the most highly educated immigrant cohort in U.S. history. But unlike English-proficiency gains, educational gains are not concentrated among new young immigrants. Older immigrants are also coming to the U.S. with more years of schooling and more college degrees. These gains are not exclusively post-2010; they have been gradual since the 1970s.

The rise in immigrants’ educational achievement may be due to several factors, including a U.S. economy that increased the returns of going to college;[ 13 ] and foreign countries have educated their populations more over time.[ 14 ] As discussed below, immigrants with college degrees not only earn more because they have degrees; their earnings gap with college-educated natives is smaller and even reverses within a few years of arrival.

Wage Assimilation and Rising Immigrant Inequality

Education and English proficiency are important insofar as they help immigrants succeed economically and socially in America. Indeed, rising education has contributed to a closing of the wage gap between immigrants and natives.

Among natives and immigrants who are in their prime years, 25–54, and who are employed full-time, the wage gap between the median working immigrant and native grew from 1960 until about 2010 and has since begun to close.

But it is not sufficient to observe only the median immigrant and native worker because there are important assimilation differences across the income distribution. The wage gap between an immigrant worker at the 75th percentile of the income distribution of immigrants and a native worker at the 75th percentile of income among natives is much smaller than at the 50th and 25th percentiles. This means that higher-income immigrants and natives have more similar wages than lower-income groups. This did not use to be the case. In the 1960s, immigrants and natives at the three wage percentiles had only minor wage differences, reflecting growing inequality among lower-income immigrants relative to natives ( Figure 14 ). On the other hand, highly skilled immigrants earn more than comparably skilled natives. In fact, immigrants at the 75th percentile of the income distribution and above now earn more than natives in a similar position.

Figure 15 takes another look at the difference between high-earning and low-earning immigrants through earnings ratios. Earnings ratios show how much more workers at the high end of the pay scale earn, compared with those at the lower end. The larger the ratio, the greater the difference in pay between groups. In 1960, the ratio of the 75th percentile to the 25th percentile for both immigrants and natives was about 2.4, meaning that those in the 75th percentile of the earnings distribution made 2.4 times as much as those in the 25th percentile. But by 2021, immigrants had a 75th–25th ratio of nearly 3.3 and natives had a 75th–25th ratio of only 2.6, showing much greater growth of inequality among immigrants than natives.

When we break down the immigrant–native wage gap by education level, we find that immigrant wage assimilation (nearing or surpassing native wages, by education level) is occurring only for college-educated immigrants ( Figure 16 ).

However, the wage gap between college-educated immigrants and natives has not only closed; it has reversed. The median college-educated immigrant today earns nearly 15% more than the median college-educated native, and even more at the 75th percentile of income of each group.

Non-college-educated immigrants, by contrast, earn less than similarly educated natives at all points of the income distribution, and that gap grows wider each year ( Figure 17 ).

Therefore, we can suspect that the overall native–immigrant wage gap has reversed because college-educated immigrants are doing so much better than those who did not complete a degree. But this inequality could also reflect sorting by English ability, such that college-educated immigrants are simply more likely to speak English, and a greater share of immigrants without college degrees are those who never learned to speak English. This drives down average earnings for this group because of a composition change, meaning that group averages can mislead about how subgroups are doing ( Figure 18 ).

The wage gap for immigrants who speak English very well but didn’t go to college did not change much during 1980–2011, while the gap including those who do speak English grew by about 10 points in the same period.

If non-college-educated immigrants earning less than similar natives is a compositional effect that is due to increased sorting by English proficiency, what is causing the reversion of the immigrant–native wage gap among the college-educated?

If merely rising English proficiency among college-educated immigrants were behind their rising earnings, then restricting the sample to those who know English should show a constant wage gap over time. For instance, this could happen if foreign professionals begin learning more English and can finally work in their fields, thus raising their incomes. But immigrant relative earnings have risen at all levels of income gradually since 1990 ( Figure 19 ). Therefore, rising English proficiency is not behind their rising incomes for this group.

Clearly, rising initial relative wages are concentrated among new immigrants who arrived after 2010 ( Figure 20 ). Initial relative wages are the first salaries that immigrants earn when they arrive in the U.S.; these tend to be lower than those of comparably skilled natives because employers tend to discount foreign job experience and educational credentials, relative to domestic experience and credentials.

After initial earnings stayed constant for over four decades, new young immigrants are now seeing higher initial earnings than similar-aged native workers—about 10% higher. Other young immigrant cohorts are also experiencing faster wage growth, relative to natives. Immigrant cohorts over 45 did not experience this increase in relative earnings post-2010, suggesting that this is driven by higher education and English proficiency among young cohorts.

If the sample is restricted to college-educated immigrants and natives, the wage gap did not change as much as the whole sample implies ( Figure 22 ). Newer college-educated immigrant cohorts are earning more than natives, but the change is not as drastic. Additionally, rising initial earnings for immigrants in the 2010s are accompanied by rising relative earnings of all immigrant cohorts with college degrees in the 2010s.

Among those without a college degree, newer young immigrants are also closing the gap ( Figure 23 ). Therefore, the average wage gap is not closing simply because newer immigrants are more educated; it is closing because all new immigrants are earning more than similar native workers. Education and English proficiency have likely contributed most to closing, and even reversing, the immigrant–native wage gap, but other choices, such as choice in occupation, seem to drive higher relative wages of immigrants beginning in the 2010s.

To show that occupational choices are behind greater immigrant earnings, I show the occupational “prestige” score of new young immigrants, aged 25–34, the census year after their arrival in the United States. After relative stability from the 1970s to the 2000s (and even a small decline), new young immigrants are entering occupations with much greater social prestige than those of past immigrants.

Occupational prestige, in this case, is a measure from the American Community Survey, based on 1960s surveys about the social standing, respectability, and status of various occupations. It is not a perfect measure, but it is useful in understanding whether immigrants are advancing on the social ladder, and not just monetarily.

As my MI colleague Robert VerBruggen showed[ 15 ] earlier this year, the success of college-educated and English-speaking immigrants should guide how the U.S. selects legal immigrants, in order to maximize immigrant success. This reports adds not merely that immigrants with higher education and better English ability do better than those without those attributes; on average, they are outearning natives of similar educational levels to a greater degree every year, driven by more positive immigrant selection among new young cohorts.

Marriage and Fertility

Though converging wages and similar education between natives and newcomers, as well as rising English proficiency, may suggest a success in immigrant assimilation, there are two ways in which immigrants in the U.S. are beginning to differ from natives that are a reason for celebration.

While marriage and fertility rates have fallen for natives in the U.S. since the 1960s, immigrant marriages and fertility have fallen at a much slower rate. Today, immigrants aged 25–54 are more than 14 percentage points more likely to be married than native-born Americans, and that difference has widened each decade since 1960 ( Figure 25 ).

The average family size—i.e., the self-reported number of blood-related family members in the household—increased for immigrants from the 1960s until the beginning of the twenty-first century because of the rising share of immigrants who were Hispanic, reflecting both greater fertility and cohabitation with grandparents in the same household ( Figure 26 ).

Marriage and family structure are important considerations for policymakers because of the implications for social assimilation and economic success. Immigrants marry at higher rates and have larger families not likely as the result of a prosperous U.S. economy but, rather, selection. Marriage rates and family sizes are higher in the countries of origin of the foreign-born population in the U.S.; so those who immigrate are often already married and growing a family or have the expectation of doing so. Another reason for the higher immigrant marriage rate may be that one way newcomers can come or stay legally in the U.S. is by marrying a U.S. citizen or permanent resident; therefore, increased marriage may reflect a selection effect by this legal channel.

Interstate Migration and the California Paradox

The foreign-born population is affected by in- and out-migration and deaths, since the children of immigrants are, by definition, native-born. But a topic in immigrant assimilation that needs more study is where immigrants move after they first arrive in the United States.

Most interstate migration research focuses on total interstate migration[ 16 ] or prime-age migration. More recently, there have been analyses about where parents of young children,[ 17 ] even broken down by race, are migrating. But much of “domestic” migration is made up of foreign-born residents. Over 11% of all interstate moves in 2020–21 were by foreign-born residents, even excluding the new immigrants who arrived in those two years.[ 18 ] Immigrants generally do not stay forever in the place where they first arrive in the United States.[ 19 ] Understanding where immigrants go after they arrive in the U.S. may be the key to understanding why some are assimilating faster and for state policymakers.

One way to find out where successful immigrants go is to compare where they move relative to natives, especially those in their prime working years.

During 2011–21, the native noninstitutionalized (i.e., not imprisoned or in nursing-home facilities), prime-age population fell in 30 out of 50 states because of a combination of natural aging and low fertility as well as interstate migration ( Figure 27 ).

Despite a growing immigrant population nationally, 10 states also lost immigrant prime-age residents, even after accounting for new immigrants arriving from abroad. Chief among the losers of prime-age immigrants were California, New York, and Illinois, with large losses also in New Mexico and South Dakota ( Figure 28 ). These five states lost 6%–11% of their prime-age immigrant populations during 2011–21.

People of prime working age are in the period of life in which they are most likely to work, earn the most in income, and constitute most of the taxpaying population. To measure why some states experienced a decrease in the prime-age immigrant population despite an influx from other countries, I add up the total in-state and out-of-state migration of foreign-born prime-age residents of each state during 2011–21, using census data. To be counted, an immigrant must have immigrated at least the year prior to the survey, so that those who simply moved as soon as they arrived in the U.S. are not counted. By adding up all the inbound and outbound moves between states for a decade, we can observe trends rather than one-year effects.

In absolute terms, the state that lost the most immigrants to other states in the last 10 years is New York, which lost almost 310,000 prime-age immigrant residents to other states ( Figure 29 ). California lost a net 135,000 prime-age immigrants to other states, and Illinois lost almost 65,000. Incredibly, 23 states had a net loss of prime-age immigrants to other states. These domestic migration figures exclude immigrants who arrive directly from abroad and stay in the state where they arrive, but at least for New York, California, and Illinois, foreign migration has not been enough to offset out-of-state migration.

While New York, California, and Illinois lost prime-age immigrants both in absolute numbers and in net interstate migration, Texas, Colorado, Washington, and Florida gained the most ( Figure 30 ). Texas gained more than 200,000 net immigrant prime-age residents from other states during 2011–21.

After adjusting for population, the picture is not too different. New York still leads, with a loss of nearly 78 prime-age immigrants per 100,000 total residents in a span of 10 years ( Figure 31 ). Colorado, Nevada, and Washington are states that attracted the most prime-age immigrants from other states relative to their population size, and Arkansas is in fifth place for growth, right behind Texas.

But looking simply at the rate of domestic net migration of immigrants hides important differences in the behavior of college-educated and non-college-educated immigrants.

The states that gained or lost immigrants also tended to gain or lose college-educated immigrants. For instance, New York lost nearly 150,000 college-educated prime-age immigrants to other states over 10 years, about half of all the immigrants the state lost. Texas gained more than 108,000 prime-age college-educated immigrants and more than 96,0000 non-college-educated immigrants from other states. But there was one major exception to this pattern; even though California lost a net 135,000 prime-age immigrants to other states, the state gained more than 80,000 college-educated, prime-age immigrants over the same 10 years. This implies that California’s immigrant losses are exclusively of immigrants who did not complete college.

California is one of only six states that lost non-college-educated prime-age immigrants while gaining college-educated ones, alongside Arizona, Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, and Maine ( Figure 32 ). California’s paradox is likely driven by the fact that the cost of living is ballooning in the state, at the same time as opportunities for highly educated workers abound. This environment is leading to a sort of immigrant “gentrification” such that immigrants with lower earnings and education are pushed out, while Silicon Valley and Golden State universities keep attracting college-educated immigrants from other states with high enough salaries.

The policies that often attract native-born Americans to a state, such as lower taxes and a better business environment,[ 20 ] also attract immigrants. But these policies may not attract highly skilled immigrants exclusively. These pro-economic-growth policies may also attract immigrants with little education, who might have a greater reliance on public welfare programs. The “California paradox” is a paradox because certain policies that increase the cost of living and make life worse for residents—including American citizens—also mean fewer poorly educated immigrants, yet not necessarily fewer immigrants with higher education.

On the other hand, midwestern and Great Plains states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and the Dakotas have attracted non-college-educated immigrants while they hemorrhage college-educated ones.

Recommendations

Select better immigrants.

We should celebrate that recent immigrant cohorts are the most highly educated, the most proficient in English, and the highest paid in U.S. history. But we can do better. Congress can make small tweaks to immigration law to favor more highly educated, entrepreneurial, and English-proficient immigrants.

These changes include:

• Accelerate the visa applications of immigrants who pay an additional fee by expanding premium processing for all immigration forms, as I described in a recent report on reducing immigration backlogs.[ 21 ] This expedition would make the legal process quicker for all applicants at no cost to taxpayers, with the indirect benefit of allowing wealthier immigrants to have their cases decided more quickly. Given the limited number of immigrant visas and the first-come, first-served system to allocate them, a fee-based expedition process would also guarantee a spot ahead of others.
• Exempt highly paid immigrants from the Department of Labor’s burdensome PERM process to obtain employment-based visas, as I proposed in a previous Manhattan Institute report.[ 22 ] This would create a faster lane for highly paid employment-based immigrants, prioritizing the more highly compensated immigrants in the competition for a very limited number of employer-sponsored immigrant visas.
• Congress should create a pilot program that awards immigrant visas based on points to immigrants for their English ability, education, age, and earnings.
• Congress could effectively “upskill” the existing immigrant flow by imposing a minimum English-proficiency requirement on family-based immigrants. Specifically, Congress could require a minimum Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score, just as U.S. colleges require for international students.
• Congress should impose a minimum educational requirement on all immigrant visas for adults, such as high school graduation. This requirement is already in place for winners of the diversity visa lottery[ 23 ] and would encourage prospective immigrants to learn English and acquire skills and education as they wait in line for family visas abroad. Those who do come to the U.S. would be preparing themselves—and the American communities they join—for success.

Lift Up Existing Immigrants

Selecting new immigrants who have the potential for greater assimilation is not policymakers’ only tool with which to improve immigrant outcomes. The biggest potential gains are found in helping immigrants already in the United States. Americans of all political persuasions should support helping the existing immigrant population gain more useful skills, including English-language comprehension. Otherwise, immigrants may be permanently stuck in a sort of underclass. Conservatives should enthusiastically endorse the idea of helping immigrants assimilate, which may encourage immigrants to be proud to be in the U.S. and grateful for the opportunities that the nation gives them. This help will likely make immigrants less dependent on public services. Progressives should be eager to reduce inequalities between immigrants and natives by breaking down the barriers that immigrants face because of lower education and lower English competency.

The U.S. has always excelled at assimilating immigrants intergenerationally.[ 24 ] However, the U.S. does not excel at assimilating low-education, non-English-speaking adults—but only their children and grandchildren raised and educated in the United States. We can do more for these adult immigrants and, in turn, create far more opportunities for their children. One way to do this is English as a Second Language training for adults.

There is compelling evidence that government-funded language-training programs for adult immigrants are effective and even pay for themselves. In Massachusetts, one study found that English-language training for adult immigrants increased their annual earnings by over $2,300 annually and over $55,000 in take-home pay over the working life of an average participant. The authors of this study estimate that immigrants who participate in the program end up paying more in taxes, such that they pay back the cost of their training within 20 years.[ 25 ] Furthermore, free English training increased voter registration, showing that this measure leads not only to economic assimilation but also to civic assimilation.

The Massachusetts study is possibly the best evidence available because admission to the program was through a random lottery, enabling researchers to conduct a randomized control trial. The two groups’ outcomes were examined for over a decade.

Language training has also worked abroad, specifically in Denmark, where Danish courses for refugees increased their employment rates, reduced the likelihood that they would commit crimes, and induced them to invest more in their own education.[ 26 ] Another study of refugee language training in Denmark found that the children of the refugees also benefited, ultimately completing high school at higher rates. Boys of these refugees were also less likely to commit crimes.[ 27 ]

Another politically controversial element to assimilation is the subject of unauthorized immigration. A large portion of the non-English-proficient immigrant population are illegally present in the U.S. either because they crossed the border without authorization or overstayed a visa. The majority of this population will likely never be deported and, on average, they have been in the country for over a decade.[ 28 ] There are real economic gains for native-born Americans from helping this population learn English, earn more income, and thus pay more in taxes. Not only will this benefit the native-born American adults but also the American children raised by unauthorized immigrants.

Many conservatives might balk at the idea of helping unauthorized immigrants in any way, but should support targeting language training to legal immigrants, including immigrants in refugee programs or on family-based visas who are here legally. On the other hand, policymakers in Democratic states who seek to help the unauthorized immigrant population by expanding welfare or public benefits programs should follow the example of Massachusetts and dramatically expand English language training rather than make the unauthorized population dependent on state welfare programs.

Interstate Competition

Earlier, this report cited a contradiction—the “California paradox.” A state can effectively “upskill” its foreign-born population by raising the state’s cost of living and driving poor, less educated, and non-English-speaking immigrants out of the state—while still attracting highly skilled ones. But what is the difference between California and, say, New York or Illinois (states that implemented similar policies to California’s and yet also experienced net outflows of highly skilled immigrants)? It may be that Silicon Valley, the most concentrated tech cluster in America, is a much more immigrant-heavy and immigrant-dependent job hub than the main places of industries—such as finance—in other high-cost states.[ 29 ] So the California Paradox is likely just a unique fact of California and one that may not last forever.

Nevertheless, states can implement targeted policies to retain highly educated immigrants. They can encourage immigrants to enroll in and graduate college by lowering tuition rates for foreign-born applicants who agree to stay within the state and work for a certain number of years after graduation. This could take the form of a forgivable student loan, similar to programs that encourage graduates to teach for five consecutive years in underserved primary and secondary schools within a state.[ 30 ]

Ultimately, state policymakers should expand what they consider part of their immigration policy toolkit. By considering economic policy, quality-of-life measures, and educational systems, they will change the type of immigrant that their state attracts, even if legal immigration policies remain unchanged. Changing the type of immigrant that their state attracts will affect the relative success and assimilation of immigrants already in the U.S., and maximizing immigrant success can maximize states’ success, especially as states compete for immigrants in creative ways.

Immigrants in the U.S. are, on average, the most assimilated in terms of language and educational attainment as they have been since at least the 1970s. By many measures, including English proficiency and wage growth, immigrants are assimilating faster and coming to the U.S. more “pre-assimilated” than in past decades. This means that immigrants are arriving with fewer educational and communication barriers, and the barriers that do exist are being surmounted more quickly than in the past. New immigrants are also earning higher initial wages relative to natives than past immigrant cohorts, and their earnings are growing faster. But by one important measure, that of marriage and children, immigrants are becoming more different from natives over time, as marriage rates and fertility among native-born Americans have collapsed at a much faster rate than among immigrants.

While progress in assimilation is good news, the gains are concentrated exclusively among college-educated immigrants and immigrants who speak English very well. We should be concerned about increased immigrant inequality, as a result of previous immigrant generations (especially unauthorized immigrants) having little to no education and no advancement in their English ability. Even among legal immigrants, many of those who come through family sponsorship may not have the necessary English skills to communicate effectively in the workplace. This reduces their job opportunities and fuels negative views about immigration, and it is a cost for taxpayers.

The U.S. has more immigrants within its borders than any other country in the world.[ 31 ] The immigrant population must succeed if the U.S. is to succeed as well. Bipartisan desire for immigrants to integrate into American society is in the best interests of the civic and economic future of the United States. That’s why we must select future immigrants who assimilate faster and support the immigrants who are already living in the U.S. based on the two tools we know can integrate immigrants into American society: education and English proficiency.

About the Author

Daniel Di Martino is a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University and a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he focuses on high-skill immigration policy. Born and raised in Venezuela, he came to the U.S. in 2016. He has appeared many times on national TV, including Fox News and CNN, and has written for USA Today and National Review . Di Martino speaks regularly on college campuses and at high schools. He is the founder of the Dissident Project and a board member of Young America’s Foundation.

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What Does It Take to ‘Assimilate’ in America?

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By Laila Lalami

• Aug. 1, 2017

‘‘The problem is,’’ my seatmate said, ‘‘they don’t assimilate.’’ We were about 30,000 feet in the air, nearly an hour from our destination, and I was beginning to regret the turn our conversation had taken. It started out as small talk. He told me he owned a butcher shop in Gardena, about 15 miles south of Los Angeles, but was contemplating retirement. I knew the area well, having lived nearby when I was in graduate school, though I hadn’t been there in years. ‘‘Oh, it’s changed a lot,’’ he told me. ‘‘We have all those Koreans now.’’ Ordinarily, my instinct would have been to return to the novel I was reading, but this was just two months after the election, and I was still trying to parse for myself what was happening in the country. ‘‘They have their own schools,’’ he said. ‘‘They send their kids there on Sundays so they can learn Korean.’’

What does assimilation mean these days? The word has its roots in the Latin ‘‘simulare,’’ meaning to make similar. Immigrants are expected, over an undefined period, to become like other Americans, a process metaphorically described as a melting pot. But what this means, in practice, remains unsettled. After all, Americans have always been a heterogeneous population — racially, religiously, regionally. By what criteria is an outsider judged to fit into such a diverse nation? For some, assimilation is based on pragmatic considerations, like achieving some fluency in the dominant language, some educational or economic success, some familiarity with the country’s history and culture. For others, it runs deeper and involves relinquishing all ties, even linguistic ones, to the old country. For yet others, the whole idea of assimilation is wrongheaded, and integration — a dynamic process that retains the connotation of individuality — is seen as the better model. Think salad bowl, rather than melting pot: Each ingredient keeps its flavor, even as it mixes with others.

Whichever model they prefer, Americans pride themselves on being a nation of immigrants. Starting in 1903, people arriving at Ellis Island were greeted by a copper statue whose pedestal bore the words, ‘‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’’ One of this country’s most cherished myths is the idea that, no matter where you come from, if you work hard, you can be successful. But these ideals have always been combined with a deep suspicion of newcomers.

In 1890, this newspaper ran an article explaining that while ‘‘the red and black assimilate’’ in New York, ‘‘not so the Chinaman.’’ Cartoons of the era depicted Irish refugees as drunken apes and Chinese immigrants as cannibals swallowing Uncle Sam. At different times, the United States barred or curtailed the arrival of Chinese, Italian, Irish, Jewish and, most recently, Muslim immigrants. During the Great Depression, as many as one million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were deported under the pretext that they were to blame for the economic downturn.

The pendulum between hope and fear continues to swing today. ‘‘We are a country where people of all backgrounds, all nations of origin, all languages, all religions, all races, can make a home,’’ Hillary Clinton told an immigrant-advocacy conference in New York in 2015. By contrast, Donald Trump warned on the campaign trail that ‘‘not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate.’’ Last November, one of these visions of assimilation won out.

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From immigrants to Americans: race and assimilation during the Great Migration

The Review of Economic Studies

The Review of Economic Studies is essential reading for economists and has a reputation for publishing path-breaking papers in theoretical and applied economics.

• By Marco Tabellini and Vicky Fouka
• September 23 rd 2021

In recent decades, immigration has reshaped the demographic profile of many Western countries. The economic and political effects of immigration-induced diversity have been investigated by a growing number of studies across the social sciences. Specifically within political economy, most studies have focused on the impact of immigration on the preferences and behavior of the native population (see the recent review by  Alesina and Tabellini  for a summary). Yet, while population inflows can have broader effects on receiving societies, including on earlier generations of migrants, such effects have remained relatively understudied. Do new groups facilitate the incorporation of existing minorities by redirecting prejudice away from the latter, or do they hinder it by fueling native-born backlash against all minorities? More broadly, how does the arrival of a new minority group affect the majority’s attitudes towards other minorities and shape boundaries across social groups?

We tested the predictions of the model in the context of US history. Between 1850 and 1915, during the Age of Mass Migration, more than  30 million European immigrants  moved to the US, where the foreign-born share of the population peaked at 14%. Like today, concerns about immigrant assimilation were widespread, and nativism and anti-immigration sentiment dominated the political debate. Opposition was particularly strong against Eastern and Southern Europeans, who were religiously and culturally different from white Anglo-Saxons. Despite such antagonism, early-twentieth-century immigrants, albeit at varying rates and less quickly than originally thought, eventually  assimilated economically  and  culturally  into American society fueling the myth of the American melting pot.

We tested the idea that the migration of another group—African Americans—played a key role in the assimilation of European immigrants. While this idea has been  suggested by historians , it has never been formally tested before. From 1915 to 1930, approximately 1.6 million Black people migrated for the first time from the US South to cities in the North and West. This unprecedented migration episode—termed the  First Great Migration —was triggered by wartime manufacturing needs in the North during WWI, as well as declining agricultural productivity and racial discrimination in the South. To identify the effects of Black in-migration on the assimilation of Europeans, we compare immigrants across Northern cities that received different numbers of African Americans, before and after the Great Migration. To deal with the possibility that Black individuals might have sorted into more rapidly growing (or declining) cities where immigrants were assimilating at different rates, we follow the  migration literature  to predict Black in-migration. This strategy exploits geographic variation in historical (pre-Great Migration) settlements of Black Americans born in different Southern states and living in different non-Southern cities. It combines such settlements with differential emigration rates of African Americans across Southern states from 1910 to 1930.

Relying on the full count US Census of Population, we find that immigrants living in cities that received more Black migrants between 1910 and 1930 were more likely to become naturalized citizens—a proxy for assimilation effort—and to marry a native white spouse of native parentage—a proxy for successful integration. Reassuringly, neither naturalization rates nor intermarriage were trending differentially across Northern cities before the First Great Migration. This suggests that our findings cannot be explained by Black migrants systematically settling in cities where European immigrants were assimilating at a faster rate.

Our research also investigates the mechanisms through which Black in-migration favored the assimilation of European immigrants. Native discrimination against immigrants decreased following the arrival of Black migrants, as group boundaries were re-defined in terms of skin color rather than language or religion. Data from the historical press reveals that, in cities that received more African Americans, local newspapers were less likely to mention words reflecting fears of immigration or concerns about immigrant assimilation. Notably, the Great Migration reduced the frequency of disparaging ethnic stereotyping, such as the association of Italians with the word “mafia” or Irish with the word “violence” or “alcohol.” The drop in negative stereotyping against European immigrants was accompanied by an increase in the probability that non-Southern newspapers described African Americans using negative terms.

Consistent with our theoretical framework, assimilation exhibited an inverted U-shape. Immigrant groups that experienced the largest assimilation response were those at intermediate cultural distance (proxied using linguistic and genetic distance) from native whites. As predicted by the model, those groups were sufficiently distant to be excluded from the ingroup before the inflow of Black migrants, but close enough to benefit from the arrival of the new outgroup. Groups such as the Chinese—too distant to be recategorized as white even after the Great Migration—saw no changes in their assimilation outcomes.

Our model also predicts that assimilation effort and assimilation success should peak at different points of the distribution of immigrant distance from natives. As before, the data support this idea. Immigrants who were culturally closer to natives (e.g. Northern and Western Europeans) were more likely to successfully assimilate in response to the Great Migration, and to do so with lower effort. Such groups experienced higher intermarriage rates—an outcome heavily influenced by the preferences of native society—but lower naturalization rates—a measure less impeded by host society barriers and more reflective of immigrant effort. The pattern is reversed for “new source” immigrants, such as Eastern and Southern Europeans. These groups, which were culturally more distant from native whites, showed the largest increase in their efforts to assimilate through naturalization. However, such efforts did not necessarily translate into successful assimilation in the form of successful intermarriage.

We can rule out the possibility that social assimilation resulted from certain groups (i.e. Northern and Western Europeans) benefitting from Black inflows due to labor market complementarities, and others (i.e. Eastern and Southern Europeans) suffering due to economic competition. In contrast with effects on social outcomes, which depended on the cultural distance of different immigrant groups from native Anglo-Saxons, the economic effects of the Great Migration were homogeneous across immigrant groups: all European immigrants, regardless of their country of origin, left the “immigrant-intensive” (and low paying) manufacturing sector at similar rates. This provides additional evidence that native attitudes played a central role in driving our results.

Our results show that inflows of one group can change the salience of particular attributes, influencing ingroup members’ perceptions of previous outsiders. This, in turn, can have important implications for immigrant assimilation. Research has examined the effects of  inclusive  or  assimilationist  policies on the integration of immigrants. Our work instead suggests that, especially in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies, much assimilation happens organically through the interaction of new and old minority groups.

The First Great Migration in the US may have unique features. However, existing evidence suggests that the mechanisms we identified in this specific context might apply in a variety of settings. In a  related study , Fouka and Tabellini document that the 1970 to 2010 Mexican immigration to the US ameliorated whites’ attitudes towards African Americans and reduced hate crimes against Black people. These patterns are consistent with immigrant origin becoming more salient relative to race, thereby improving the status of Black Americans. The framework put forward in our work highlights the multidimensional effects of immigration for social boundaries in diverse societies.

Marco Tabellini earned his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, and spent the academic year 2018-2019 as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Business School, where he is currently an Assistant Professor. He also holds a B.S. and M.S. in Economics and Social Sciences from Bocconi University. Marco studies the political and economic effects of migration, focusing primarily, though not only, on the early twentieth century US – a setting characterized by the massive inflow of Europeans and by the first wave of the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North of the US. More broadly, Marco’s research seeks to understand which factors facilitate or hinder immigrant assimilation, how the presence of different ethnic groups in a society influences inter-group relations, and to what extent migration might foster the political and the social integration of under-represented segments of the population.

Vicky Fouka is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, an NBER Faculty Research Fellow and a Research Affiliate at CEPR. She has a PhD in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University. Her research focus is group identity and intergroup relations. She studies the conditions under which minority members identify with and are accepted by a majority and the implications of that for the design of policies and institutions. Major applications of her research are immigrant assimilation, the determinants of prejudice against ethnic and racial minorities and the long-run effects of history for intergroup relations.

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George Borjas

Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics

This book collects my main academic papers on the economics of immigration. although economists showed little interest in immigration issues when i first began to work on this topic in the early 1980s, the literature has exploded since. the essays cover a wide range of topics: the assimilation of immigrants, the skill characteristics of the immigrant population, the intergenerational progress of immigrant households, the measurement of the impact of immigrants on the labor markets of receiving countries, and the calculation of the economic benefits from immigration. the introduction recounts the personal and intellectual journey that led to the various research projects. these papers continue to be widely cited and have often set the research agenda for subsequent investigations of immigration in both receiving and sending countries., table of contents, introduction, i. economic assimilation, 1. “assimilation, changes in cohort quality, and the earnings of immigrants,” journal of labor economics , october 1985., 2. “the slowdown in the economic assimilation of immigrants: aging and cohort effects revisited again,” journal of human capital , winter 2015., ii. self-selection of immigrants, 3. “self‑selection and the earnings of immigrants,” american economic review , september 1987., 4. “who leaves the outmigration of the foreign- born” (with bernt bratsberg), review of economics and statistics,  february 1996., iii. ethnic capital, 5. “ethnic capital and intergenerational mobility,” quarterly journal of economics , february 1992., 6. “ethnicity, neighborhoods, and human-capital externalities,” american economic review , june 1995., iv. labor market impact, 7. “how much do immigration and trade affect labor market outcomes” (with richard b. freeman and lawrence f. katz), brookings papers on economic activity , 1997., 8. “the labor demand curve is downward sloping: reexamining the impact of immigration on the labor market,” quarterly journal of economics , november 2003., 9. "native internal migration and the labor market impact of immigration,” journal of human resources , spring 2006., 10. “the collapse of the soviet union and the productivity of american mathematicians” (with kirk b. doran), quarterly journal of economics , august 2012., 11. “the wage impact of the marielitos : a reappraisal,” industrial and labor relations review , october 2017., v. economic benefits, 12. “the economic benefits from immigration,” journal of economic perspectives , spring 1995., 13. “does immigration grease the wheels of the labor market” brookings papers on economic activity , 2001..

Should Immigration Require Assimilation?

Every year, unique people—each with their own cultural history—become new citizens of the United States. Must they leave their own heritage behind?

The ceremony in which Marta Quintanilla Call became a U.S. citizen was held in a cavernous high-school auditorium in Oakton, Virginia. She and 499 other immigrants stood, put their hands on their hearts, and repeated the oath of allegiance, prompted by a woman on the stage. Next came a videotaped congratulatory message from President Obama and a slideshow of American scenery accompanied by a recording of Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the U.S.A.” The country hit, played incessantly on radio stations after the 9/11 attacks and again after Osama bin Laden was killed, would have struck some of the immigrant Americans as inappropriate if they knew what the songwriter actually thought about foreigners. “If America changes to the point that it is no longer a Christian nation and no longer protects itself from aliens who come and go,” Greenwood said in 2010, “then it won’t be America anymore.” The new citizens nevertheless seemed to feel welcomed. At the end of the ceremony, they cheered and waved the little American flags they received with their naturalization certificate.

Though the ceremony was not personal or intimate (or culturally sensitive), its very size made it impressive, because of the diversity on display. The people who filled the auditorium that morning in August 2014 came from 82 countries (about half with a non-Christian heritage) and represented nearly all the nationalities on the planet. Many of the women wore headscarves, and some of the men wore skullcaps. Three of the top four countries represented—India, Pakistan, and Ethiopia—had prior to 1965 been allocated only a few U.S. visa slots per year.

The fourth country was El Salvador, Call’s native land. Along with her, 37 other Salvadorans took the citizenship oath. For Marta, the ceremony was the culmination of a sojourn in America that had begun 22 years earlier at a detention center on the Texas-Mexico border. America to her was the place where imagined futures did not seem hopelessly out of reach, as they would have in the village where she was raised. She wore a new black dress for the occasion and had her hair highlighted with a blond streak. A colleague from her Days Inn cleaning job met her at the high school with a dozen red roses, which Marta held throughout the ceremony. Her husband and their two young children, Kimberly and Carlos, accompanied her to the ceremony, as did Jonis, Marta’s son from her first marriage. They celebrated afterward at the International House of Pancakes. Erick and René, the two sons from El Salvador, were still resentful of her and jealous of Jonis, and they skipped the ceremony. Both nevertheless wanted to follow in their mother’s footsteps and intended to apply for citizenship themselves as soon as they could. René, the younger, said he wanted to join the Army.

In theory, the decision to become a U.S. citizen separates migrants who want only to take advantage of economic opportunity from those who are ready to acquire a new national identity. It suggests an ideological commitment that goes beyond the intent to live and work in the United States simply for money. As a “legal permanent resident,” Call could have stayed in the United States indefinitely while retaining her Salvadoran citizenship, but she was determined to vote in U.S. elections, carry a U.S. passport, and be as much a part of America as her husband and three U.S.-born children. One reason Chinese migrant workers encountered such hostility in the western U.S. in the 19th century was that they were not seen as coming to the country to start new lives. The men often journeyed alone, under labor contracts, and intended eventually to return to their families in China. The idealized immigration story is that people come to America freely, with a willingness to participate fully in the country’s life.

A similar criticism was sometimes made of Hispanic immigration. A 2013 study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that people arriving from other parts of the world were almost twice as likely to become U.S. citizens as were those coming from Mexico or Central America. One possible explanation was the proximity of their homelands, which made it easier for these Hispanics to maintain old bonds that might otherwise be broken by the migration experience. Critics of Hispanic immigration also pointed to the prevalence of Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, suggesting that this showed that Hispanics were not assimilating. Samuel Huntington argued in his 2004 book Who Are We? that the scale and persistence of immigration from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, along with the widespread and continuing use of Spanish by immigrants from those countries, “could change America into a culturally bifurcated Anglo-Hispanic society with two national languages.”

But the delay in Hispanic assimilation was also tied to other factors, notably poverty and low educational attainment, often associated with a lack of self-confidence. A 2000 survey of Salvadoran immigrant parents with children in Fairfax County public schools found that fewer than 30 percent had completed high school, and more than 80 percent reported household incomes of less than $40,000 per year. Call could have applied for U.S. citizenship earlier than she did, but she did not feel ready. To become a citizen, she had to be able to speak, read, write, and understand basic English and demonstrate some knowledge of U.S. government and history. Having reached only the fourth grade in her rural Salvadoran school, she was barely literate in Spanish, much less in English, and the burden of raising children and struggling constantly to make ends meet had left little time for education.

To prepare for the language and civic tests and learn more about the naturalization process, Marta attended nightly citizenship classes sponsored by Catholic Charities. Volunteer instructors tutored her and fellow immigrants on such matters as the number of senators and representatives in Congress and the roles of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. The immigrants needed to learn what led to the Declaration of Independence and what was in the U.S. Constitution. The students could continue in the class as long as they wanted, and Marta became one of the stalwarts, often reassuring others who were feeling overwhelmed by the material and the language barrier. “I was afraid to come to this class the first time,” she told a Senegalese woman who was ready to give up. “I have been in this country for more than 20 years, but the first time I came to this class, it was like I was in the country for the first day.”

A close evaluation of Hispanic acculturation data suggests there was scant reason to worry that their growing presence in the country would dilute America’s national identity or lead to cultural separatism. The 2000 Fairfax County survey of Salvadoran immigrants like Call found that while 83 percent had arrived in the United States with no English at all, most of their children by the time of the survey spoke English well enough to translate for them. In a 2007 article, four political scientists examined available data for Hispanic immigrants and found that they “acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning with the second generation” and that their educational attainment and political attitudes suggest “a traditional pattern of political assimilation.” A scholar at the RAND Corporation, after comparing the trajectories of various ethnic groups in America, found that “education advances made by Latinos are actually greater than those achieved by either Europeans or Asian migrants,” meaning that as a group their educational attainment rose steadily from generation to generation. Hispanics were joining the American mainstream, just as previous immigrants had.

A broader and more difficult question was whether immigrants who became American citizens would genuinely embrace the American ideology. The woman from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) who presided at the naturalization ceremony at Oakton High School told the assembled immigrants to cheer as their origin countries were announced, and then she encouraged them to applaud again and wave their flags when they officially became Americans, as if they had been reborn. She said they should speak English whenever they could, take part in elections, and otherwise fulfill their civic responsibilities, but she also told them they should feel free to continue speaking their native language, celebrate their own cultural backgrounds, and stay true to their own religions.

The question of what it should actually mean to become American had been debated for decades. The term “assimilation” was resisted by some immigrant advocates because it suggested that people arriving from other lands were obliged to give up their distinctive histories and embrace the dominant culture in their new homeland. When almost all newcomers to America shared a European background, the question was less pressing, but that changed with the arrival of a much more diverse immigrant population after 1965. In 2006, the George W. Bush administration organized the Task Force on New Americans with representatives from 12 cabinet departments. In its report, “Building an Americanization Movement for the Twenty-first Century,” the group attempted to balance the celebration of ethnic diversity and the promotion of national unity by distinguishing between the cultural and political aspects of a new citizen’s identity. “The cultural sphere—traditions, religion—is up to the individual,” it concluded. “The Task Force focuses on the shared common identity that binds us as Americans in the political sphere.” Government policies, it said, should concern “not cultural but political assimilation,” which the group defined as “embracing the principles of American democracy, identifying with U.S. history, and communicating in English.”

Distinguishing between the political and cultural spheres of the American identity, however, did not address the question of whether the United States should have a common political culture , meaning the values, attitudes, and beliefs that shape the nation’s approach to politics. Issues such as minority rights, civil liberties, the role of the state, and the place of religion in public life were largely unresolved. What, for example, was the significance of the national motto, E pluribus unum , which is usually translated as “Out of many, one”? One of the most provocative offerings about American identity came from the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who claimed that a “cult of ethnicity has arisen among non-Anglo whites and among nonwhite minorities” and that it was endangering a distinctive American identity. “It belittles unum and glorifies pluribus ,” he wrote in his book The Disuniting of America. He detected a slackening commitment to America’s unique goal, which he said “was not to preserve old cultures, but to forge a new American culture.”

Schlesinger’s critics countered that his “ unum ” was simply a white Anglo-Saxon construct reflective of an earlier, less diverse America, and that it could not possibly bind all Americans in the post-1965 period, whether laudable or not. “A nation of more than 130 cultural groups cannot hope to have all of them Anglo-Saxonized,” wrote Molefi Kete Asante in his book The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism. Asante, a professor of African American Studies at Temple University, argued that Schlesinger and others who wrote critically of multiculturalism were not only out of touch with the contemporary U.S. reality but were actually advocating a vision that would divide Americans, not bring them together. “Since the American idea is not a static but a dynamic one,” Asante said, “we must constantly reinvent ourselves in the light of our diverse experiences. One reason this nation works the way it does is our diversity. Try to make Africans and Asians copies of Europeans … and you will force the disunity Schlesinger fears.”

Even the multiculturalists like Asante, however, recognized that “Americanization” brought certain obligations. Many immigrants were not accustomed to living in diverse communities, and accepting American values meant learning to respect people of different racial and cultural backgrounds. Americans of white Anglo-Saxon parentage had to appreciate the Asian or African experience, but Asians and Africans were also obliged to appreciate each other. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by Barbara Jordan of Texas devoted an entire chapter of its final report to “Americanization,” focusing on the importance of “a covenant between immigrant and nation.” The United States, the commission concluded, “assumes an obligation to those it admits, as immigrants assume an obligation to the country they chose.” The commission emphasized that immigration is a voluntary act, and that those foreigners who choose to become U.S. citizens must necessarily accept certain principles, including the elevation of individual rights over collective rights. “Unlike other countries, including those from which many immigrants come,” the commission said, “rights in the United States are not defined by ethnicity, religion, or membership in any group nor can immigrants be denied rights because they are members of a particular ethnic, religious, or political group.” Whether such a formulation is inherently European or universal might be debated, but it would seem to put limits on the celebration of diversity per se. To adopt a position of pure cultural relativism would be to accept some customs or traditions that are antithetical to broadly accepted American values and norms. Forced marriage or genital mutilation are not to be tolerated, while freedom of expression and women’s rights are not to be abridged, regardless of how other cultures or countries view such issues.

The elaboration of an American political culture that guarantees freedoms but also respects diversity is inevitably a challenge in an era when so many people of such different backgrounds are coming together. “The mutual antipathy of tribes is one of the oldest things in the world,” Schlesinger observed. “Mass migrations produce mass antagonisms. The fear of the Other is among the most instinctive human reactions.” While his detractors rejected Schlesinger’s diagnosis of what ailed the American nation, they could not dispute the potential for conflict he identified in a more diverse America. The bigger questions were what diversity meant and how to deal with it. The critics of immigration regularly cited the prospect of increased ethnic conflict as a reason for limiting the foreign influx. Otis Graham, one of the founders of the modern restriction movement, highlighted the possibility of “weakening social cohesion, mounting class and ethnoracial division, and even regional separatism.” Schlesinger argued that the multiculturalists were making things worse by not promoting commonality; the multiculturalists countered that the solution was to respect different cultural traditions.

Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist famous for his analysis of how and when Americans bond with each other, addressed the issue in a 2006 lecture he titled “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century.” Noting the increased ethnic diversity in the United States and other advanced countries due to rising immigration, Putnam said the consequence in the short run was reduced social solidarity. “New evidence from the U.S.,” he wrote, “suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down.’ Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” But this was only a short-term phenomenon. “In the long run,” he said, “successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of solidarity and more encompassing identities.” Social behavior in this vein featured what he called “bridging” interactions between individuals of different cultural backgrounds, and he saw this as an area that could be supported by public policy and institutions. “My hunch,” he said, “is that at the end we shall see that the challenge is best met not by making ‘them’ like ‘us,’ but rather by creating a new, more capacious sense of ‘we.’”

This article is excerpted from Tom Gjelten’s book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story.

Statistics on U.S. Immigration: An Assessment of Data Needs for Future Research (1996)

Chapter: 3 effects of immigration and assimilation, 3 effects of immigration and assimilation.

An important concern in immigration research involves the effects of immigration and assimilation on health, education, and social programs, particularly in areas of high immigration concentration. Much folk wisdom has viewed assimilation as a linear process of progressive improvement and adjustment to American society. The general assumption is guided by an implicit deficit model: to advance socially and economically in the United States, immigrants need to "become American" in order to overcome their deficits in the new language and culture. As they shed the old and acquire the new, they acquire skills for working positively and effectively—a process that may not be completed until the second or third generation after entry.

Today's immigration is overwhelmingly composed of newcomers from Asia and Latin America, areas with significantly different languages and cultures than those of previous European immigrants in the late 1800s and earlier decades of the 1900s. Concerns have been raised about the speed and degree to which these immigrants can assimilate—and hence about the social "costs" of these new immigrants—before they begin to produce net benefits to their new society. The traditional assumption is that immigrants have costs to U.S. society in the initial period after arrival, but that the costs decrease and the benefits to society increase as duration of residence increases. It is further assumed that the benefits to society also increase with greater assimilation to American culture. Recent research findings, however, especially in the areas of perinatal health, mental health, and education, raise significant questions about such assumptions. Indeed, some of the findings run precisely opposite to what might be expected from traditional notions and theories of assimilation.

This chapter captures the workshop discussions of the effects of immigration and assimilation on social policies and programs, health, and education.

Social Policy and Welfare 1

Immigration researchers disagree about many major issues that are essential for revising social policy, including the criteria used to admit immigrants and the extent of social supports required to ensure their successful integration. More specific areas of disagreement include: whether recent arrivals are less skilled than earlier arrivals; whether the pace of socioeconomic assimilation has slowed in recent years and, if so, why; whether the net social and economic impacts of immigration are positive or negative; which social groups and communities are the net beneficiaries (or losers) from the influx of new immigrants; whether legal immigrants, illegal aliens, and refugees face dissimilar prospects for integration in the United States and, if so, why; and whether the criteria currently used to admit immigrants are optimal for achieving social, political, humanitarian, and economic objectives. All analysts agree that reliable answers to all of these questions are necessary for future policy initiatives concerned with employment, schooling, and income maintenance.

Despite the many areas of disagreement among immigration experts, there is widespread consensus on three issues: (1) the volume of immigration is likely to increase over the next decade, (2) the demographic and socioeconomic diversity of the flows has increased in recent decades, and (3) currently available data are ill-suited to address adequately many policy-relevant questions about how immigration contributes to contemporary patterns of stratification.

Employment and Income Dynamics

One of the most serious deficiencies in the area of immigration and economic inequality is the absence of information about income and employment dynamics among various segments of the foreign-born population. Virtually all national estimates of immigrant employment, poverty, and welfare participation are based on data from the decennial census or the Current Population Survey. Although static measures of poverty status and welfare participation are useful for portraying aggregate trends and differentials in the prevalence of poverty in a given year, they do not illustrate the dynamics of income stratification processes. These tasks cannot be accomplished with currently existing data because administrative records on program participation seldom include nativity identifiers, and because nationally representative longitudinal or cross-sectional surveys seldom provide sufficient detail on type of program participation, much less duration of

episodes. Although the Survey of Income and Program Participation is suitable to address these questions and others about income and employment dynamics, items about immigrant status are now available only on the topical modules (i.e., questions on selected special attachments to the main questionnaire).

A review of the Survey of Income and Program Participation by a panel of the Committee on National Statistics (Citro and Kalton, 1993) recommended a number of changes for improving the survey. Because it is the preeminent source of survey data on the use of public services, information from the survey has great potential for contributing to current debates about the use of welfare, medical care, and other social services by immigrants. But to serve current policy analysis requirements, information is needed on potentially illegal statuses—a difficult challenge for any survey research. Workshop discussion did not address problems of such data collection, but such enhancement of the survey is worth further consideration. A further limitation of these data are the relatively small sample sizes of the Asian and Hispanic populations, which preclude detailed analyses of specific nationality groups.

Further advances toward understanding the process of socioeconomic integration of immigrants require a longitudinal analysis of employment and income dynamics. This is essential to determine if rising inequality among various groups of immigrants and their native-born counterparts results from greater numbers experiencing transitory or chronic episodes of joblessness, poverty, and welfare dependence. Studies of employment and income dynamics among immigrants should also help to clarify inconsistencies in current research regarding the relationship between length of U.S. residence and economic well-being. Longitudinal analyses of income and program participation among the foreign-born population are a necessary adjunct to policy because the program implications of transitory episodes of poverty and welfare participation differ appreciably from chronic dependence.

The Context of Immigration

Contextual analyses of immigrants' integration experiences are an important area of needed information. In practical terms, this means that future national surveys of immigrants should not only permit subgroup analysis, but should also represent the social and economic spectrum of communities in which immigrants reside. Whereas assessments of economic well-being based on national samples are worthwhile for broad generalizations about income inequality among nationality groups, they are inadequate for portraying the contexts within which economic integration processes unfold. Widely discrepant conclusions about the extent and nature of labor market competition between native-born and immigrant people illustrate the need to reconcile findings based on specific labor markets and those based on nationally representative analyses. In fact, the high

concentration of immigrants residing in a handful of large cities raises questions about the usefulness of analyses based on national populations.

The context for immigration involves the entrance and exit of immigrants. It is relatively easy to see the excellent opportunity for contextual studies presented by a case in which migration takes place and immigrants settle within an ethnic community. Contextual studies are also important, however, when what is called the "quality" of immigrants is being studied. George Borjas compared recent immigration flows with those prior to 1965 and found a declining quality of immigrants in terms of assimilation and productivity. But the quality of an immigrant should be related to more than wages. Immigrants who came before 1965, many of whom were Europeans, came during a period of lower rates of immigration. Recent flows are different. Education levels of immigrants vary, and the averages need to be used in context for good analyses to be done. An illustration of the importance of context is the case of Haitian children enrolled in poorer schools in Miami's inner city. The education and assimilation experiences of these children might have been more positive if they had not settled in Miami. In summary, the context of immigration is important in research.

Comparing Political and Economic Immigration

Because systematic comparisons of political and economic migrants have not been undertaken, a third important area is improving understanding about whether and how the integration experiences of refugees and legal immigrants differ. Refugees undertake politically motivated migration, whereas immigrants have economic motivation, according to a perspective taken by some. Although the distinction between political and economic migrants has been greatly overstated, there is little disagreement that the reception experienced by these two classes of immigrants is dramatically different. Existing research is inconclusive about the effects of resettlement assistance; it is not clear if such assistance facilitates or retards economic assimilation. A useful experiment to resolve this key policy question would compare two similar cohorts of immigrants who arrived at the same time from the same country. The data needed to conduct even this simple exercise, which is fundamental for assessing the effects of resettlement assistance, are not available. Yet this exercise is particularly critical in the current climate of fiscal retrenchment. Between 1980 and 1991, the federal government appropriated over $5 billion to various forms of resettlement assistance, but during the past five years the appropriations for refugee programs have been slashed. The reasoning behind sharply curtailing appropriations for resettlement assistance for refugees, as opposed to extending some form of resettlement assistance to all economic migrants, rests on a thin research base.

Effects of Amnesty

In light of the increased attention during the 1970s and 1980s to legal status among the foreign born, it is imperative to investigate how immigrants granted amnesty under the provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act are faring relative to other legal immigrants and native citizens. Nearly 3 million illegal aliens were granted legal status between 1987 and 1988, of whom more than 85 percent were from Mexico. Despite great interest within the policy research community in the effectiveness of employer sanctions and tighter border controls, there have been no comparable research initiatives to investigate the experiences of legalized immigrants. How well is the legalized population faring in the labor market relative to other groups of immigrants? Did the change in legal status influence employment and welfare behavior? Although there has been much speculation about likely changes following the amnesty program, research initiatives have not matched the speculative curiosity.

Until recently, no data were available to investigate research questions about the behavior of new immigrants under the legalization program. However, the Legalized Population Survey, conducted in 1986 by Westat, Inc., under contract to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, provides a unique opportunity to analyze the income and employment dynamics of recently legalized immigrants. It is a nationally representative survey of immigrants granted amnesty under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. A second part of the survey was in the field in 1992 and should provide additional valuable data. This survey should provide essential information about changes in employment and program participation, including the use of several in-kind programs (such as food stamps) that might be traced directly to a change in legal status. Analysis of these data is a high priority for evaluation of the behavioral consequences of legalization on welfare participation.

Research Issues

Workshop discussions identified four areas in which better information is needed for the improvement of studies of federal programs and immigrant adjustment. First, improved data are needed about income and employment dynamics. The Current Population Survey could benefit from special-purpose modules that include retrospective questions on changes in economic status. For the Survey on Income and Program Participation, it would be helpful to have a question on immigrant status included in an early wave of the interviewing and to include contextual variables in the survey data.

Second, comparative studies are needed on poverty and economic change for immigrants in different areas and cities. Workshop discussion suggested that it would be useful to have a set of comparative studies on immigrant adjustment, conducted with common variables, for a variety of metropolitan areas.

Third, more studies are needed of the different types of immigrants in order to note the comparative effect of assistance on economic adjustment. Refugees (political immigrants) are eligible for different federal assistance programs than economic migrants, who enter the United States based on scrutiny of their ability to gain successful employment.

A final area that warrants attention is the effect of the legal status, especially legalization, on immigrant adjustment. A substantial proportion (probably one-fifth or more) of the current foreign-born population entered the United States illegally during recent decades, and many of these illegal aliens are seeking legal status under the general and special agricultural workers provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Comprehensive studies are needed of the adjustment of this newly legalized population, compared with immigrants who entered legally.

Perinatal Health 2

Research is needed to improve our understanding of an important, contemporary public health enigma: the apparently better-than-average pregnancy outcomes among immigrant groups, regardless of socioeconomic status. Current health data on specific immigrant groups are limited (national-level vital statistics data lack information on immigration status), and immigrants' ethnic groups are often reported only for pan-ethnic categories (Asians and Hispanics). Still, pregnancy outcomes as measured either by birthweight or mortality are better among babies born to immigrant than to native-born mothers (Eberstein, 1991). Similar results have been reported for Spanish-surname mothers in California (Williams et al., 1986). Guendelman et al. (1990), using data from the Hispanic-HANES survey, found that low-birthweight rates were significantly higher for second-generation native-born women of Mexican descent compared with first-generation Mexico-born women, despite the fact that the latter population had a lower socioeconomic status, a higher percentage of mothers over 35 years of age, and less adequate prenatal care. The risk of low birthweight was about four times higher for second-generation compared with first-generation primiparous women, and two times higher for second-generation compared with first-generation multiparous women. Earlier, Yu (1982) reported that Chinese-American women have lower fetal, neonatal, and postneonatal mortality rates than women of European origin and those in other major ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Yu also reported that the superior health profile of Chinese-origin infants was observed at every level of maternal education and for all maternal ages.

Research in California over the past decade has found that infant mortality

rates for recently resettled Southeast Asian refugees (especially Vietnamese and Cambodians) were significantly lower than those for the non-Hispanic white population (Rumbaut and Weeks, 1989; Weeks and Rumbaut, 1991). The results are noteworthy because the Southeast Asians had the highest rates of poverty and fertility in the state, had experienced very high infant death rates prior to their arrival in the Unites States, lacked English proficiency, and had the latest onset of prenatal care of all ethnic groups. Other Asian groups (Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos) and Hispanics (mostly of Mexican origin) also had lower infant death rates than whites, and much lower rates than those observed for Native Americans and blacks. The groups with below-average infant mortality rates consist largely of immigrants.

The evidence indicates that positive perinatal health outcomes among immigrant groups are a real phenomenon, worthy of further investigation. Are immigrant women superior health achievers, even when socioeconomic status is controlled and, if so, why? What are the effects on pregnancy outcomes of a wide variety of sociocultural and biomedical risk factors for foreign-born and native-born women of diverse ethnic and racial groups? Although there are significant differences by nativity and ethnicity in pregnant women's histories of smoking, alcohol, and drug abuse during pregnancy—behaviors that are deleterious to the infant's health at birth and that appear to be more prevalent among the native-born—such variables do not explain other independent effects of nativity and ethnicity on outcomes. There is considerable complexity to carrying out research in an area in which immigration, assimilation, and health interact. Existing vital statistics by themselves will not provide the research answers; alternative sources of data are needed and should include qualitative information as well as new studies based on comparative longitudinal designs (e.g., identifying immigrant and native-born women of different socioeconomic and ethnic groups early in their pregnancy and following them through the first year of the newborn's life). If we are to add significantly to the store of knowledge and to develop a larger set of intervention options, such research and data are essential.

Mental Health

Intriguing questions have been raised by research on the mental health of ethnic minorities in the United States, including immigrants. In a review of mental health prevalence rates reported in research over the past two decades (Vega and Rumbaut, 1991), studies suggest that rapid acculturation does not necessarily lead to conventionally anticipated outcomes, i.e., that improved adjustment to American society and a decrease in the mental health problems are associated with immigration. Instead, mental health studies suggest that assimmilation—in the various forms it can take—can itself be a traumatic process rather than a simple solution to the traumas of immigration.

For example, results from the Hispanic-HANES study (Moscicki et al., 1989),

with an exceptionally large regional sample, indicate low symptom levels of mental health disorders for Mexican-Americans in the southwestern United States and significantly lower rates of depressive symptoms and major depression for Cubans in Miami, compared with all other Hispanic groups. The Los Angeles Epidemiological Catchment Areas study also reported lower rates of major depression among Mexican-Americans than among non-Hispanic whites (Karno et al., 1987). Significantly, among Mexican-Americans, immigrants had lower rates of lifetime major depression than native-born people of Mexican descent; and among Mexican immigrants, the higher the level of acculturation, the higher was the prevalence of various types of psychiatric disorder (Burnam et al., 1987). Furthermore, the native-born Mexican-Americans and non-Hispanic whites were much more likely than immigrants to be drug abusers.

Other suggestions for future research emerged from the workshop discussions. Research should take the social and historical contexts of immigrants fully into account, in terms of entries, exits, and assimilation. And among nonimmigrant ethnic and racial groups, studies need to distinguish between different American-born generations (how many generations have passed since the immigration?) and conceptualize categories of race and ethnicity as social processes, rather than fixed, purely ascriptive categories. Moreover, research is needed to identify protective factors that appear to reduce mental health problems within diverse ethnic minority groups; recent findings show that certain immigrant groups exhibit lower symptom levels of psychiatric disorders than do majority group natives. Longitudinal studies are especially needed to characterize and investigate stress and its temporal patterning among immigrant groups, including patterns of immigrant adaptation to specific conditions of life change and their psychological or emotional sequence. And, given the unprecedented racial and ethnic diversification of the U.S. population as a result of sharply increased immigration from Asia and Latin America, research is needed to investigate the mental health consequences of racial and ethnic discrimination, and how different groups (especially first and second immigrant generations) perceive and react to discrimination.

Educational Attainment

The rapid surge of recent immigration has been accompanied by a rapid growth in the research literature on the educational attainment of immigrants; the research has concentrated predominantly on the educational levels of adult immigrants of working ages. Relatively little study has been given to the educational achievements of the U.S.-born second generation—the sons and daughters of immigrants—despite the fact that immigrant children are a highly visible presence in the schools now and they will represent a sizable component of the next generation of U.S. residents. The patterns of their educational attainment, language shift, and psychological adaptation cannot be predicted on the basis of their

parents' performance, nor from the experience of earlier waves of large-scale immigration. Research on the children of immigrants poses significant but so far unanswered theoretical and empirical questions. What factors account for variations in successful English-language acquisition for the children of immigrants? What is the role of family factors (encouragement of regular study and the setting of education and occupation goals, for example) for educational attainment?

Available results from the limited studies available are suggestive. In a study of students in the San Diego high schools, lower grade point averages were noted for Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, and blacks than for all other students. With the exception of Hispanics, immigrant minority students from non-English-speaking families had higher grade averages than either majority native-born students or immigrant minority students from English-speaking families. The highest grade point averages were those of students in immigrant families from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. More remarkably, Hmong students (whose parents are largely illiterate peasants from the Laotian high-lands) and Cambodian students (whose parents are mostly from poorly educated rural areas) were outperforming the average native-born student. Other research has reported similar findings among immigrants of lower socioeconomic status from Central America, Southeast Asia, and the Punjab, and similar studies have found that Mexican-born immigrant students do better in school and are less likely to drop out than U.S.-born students of Mexican descent, despite the comparatively greater socioeconomic disadvantages of less assimilated foreign-born people (Rumbaut, 1990).

Studying the adaptation process of immigrant children—patterns of language acquisition, educational attainment, cultural and psychological adjustment, ethnic identity, and acculturation strategies—can best be approached through comparative longitudinal research designs in a variety of community contexts, supplemented by intensive ethnographic field work. Parental socioeconomic status and individual human capital can certainly be expected to have a strong effect on every aspect of the adaptation process, but those characteristics and related demographic variables cannot by themselves provide a completely satisfactory explanation. For that purpose, existing data sets are not adequate to the research tasks. Data are needed on the different contexts of reception and incorporation facing different immigrant groups, including the presence or absence of discrimination and the character of the ethnic communities in which immigrant children are raised. Such data would be further enhanced if information on schools and the school environment were collected.

Research Needs

In studying the effects of immigrants on American society, as well as the effects of American society on immigrants, better information is needed in five areas:

• The predominant portion of immigration studies has focused on the problems arising from immigration. Studies are needed that examine the overall effects of immigration, not just the negative impacts.
• There is a difference between cultural assimilation (e.g., learning English and feeling at home in American society) and structural assimilation (e.g., achieving economic success). In addition, assimilation is a ''segmented'' process, depending on the subculture of American society in which different immigrant groups reside (e.g., ethnic enclaves, segregated inner cities, white middle-class suburbs). Several aspects of assimilation are essential to study: taking on aspects of the destination community, adaptation to new social and economic characteristics (compared with those of the country of origin), and integration into the destination community. Cultural assimilation does not necessarily lead to structural assimilation. There is a need to study the relationship of cultural and structural adjustment in more detailed studies of nationality groups than has been done to date.
• Available studies have examined changes by age groups of immigrants, but data have been missing on the temporal and local-area contexts of individual assimilation. Further studies (similar to Tienda, 1992) are needed on immigrants and labor markets, with data on contextual aspects, temporal shifts, and labor market differentials.
• Available studies suggest that immigrants have lower mortality and morbidity compared with the native-born U.S. population. Fuller explanation of mortality and morbidity adjustment requires improvement of data on multiple causes of death, duration of residence of immigrants in the United States, and the residential context. These data, however, may be expensive to collect if they begin as new data collection systems; more study is called for on the benefits of such studies, relative to their costs. 3
• For studies of the well-being of immigrants and their children, it is critical to have data on two items. First, country of origin is important because some immigrants originate in conditions with high mortality: survivors of high mortality are quite selective and may be seen as healthier in their years after arrival in the United States. Second, the local context of their destination community can influence health outcomes. Information on conditions for both the originating and destination communities are needed for interpreting health data.

Workshop participants observed that there is a need for further research on immigrant adjustment and the policies necessary for improved adjustment by

immigrants. Policy analysis requires improved information on, for example, the speed of adjustment to jobs, English language abilities, fertility changes, and individual endowments and community context.

Workshop discussion suggested that additional research is needed on immigrant assimilation and federal programs. First, workshop participants emphasized the need for contextual analysis, work that takes into account situations in which immigrants differ by type of entry and type of environment. Second, a moderate proportion of immigrants return to their countries of origin. Studies of return migration could provide useful insights into assimilation (or, in some cases, lack of assimilation). Third, different types of immigrants face different eligibility rules for welfare participation. Useful comparative studies of recent immigrants could be conducted that take advantage of the natural variation in welfare eligibility. Fourth, the visa category of immigrant entry is important for policy studies on the effects of immigration because the characteristics of legal immigration are affected by the number of visas issued. The decennial census and the Current Population Survey are not appropriate for collecting immigration status, however, because they are self-administered (respondents often do not know their specific immigrant status) and questions on immigration status on the Current Population Survey could affect the collection of employment data. Expanded data on immigration status could be collected better on special surveys or in conjunction with linked Immigration and Naturalization Service administration records. Fifth, most new immigrants in recent decades are members of racial and ethnic minorities. This introduces a new and complicated context for immigration studies, with the requirement for information on racial identity in conjunction with the analysis of other immigrant characteristics.

In the absence of a longitudinal survey of immigrants that would permit the estimation of duration models, the decennial census and the Current Population Survey are the primary instruments for analyzing the impacts of immigration. Modest revisions to both instruments with data on place of birth, citizenship, and year of arrival would greatly enhance the range of possible analyses.

It would also be worthwhile to add questions on immigration status to the core questionnaire for the Survey of Income and Program Participation, rather than limiting these questions to the topical modules. However, simply distinguishing immigrants from natives will not further the understanding of integration processes unless additional questions about immigration histories (especially the first and most recent arrival) are included as well. The Survey of Income and Program Participation is uniquely suited to examine employment and income dynamics over short durations, but it would be less successful in portraying long-term experiences of successive cohorts of immigrants, even if sample sizes were

sufficient for subgroup analyses. Furthermore, contextually based analyses are virtually impossible with the Survey of Income and Program Participation.

To aid in monitoring the self-sufficiency of refugees, the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has conducted a national survey of Southeast Asian refugees, which has proven invaluable for monitoring the economic progress of political immigrants. The Annual Survey of Refugees was converted to a longitudinal survey beginning with the 1984 interviews, tracking a randomly sampled group of refugees over their initial five years in the country. The survey permits comparisons of refugees arriving in different years and hence allows an evaluation of the relative influence of changing conditions of the period on the process of economic and social integration.

The survey would be strengthened if two changes were made. First, the length of time refugee families are followed should be extended from the current 5 to at least 10 years. This is necessary because, at least in California, a significant share of the refugee population had not exited welfare after five years of U.S. residence. Because many refugees remained dependent on welfare at the end of the study period, the data analysis is limited by the small number of refugees who have made the transition to work and adequate income. Second, it would be useful to include other entrants (such as Haitian and Cuban [Mariel] "entrants," even though they did not enter the United States as refugees) in the Annual Survey of Refugees so that their adjustment experiences can be compared more systematically with those of Southeast Asian refugees.

Federal programs to assist immigrants economically began in the early 1960s with efforts to aid refugees from Cuba. These programs have continued, with an emphasis on providing economic support to refugees. Given the national interest in programs to deal with the economic situation of immigrants, the lack of data on the incidence and prevalence of poverty among the foreign-born population is a serious deficiency.

It is important to note that the adjustment of immigrants differs for legal immigrants, illegal aliens, and refugees—each of whom has different social and economic characteristics and different eligibility for federal and state welfare programs. Refugees in California, for instance, seem to remain on welfare longer than other immigrants. In contrast, the welfare participation of aliens legalized under the provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act seems to be comparatively low.

The growing importance of immigration in the United States today prompted this examination of the adequacy of U.S. immigration data. This volume summarizes data needs in four areas: immigration trends, assimilation and impacts, labor force issues, and family and social networks. It includes recommendations on additional sources for the data needed for program and research purposes, and new questions and refinements of questions within existing data sources to improve the understanding of immigration and immigrant trends.

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Why (some) immigrants resist assimilation: US racism and the African immigrant experience

Claire L. Adida

UC San Diego

Amanda Lea Robinson

The Ohio State University, 2130 Derby Hall, 540 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210

Scholarship shows that Black immigrants to the US resist assimilation to reduce exposure to racial discrimination faced by native-born African Americans. But, not all Black immigrants are equally likely to be (mis)perceived as African American. We argue that immigrants who are likely to be misidentified as African American have incentives to reify ethnic boundaries as a form of protection against racial discrimination. We develop this argument from interviews and focus groups with African immigrants. We then use a lab experiment to measure rates of miscategorization and identify its correlates among African immigrants. Finally, we test our argument with a novel survey of Somalis, an immigrant population with two ethnic subgroups who differ in their likelihood of being miscategorized as African Americans. We show that this difference shapes the degree of resistance to assimilation. These findings improve our understanding of the relationship between racial discrimination and incentives for Black immigrants to resist assimilation.

“When you first see me, you see Black. You don’t see that I’m African or whatever. It doesn’t really matter, I’m still Black.” An immigrant from Côte d’Ivoire, Joyce, 1 echoes a phenomenon first observed twenty years earlier by sociologists studying the experience of Caribbean immigrants to the United States: that for some immigrant groups, assimilation in the US means assimilation into a marginalized community ( Portes and Zhou, 1993 ; Waters, 1999 ). But Joyce is not Caribbean; she is a member of one of the fastest-growing group of new immigrants to the United States today: Africans ( Nwoye and Kopf, 2019 ; Tamir and Anderson, 2022 ). African immigrants have doubled in number every decade since 1970, and reached 2.1 million in 2015 ( Anderson, 2017 ). Yet scholars have only just begun to interrogate the uniqueness of, and variation in, their immigrant experience (e.g., Adjepong, 2018 ; Alex-Assensoh, 2009 ; Guenther, Pendaz and Makene, 2011 ; Halter and Johnson, 2014 ; Smith, 2014 ; Smith and Greer, 2019 ; Showers, 2015 ).

The study of African immigration to the US provides scholars an opportunity to better understand the changing effects of immigration as the country absorbs new waves of migrants. What does immigrant assimilation look like when the segment of the host population into which immigrants would most likely assimilate – which Mittelberg and Waters (1992) call the proximal hosts – is itself a marginalized minority? How do persistent structural disadvantages faced by African Americans shape the assimilation trajectories of African immigrants to the US? And, what explains variation in immigrant assimilation among Black immigrants?

In this paper, we build on the insight that some immigrant groups are better off resisting assimilation ( Laitin, 1995 ; Portes and Zhou, 1993 ; Waters, 1999 ), and push forward our theoretical understanding of variation in resistance to immigrant assimilation among foreign born Black immigrants and their children 2 Specifically, we argue that different individuals and immigrant groups face different risks of being racially lumped with members of the marginalized host community, and therefore face different incentives to reify their ethnic identities as protection from race-based discrimination. We recognize, of course, that no single factor will explain all variation in immigrant assimilation. For example, the social capital an immigrant community confers may also provide incentives for immigrants to reify their immigrant identity and resist assimilation (e.g., Cobas, 1987 ; Portes and Manning, 1985 ). Thus, while many factors – both idiosyncratic and systematic – may shape rates of assimilation, we argue that when the proximal host is itself marginalized, then the degree to which one could be ascribed membership in this group is an important factor that shapes incentives to resist assimilation.

We substantiate this argument with three distinct empirical approaches. First, we rely on qualitative interview data from first and second generation immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate that not all African immigrants are equally likely to be mistaken for African Americans, complicating existing understandings of Black immigrant experiences. Second, we use a lab experiment to identify the demographic correlates of African immigrants being mistaken for African American. We find that immigrants from the Horn of Africa are significantly less likely to be mistaken as African Americans than immigrants from other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Third, we draw on focus group discussions and original survey data from Somali immigrants, who constitute one of the fastest-growing groups of African migrants to the US ( Connor and Krogstad, 2016 ). 3 We focus on Somali immigrants because they comprise two distinct ethnic groups – Somali Bantus and ethnic Somalis– that differ markedly in their physical distinctiveness from African Americans: ethnic Bantus are more likely to be mistaken for African Americans than ethnic Somalis. By studying these groups, we are able to evaluate our theoretical claim that the risk of being misidentified as a member of a marginalized segment of the host population disincentivizes assimilation, while holding constant the national identity, migration status, and religious identity of the immigrant group. 4 Our results confirm that Somali Bantus, those who our theory predicts will more strongly resist assimilation, are indeed more likely to reinforce ethnic boundaries – through support for endogamous marriage – and to invest in distinct cultural markers – such as giving their American-born children ethnic names. We then provide further evidence that these patterns are driven, at least in part, by differential perceived risks of racism: ethnic differences in resistance to assimilation widen over time and generation, which suggests that ethnic Bantu resistance is in response to experiences in the US; ethnic Bantus are more likely than ethnic Somalis to perceive their Somali identity as protective against racism; and ethnic Bantu are also more likely to distance themselves from African Americans in terms of both social connections and residential integration.

This study contributes to our general understanding of identity formation and cultural change by situating the assimilation of African immigrants within a broader class of rationalist models of cultural adaptation (e.g., Acharya, Laitin and Zhang, 2018 ; Esser, 2004 ; Laitin, 1986 , 1998 ). We build most explicitly on models of assimilation that emphasize the potential costs and benefits of adopting or abandoning cultural attributes (e.g., Adida, 2014 ; Laitin, 1995 ; Portes and Zhou, 1993 ; Waters, 1999 ). We contribute to this body of work by emphasizing that the degree to which racial discrimination shapes the potential costs of assimilation for Black immigrants depends on the likelihood that an immigrant is perceived as African American. This underscores the fact that identities are socially constructed within a set of social and political constraints: they are renegotiated and reformed through transitions from one cultural context to another, and may do so differently across individuals or groups.

Our paper also contributes to a general understanding of how social discrimination and exclusion affect the identity, attitudes, and behavior of marginalized groups. Scholars show that perceptions of discrimination are fundamental to understanding political preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of immigrant and minority populations ( Abdelgadir and Fouka, 2020 ; Fouka, 2019 ; Guo, 2020 ; Kuo, Malhotra and Mo, 2017 ; Maxwell and Bleich, 2014 ; Oskooii, 2016 , 2020 ; Pérez, Deichert and Engelhardt, 2019 ; Schildkraut, 2005 ). Our research contributes to this literature by focusing on a relatively understudied immigrant population, and by demonstrating that the persistent racial discrimination and inequities faced by African Americans have direct implications for the integration of Black immigrants.

Finally, our theoretical expectations offer new intuitions for the Black politics literature. A core tenet of this literature is that common experiences with discrimination facilitate the formation of common political identity preferences among African Americans ( Chong and Rogers, 2005 ; Dawson, 1995 ; McClain et al., 2009 ; Miller et al., 1981 ; Schmermund et al., 2001 ). Our study brings a new twist to this traditional intuition, based on the immigrant experience: here, it is instead the ability to escape some (but not all) forms of discrimination that facilitates the assimilation of Black immigrants. Our research thus contributes to the small but growing literature that integrates the study of Black politics in America with a focus on Black immigrants ( Austin, 2019 ; Greer, 2013 ; Rogers, 2006 ; Smith, 2014 ). We advance this literature by leveraging a key source of variation among Black immigrants – the likelihood of misidentification as African American – to better understand how race shapes the strategic assimilation of immigrants. Our approach thus acknowledges that both race and ethnicity are complex combinations of multiple characteristics – or “bundles of sticks” ( Sen and Wasow, 2016 ) – while isolating a particular component of the Black immigrant experience that is hypothesized to disincentivize assimilation.

Rational Resistance to Cultural Assimilation

Social scientists have studied Black immigrant assimilation for decades, motivated by the observation that Black immigrants seem to resist assimilation into the racialized US landscape, with important implications for their integration. 5 Relying first on Caribbean immigrant experiences but more recently extending the analysis to African immigrants to the US, scholars have found that – in contrast to other immigrant groups – resistance to assimilation among Black immigrants yields better economic ( Portes and Zhou, 1993 ; Waters, 1999 ) and health ( Hamilton, 2014 ; Koya and Egede, 2007 ) outcomes. Indeed, the selection effect of immigration to the U.S. has led to the arrival of relatively highly-educated Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean ( Tesfai, 2017 ). In the United States, these immigrants are then perceived as African Americans ( Bonilla-Silva, 2004 a ), exposed to racial discrimination and prejudice; as a result, for these immigrants, assimilation means the possibility of down-ward social mobility ( Mittelberg and Waters (1992) , p. 425). Haitian immigrants to the US, for example, transition from a context where race is fluid and somewhat endogenous to class – upper-class Blacks, for example, are perceived as closer to white Europeans – to a context where race is a sticky and exogenous social identity ( Mittelberg and Waters, 1992 ; Vickerman, 1999 ).

As a result, Black immigrants to the US tend to adopt a process of selective assimilation, in which they retain elements of their immigrant culture and identification ( Portes and Zhou, 1993 ; Waters et al., 2010 ). A case study of Ethiopian immigrants in Washington DC finds that these immigrants prefer to identify as “African”, “Ethiopian American,” or “Ethiopian,” rather than “Black” ( Chako, 2003 ). African immigrant students in Atlanta also use ethnicity as a buffer against discrimination ( Ogundipe, 2011 ). These deliberate efforts to resist assimilation do not appear to dissipate over immigrant generations. The children of middle-income Nigerian immigrants to the US adopt a hybrid identity, in which they distance themselves from low-income African Americans ( Imoagene, 2017 ). And an ethnographic study of West Indian and West African immigrant children in New York City, reveals that these second and one-and-a-half generation immigrants deliberately retain elements of their immigrant culture through cuisine, fashion, and language ( Sall, 2019 ). Black immigrants are rational when they resist assimilating into American culture and being misidentified as African Americans: they resist a lowering of their social and economic status ( Hamilton, 2019 ).

Central to literature on Black immigrant integration is the recognition that Black immigrants resist assimilation because they are otherwise indistinguishable from the stigmatized and marginalized African American population . In reference to Afro-Caribbean immigrants and African Americans, Rogers (2001) notes, “under the peculiar American system of racial ascription, the two groups are practically indistinguishable by phenotype” (p. 174). Ogundipe (2011) , echoing an insight from Bryce-Laporte (1972) , describes Black immigrants as “invisible” and Butterfield (2004) reports that second-generation West Indians are frustrated by the fact that “their phenotype places them into a situation in which they are assumed to be African American” (p. 83). Tormala and Deaux (2006) emphasize how this racial lumping translates into increased discrimination: “at automatic and nonconscious levels, Black immigrants and Black Americans are perceived in the same way. Whether by passersby, customers walking around a store, or drivers in an upper-class neighborhood, Black immigrants will be categorized as Black and subjected to the same kinds of race-based bias and discrimination as American Blacks” (p. 137).

This fact puts Black immigrants in a decidedly different position vis-à-vis the American racial landscape than most other immigrant groups. Earlier waves of immigrants were able to avoid discrimination – even when such stigma was assumed to be driven by racial difference – by distancing themselves from African Americans ( Kim, 2003 ; Loewen, 1971 ; McClain et al., 2006 ) or culturally assimilating into white American culture, with some groups even “becoming white” ( Ignatiev, 1995 ; Jacobson, 1998 ; Roediger, 2005 ; Sacks, 1998 ). Those for whom assimilation as white is limited by phenotypic and cultural characteristics – as is the case for many Asians and non-Black Latinos – are typically seen as perpetual foreigners, which the American racial hierarchy tends to place in a middle ranking, well below white Americans but still above African Americans ( Kim, 1999 ; Forman, Goar and Lewis, 2002 ; Alco, 2003 ; Kim, 2003 ; Bonilla-Silva, 2004 b ; Greer, 2013 ; Trietler, 2013 ). 6 For such groups, assimilation moves them up in the racial hierarchy, even if not all the way to the top. However, Black immigrants face a markedly different situation: the social and institutional legacies of chattel slavery in the United States, such as the uniquely-American one drop rule that ascribes a Black identity to anyone with identifiable African heritage ( Davis, 1991 ), make it virtually impossible to escape racial classification as Black for most immigrants from Africa. 7 Thus, it is only among those ascribed a Black racial identity that overtly signaling foreign heritage results in moving up, rather than down, the racial hierarchy.

Historical accounts of African Americans donning turbans and robes, claiming to be foreign dignitaries, and successfully accessing spaces that were off limits to African Americans in the Jim Crow era ( Kramer, 2011 ), exemplify the value of a foreign identity relative to an African American one. For those African Americans, signaling foreign heritage was a strategy to escape Black subjugation when passing as white was not an option. Similarly, most African immigrants today do not have the option to assimilate as white Americans and, thus, the loss of a foreign status results in default classification as African American. As a result, the risk to Black immigrants comes not from assimilation into African American culture, but from assimilating into any facet of American culture that erases the visibility of their foreign heritage. 8

Research suggests that Black immigrants are aware of the benefits of foreign heritage within the American racial hierarchy. Thus, as documented by Waters (1999) , Black immigrants prioritize and signal an ethnic or national identity that differentiates them from African Americans. In particular, Waters finds that “by evoking their foreign status” Black immigrants aim to “‘exit’ from the stigmatized black category” ( Waters, 1999 , p.151). Subsequent work on Black immigrants echoes this finding: it shows that Black immigrants strategically distance themselves from African Americans in order to reduce their exposure to race-based discrimination (e.g., Chako, 2003 ; Foner, 1998 ; Greer, 2013 ; Guenther, Pendaz and Makene, 2011 ; Howard, 2003 ; Imoagene, 2017 ; Mensah and Williams, 2015 ; Ogundipe, 2011 ; Portes, 2004 ; Rogers, 2006 ; Trietler, 2013 ; Husain, 2019 ). 9 The evidence as to whether African Americans are actually subject to more race-based discrimination than Black immigrants is limited, yet it is certainly a commonly reported belief among Black immigrants. 10 In particular, Black immigrants who are able to “foster a perception of themselves as different from the bottom…of the racial hierarchy” ( Trietler, 2013 ) expect to be granted a form of “elevated minority status” ( Greer, 2013 ), in which they are still subject to race-based discrimination, but of a less extreme form: they are viewed as “different, special, and good” Blacks ( Rogers, 2006 ). 11

Black immigrants can signal an ethnic or national identity in numerous ways in order to differentiate themselves from African Americans. For example, not Americanizing one’s own name, giving one’s children ethnic names, wearing national or ethnic-signaling attire, using their native languages in public, valuing ingroup over outgroup marriages, and choosing to live in particular neighborhoods – behaviors referred to elsewhere as “ethnic embeddedness” ( Waters et al., 2010 ) – all signal an identity separate from African Americans. While such outward signals of ethnic and national identity among immigrants are certainly shaped by a multitude of factors – including underlying strength of group attachment or efforts to reinforce community commitments, among others – we follow others in arguing that they also serve as investments in distinctiveness.

Investments in ethnocultural distinctiveness are not trivial. Immigrants to the United States, from the earlier wave of European immigration to the more recent wave of immigration from Latin America and Asia, all follow an assimilationist trend over time ( Waters and Jiménez, 2005 ): within two generations, immigrants become “more like other native-born Americans than their parents were” across all measurable outcomes ( Waters and Pineau, 2015 , p.3). Absent concerted efforts to remain distinctive, immigrant groups assimilate, not necessarily because they seek this out, but rather as a result of weaker incentives to resist it. Racism in the US means that all Black immigrants are likely to resist assimilation more than non-Black groups, but that they may do so at different rates based on the strength of group-specific disincentives for assimilation. Our argument concerns this relative difference in incentives, and its implications for assimilation.

We focus, in particular, on variation in immigrants’ distinctiveness based on physical appearance, which shapes whether they are perceived to have recent immigrant heritage or not. Black immigrants to the United States are a diverse group, and not all are equally likely to be mistaken for African Americans. Recognition of this within-group variation in immigrant visibility is our central theoretical contribution. While existing research highlights the role of racial discrimination in the assimilation of Black immigrants relative to other immigrant groups, we focus on the differential risks of cultural assimilation among Black immigrants with different propensities to be misidentified as African American and the incentives that creates for reification of ethnic boundaries. This within-group approach provides significant analytical leverage: it allows us to disaggregate race-of-immigrant effects and focus on the constituent component of immigrant race – phenotypic overlap with African Americans – that is theoretically posited to shape assimilation outcomes ( Sen and Wasow, 2016 ). In addition, focusing on variation among Black immigrants allows us to better isolate the role of racial discrimination in driving assimilation outcomes, while holding constant many other facets of the immigrant experience that also shape ethnocultural behaviors. Thus, we argue that while it is not the sole factor shaping immigrant assimilation, a Black immigrant’s propensity to be misidentified as African American creates incentives to adopt or maintain ethnic markers as a means to mitigate race-based discrimination.

Empirical strategy

To assess this argument, we draw on three original sources of data. First, we conducted in-depth interviews with 33 African immigrants – defined as having at least one parent born in Sub-Saharan Africa – who either worked or studied at a large public university in the Midwest. 12 These participants were recruited in May and June 2016 via solicitations to Africa-related social organizations on campus, and participants were interviewed by trained research assistants who were African immigrants themselves. The interviews lasted approximately one hour, and covered a wide variety of topics, such as the immigration trajectory of the respondent or their family, ethnic and racial self-identification, perceptions of race relations in the United States, social networks, cultural practices, and exposure to discrimination. These interviews were recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and inductively coded by at least two research assistants or authors. The resulting data were used to generate insights about variation in immigrant experiences, and highlighted the importance of immigrant visibility in driving different perceptions of race and racial self-identification.

Second, in November and December of 2016, we conducted a lab experiment among 170 undergraduates at the same university, in which we randomly showed participants the name, photograph, or a short introduction video of a subset of the African immigrants we had interviewed, as well as African Americans. 13 We asked these participants, recruited via a departmental course participant pool, whether the name, photograph, or video was an African immigrant (defined as having at least one parent born in Africa) or an African American (defined as having all four grandparents and both parents born in the United States). The stimuli were presented in the form of a name, a photo, or a video (of the confederate saying “Hi, my name is [First name] [Last name]”) displayed on the screen of a private computer terminal in a lab setting. Each participant saw a randomly selected set of 25 stimuli: the computer program randomly generated the interview participant, the stimulus for that participant, and the order of presentation. Figure A.1 of the appendix illustrates a sample stimulus from this lab experiment, using a photograph from one of the project research assistants (not a real participant), with permission. We used monetary incentives ($0.25 per correct guess) when asking participants to classify each name, photograph or video as being African immigrant or African American. After this classification task, we paid participants for their correct guesses overall ( [ $ 5.50 ,   $ 12.00 ] ,   x ¯ = $ 9.36 ,   σ = $ 1.29 ) , but did not provide feedback on the correct classification of any individual stimulus. We use the resulting data to build an objective measure of the degree to which different immigrants who we interviewed are mistaken for African Americans by the larger American population. 14

Third, we collected both qualitative and quantitative data from members of the Somali communities in Columbus, Ohio. In terms of qualitative data, we conducted eight focus groups of ten participants each, who we recruited from the wider Somali communities through community leaders and organizations. We organized these focus groups by gender, ethnicity, and age group (under and over ~ 35 years of age); trained research assistants from the respondents’ particular ethnic community led the discussion. These discussions focused on experiences and challenges as immigrants in the United States, relationships with and perceptions of African Americans, and political knowledge and engagement. We then transcribed, translated (if necessary), and inductively coded their content.

Then, in March and April of 2018, we collected survey data from a convenience sample of 520 members of the Columbus Somali communities. 15 Four Somali enumerators recruited respondents and interviewed them face-to-face. The resulting sample includes 293 ethnic Somali and 227 ethnic Bantu respondents. For feasibility and appropriateness, all interviews were conducted by coethnic research assistants and most were conducted by same-gender research assistants. 16 Enumerators were asked to interview strangers as well as people they might know. Typically, enumerators report that the respondent was either a complete stranger or that they recognized the person without him or her being an acquaintance, close friend, or family member (see Figure A.3 ). However, the sample is a convenience sample and may not be fully representative of the larger populations. 17 This is inevitable given the size and vulnerability of the population of interest; and, because our objective is to compare the two ethnic groups, we focused primarily on standardizing the method of recruitment across the two groups. Figure A.2 shows the distribution of respondents by the type of location in which they were interviewed and Table A.3 reports demographic characteristics of the interview respondents. We use the survey data from these respondents to assess the degree to which ethnic differences in the risk of racial lumping with African Americans shapes behavioral investments in, and attitudinal endorsements of, ethnocultural markers. 18

We present our results in four sections below. First, we use the qualitative data from our in-depth interviews and the accompanying lab experiment to show clear regional patterns to phenotypic overlap with African Americans, with immigrants from the Horn of Africa region being less commonly miscategorized as African American. Second, this finding leads us to focus on variation in phenotypic overlap with African Americans among a single national origin group – Somalis. In particular, we leverage the difference in risk of racial lumping between ethnic Somali, who have less phenotypic overlap with African Americans, and ethnic Somali Bantu, who are phenotypically closer to African Americans. Third, we use survey data to show that the Somali Bantu resist assimilation more across a host of cultural indicators. Fourth, we provide evidence for our mechanism, i.e. that this difference in assimilation is driven by differential concern about racial discrimination.

Our interviews and lab experiment allow us to establish that some African immigrants are more identifiable as such, while others are more often mistaken for African Americans. The data also suggest that one of the strongest correlates of being misclassified as African American is the region from which the immigrant or their parents migrated. In particular, immigrants from the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia) reported being much more visible as immigrants within the larger American context. In our student interviews, respondents with heritage from outside the Horn repeatedly mentioned that others perceived them to be African Americans. Ross, who immigrated from Benin as a child, said “You are Black. There are not going to know, oh you are African” and Joyce, an Ivoirian American, said “when you first see me you see Black. You don’t see that I’m African or whatever. It doesn’t really matter I’m still Black.” Jackie, a second generation Nigerian American, similarly said “people looking at me on the outside without looking at my name…they are going to be like “oh she’s African American.”‘ Another second generation Nigerian American, Paul, also felt that most Americans assume he’s African American: “People from other races when they look at me, they don’t really see different parts of Africa, they see African American.” And Sarah, a recent immigrant from Ghana, recalled, “my roommate, she didn’t recognize me as African before I told her ‘I’m African, I came from Ghana.’ I think they can’t really tell until you say it, or start speaking.”

In contrast, interview subjects from the Horn clearly recognized that Americans distinguish them from African Americans. One respondent of Ethiopian heritage, Rachel, remarked that people say that she is “black but not ‘Black’.” Cara, a first generation Somali immigrant, said that Americans “almost always they know I’m East African” and Mary, a recent immigrant from Ethiopia, said “they know that I’m not [African American], either I’m mixed or Somali or East African.” Similarly, Nancy, an Ethiopian immigrant who came to the U.S. as a child, said “I was always mistaken as native American or Latina, or something, they always said I looked exotic.” Marlum, an American whose parents are Somali, remarked that other people often say to her “you look foreign.”

Most of these respondents from the Horn of Africa focused on their physical appearance as marking them distinct from African Americans. Thomas, a recent immigrant from Eritrea, remarked that Americans know he and other Eritreans are not African Americans “by our looks” and Rachel, a second generation Ethiopian American said “I’m not sure what they mistake me as, especially since I’m a lighter complexion. I’ve gotten different, you know, non-Black… they think I’m not Black or not African.” Ariel, a second generation Ethiopian American, recounted, “From what I’ve experienced, people don’t assume I’m African. Even when I tell them, they go, ‘Oh, you’re light,’ or some other stupid comment.” Cara, originally from Somalia, noted that “we have different hair” and Thomas, originally from Eritrea, said “most of the Eastern Africans look alike, with a light skin color and a different look than most African nations.” Halima, a 1.5 generation Somali immigrant, noted that “people say that our features are kind of different as East Africans compared to African Americans.”

These stark patterns are consistent with existing knowledge about phenotypic differences within Africa. Those who hail from the Horn of Africa region are primarily Afroasiatic peoples, who are, on average, phenotypically distinct from the Bantu and Nilotic groups that comprise the majority of the rest of the continent and from which most African Americans descend ( Tishkoff et al., 2009 ). Existing evidence suggests that many Afroasiatic peoples do not consider themselves Black or ethnically African, although they acknowledge that they are typically ascribed a Black racial identity within the US context (e.g., Eno and Eno, 2010 ; Habecker, 2012 ).

The lab portion of our study further corroborated the self-reports that African immigrants from the Horn of Africa are less often mistaken for African Americans. In particular, student participants correctly identified photographs of African immigrants from the Horn as immigrants 75% of the time, compared to only 51% for African immigrants not from the Horn ( t = 2.77, p < 0.05). 19 This difference, however, disappears when the name or video stimuli are provided instead of the photo, which suggests that immigrants with Horn of Africa origins are more visible as immigrants based primarily on physical appearance. 20

The results of our student study highlight that region of origin within Africa has a strong bearing on immigrant visibility vis-à-vis Blacks in the American context. However, the study was limited to university students, and there are likely to be other significant differences between immigrants from the Horn and other regions. Our next step was thus to expand to an off-campus community context, and to try to isolate visibility due to Afroasiatic heritage while holding many other factors constant. This led us to a focus on two distinct ethnic communities from Somalia: ethnic Somali (referred to within the Somali diaspora as Somali Somali ) and Somali Bantu.

The distinction between these two communities is due, in large part, to the fact that ethnic Somali have largely Afroasiatic heritage, while the Somali Bantu – a minority of around 5% within Somalia – are of Bantu-Nilotic origins. The ethnic Bantu are a heterogenous group, but within Somalia they are all called Jareer (hard hair) to distinguish them from ethnic Somalis, who are perceived to have softer hair ( Eno and Kusow, 2014 ). Today, the ethnic boundary, both within Somalia and in the US, is relatively impermeable ( Menkhaus, 2003 ; Besteman, 2016 ).

However, while long victimized ( Besteman, 2012 , 2016 ; Eno and Kusow, 2014 ; Grady, 2015 ), the construction of a distinct Somali Bantu ethnic identity is a recent one, dated to the discussion of “Somali farmers with Black African physical features” ( Menkhaus, 2003 , p.335) by the international community during the 1991 famine in Somalia. The term was coined to describe a class of subsistence farmers with no status in the Somali lineage system and with a shared history of discrimination at the hands of ethnic Somalis ( Declich, 2000 ; Deramo, 2016 ; Menkhaus, 2003 ). Until that point, these “riverine identities remained diverse [and] localized” ( Besteman, 2012 , p.288) and the individuals now identified as Somali Bantu possessed “almost none of the features typically associated with a cohesive ethnic group” ( Menkhaus, 2010 , p.93). Eventually, the Somali Bantu were identified by the US State Department as eligible for refugee priority status as a persecuted ethnic group in need of resettlement. After a decade in camps for refugees and the internally displaced, approximately 10,000 Somali Bantus were resettled throughout the US in the early 2000s.

Ethnic Somalis also resettled in the United States as refugees beginning in the 1980s and in significant numbers after the collapse of Somalia in 1991. Although they escaped violence and resettled as refugees, their status in Somalia was never as dire as that of the Somali Bantu. Indeed, all ethnic Somalis belong to a clan – each of different Arab lineage – and while the clans themselves occupy clear positions in a hierarchical structure, they are socially, economically, and politically superior to the non-clan ethnic minorities of the country. To be sure, many ethnic Somalis also suffered tremendously at the hands of the country’s dictator, Siad Barre, who terrorized certain clans such as the Hawiye and the Isaaq as he lost his grip on power after the end of the Cold War.

We focus our study on these two communities in the context of Columbus, OH. Columbus offers a unique opportunity because it is home to the second largest Somali population in the US (after Minneapolis), but unlike most other concentrations of Somalis, includes large populations of both ethnic Bantus and ethnic Somalis. The estimated size of the ethnic Somali community in Columbus is around 55,000 individuals, while the size of the Somali Bantu community is estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000 individuals. 21 Columbus is also home to a large African American population, about 28% according to the 2010 Census, and the city suffers from stark racial inequality and severe segregation. This means that the risk of systematic racial discrimination for new Black immigrants is quite real.

In April of 2017, we conducted a series of focus group discussions with the Somali community in Columbus to further probe our intuition that the differential risk of racial lumping that we had identified in the lab would apply to the ethnic differences among Somalis. Recruited via our research assistants’ social networks, our focus group participants were organized into eight groups of 10, for a total sample size of 80. To facilitate widespread participation, we organized the groups by gender, ethnicity, and age. These focus groups were administered by coethnic interviewers in both English and the group’s ethnic language (Af-Maay or Af-Somali), and lasted approximately one and a half hours. They were held on a university campus or at community centers near Somali neighborhoods. We compensated participants for their time ($30), and we never recorded their names. We did record, transcribe, translate, and code the focus group conversations. We instructed focus group facilitators to ask questions and direct the conversation toward the following topics: life in the United States, identity and attitudes about race, American perceptions of Somalis/Bantus in the US, discrimination, social and cultural engagement with Americans, and political participation and attitudes.

We draw two main inferences from our analysis of how ethnic Bantus and ethnic Somalis responded to questions about American perceptions of their identity. First, while both ethnic Somalis and ethnic Bantus report that they are sometimes mistaken for African Americans, especially by white Americans, only ethnic Somalis also mention being ascribed other non-Black identities, such as mixed-race, Arab, or Indian. This suggests a larger identity repertoire to which ethnic Somalis are ascribed compared to ethnic Bantus. Second, when the participants discussed which characteristics differentiated them from African Americans, ethnic Somalis would often refer to physical traits such as the shape of their face or their hair, while ethnic Bantus only referred to their accent or dress. These patterns are consistent with the claim that ethnic Bantus are more likely to be ascribed an African American identity based on their appearance than are ethnic Somalis.

We first note that both ethnic Bantus and ethnic Somalis report that they are sometimes mistaken for African American. One ethnic Bantu male respondent explained that “When we are first seen, people think we are African American” and another concurred “For me, from far away, people think you are African American.” Similarly, among older ethnic Bantu male respondents, we were told: “Some people might think we are the same when they look at us but our culture is different”; younger ethnic Bantu female participants concurred: “Most of them think we are Black but we are Somali Bantu.”

Ethnic Somalis sometimes echoed this sentiment. The older ethnic Somali male participants claimed that ”the white man sees you as a Black man”, “In mainstream America, we are Black men. There is only Black and white. That is it. Do you get it? You are a Black man.” Older ethnic Somali female participants concurred: “For most of the white people they are unable to distinguish them, Black is Black,” as did younger ethnic Somali male participants: “when I’m out by myself I’m just a Black guy.”

At the same time, however, ethnic Somalis – but, importantly, not ethnic Bantus – raised numerous examples of also being mistaken for other identities. One older ethnic Somali woman claimed that “for us adults, they may think we are from other countries such as the Middle East.” Another mentioned being asked if she is from India, while a younger ethnic Somali woman who wears a headscarf said she has been mistaken for an Arab. One young ethnic Somali male respondent remembers being identified as mixed-race: “I think they kinda assume that I was mixed. Maybe cause of my hair, you know.” One older ethnic Somali man recounted a story of another participant being stopped by a police officer while they were together. He said, “You remember what he wrote? He wrote that you were white.” In fact, one ethnic Somali explicitly noted the ethnic difference at the heart of our research strategy, saying, “There is also differences in the Somali community. So, you’re obviously gonna be able to tell that an [ethnic Somali clan name] is not African American, you know. But then if you meet a Bantu Somali maybe, or a darker ethnic Somali person, then there’s a chance that they pass as African American.” These differences confirm that ethnic Somalis have a wider repertoire of identities ascribed to them in the US context, including non-African American identities, than do ethnic Bantus.

Second, when discussing what drives their visibility as immigrants or foreigners, ethnic Bantu respondents consistently referred to factors such as language, dress, and culture, while ethnic Somalis added other more exogenous characteristics, such as the color of their skin, the shape of their face, the texture of their hair, or more generally their features. One respondent put it clearly: “Even though we are all Black, there [are] a lot of characteristics that distinguish us. For us Somalis, we look alike and we have the same color, even if some are lighter than others, but it is clear that we are Somalis and clearly distinguishable from other Blacks. ” One respondent claimed “I think a lot of the differences that people might see would be physical features like hair texture for the most part,” and another echoed that Somalis looked different due to, ”regular facial features, the nose maybe, the the size of a forehead, the the hair texture and all that.” Someone else agreed unequivocally: “I don’t have to tell them where I am from, they already know from my face.” When asked if this was because of the way he dressed, the participant emphasized that it was “from the face.”

Our choice to study the experience of ethnic Somalis and ethnic Bantus allows us to isolate the effects of an immigrant’s perceived phenotypic overlap while holding other characteristics constant: both groups come from the same country, both are Muslim, both migrated as refugees. At the same time, as evidenced by the above discussion, these groups face different risks of being mistaken for African Americans, allowing us to analyze the extent to which this drives resistance to assimilation. In so doing, our research design closely follows those of Laitin (1986) and Adida, Laitin and Valfort (2016) , which compare two groups that are similar in a number of potentially confounding ways, but differ on the key variable of interest. 22

We leverage the difference in phenotypic overlap with African Americans among the ethnic Somali and Somali Bantu of Columbus to better understand how the risk of being mistaken for African American is related to cultural assimilation. We conceptualize cultural assimilation, and investment in ethnic markers, with a focus on endogamy (marriage within one’s ethnic group) and naming practices. We follow a rich literature in the social sciences that considers endogamy and naming to be indicators of assimilation ( Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson, 2017 ; Biavaschi, Giuletti and Siddique, 2017 ; Fouka, 2019 ; Kalmijn, 1998 ; Qian and Lichter, 2007 ; Saavedra, 2018 ). It is worth noting that these measures capture the maintenance or loss of markers of recent foreign heritage, rather than which specific facets of American culture (e.g., white or Black culture) are adopted in their stead. We also create an aggregate measure of resistance to assimilation using the mean of standardized components. Table A.4 of the appendix reports summary statistics for each of the three variables and the index measure of resistance to assimilation.

We first report simple differences-in-means between ethnic Somalis and ethnic Bantus on three measures of cultural markers: whether the respondent is married to a coethnic, whether the respondent prefers that their children marry a coethnic, and whether the respondent prefers to give their child a first name that signals their ethnicity. Our preliminary results are striking: on all three measures of investment in cultural markers, ethnic Bantu respondents score significantly higher than do ethnic Somali respondents. Ethnic Bantus are more likely to have a coethnic spouse (97% vs. 89%, χ 2 = 10.36, p < 0.01), to value the importance of their child marrying a coethnic (2.72 vs. 2.01 on a four-point scale, t = 11.83, p < 0.001), and to prefer that their children have an ethnically-distinct first name (91% vs. 59%, χ 2 = 66.16, p < 0.001). Thus, we also see a large ethnic difference for the index of resistance to cultural assimilation (0.37 vs. −0.38, t = 12.22, p < 0.001).

To gauge the differences in cultural assimilation and ethnic markers by ethnic group, controlling for the potentially confounding differences between the two groups, we estimate the below model for each measure of cultural assimilation:

where i is the survey respondent, Y is a measure of resistance to assimilation, β 1 captures the difference between ethnic Bantus and ethnic Somalis, and X is a vector of controls, including a respondent’s age, sex, education level (primary education completed or not), household income, employment status, and immigrant generation (second generation or not).

The results, presented in Table 1 , illustrate patterns that are consistent with our theoretical expectations. 23 Controlling for potential confounds, we observe that ethnic Bantus invest in cultural markers more than do their ethnic Somali counterparts. In particular, married Somali Bantu are significantly more likely to have a coethnic spouse, to say that they prefer that their children marry a coethnic, and to prefer ethnic names for their children. Model 4 of Table 1 confirms that ethnic Bantus score significantly higher on the overall index of resistance to cultural assimilation.

Resistance to assimilation

The results above provide evidence that ethnic Bantus, who are more likely to be misidentified as African American than are ethnic Somalis, are more likely to resist assimilation: they choose more ethnically distinct names for their children, and prefer endogamy. But are these differences really driven by efforts to avoid race-based discrimination? We recognize that immigrants may resist assimilation for a host of different reasons; this section provides evidence consistent with our argument that differential racism avoidance is likely to account for at least some of the observed difference in assimilation across the two groups.

First, because the theorized mechanism of racism avoidance is driven by exposure to race-based discrimination in the US, we expect that ethnic differences in assimilation resistance increases with time in the US. In Figure 1 below, based on Models 1 and 2 of Appendix Table A.7 , we show patterns of resistance to assimilation by immigrant generation and by years in the US. 24 Consistent with expectation, these results show that while resistance for ethnic Somalis decreases with generation and remains stable over time among the first generation, resistance to assimilation actually increases over time among ethnic Bantu immigrants and does not decline in the second generation. These results bolster our claim that it is something about the experience in the United States – which we argue is the systemic discrimination faced by African Americans – that puts these two Somali ethnic groups on divergent paths of assimilation. 25 These results also help rule out the possibility that the ethnic differences that we document are driven by pre-emigration group differences in cultural investment. Even if ethnic Bantus bring stronger ethnic attachments with them from Somalia – a doubtful claim given accounts of the creation of the ethnic Bantu identity – we observe increased investment in ethnic markers that is unique to the ethnic Bantus since their migration to the United States.

Degree of resistance to cultural assimilation over time in the US by ethnic group.

Second, if differential risk of racism is indeed what is driving ethnic differences in assimilation, then ethnic Bantu should report a greater perceived threat of racial discrimination. Our qualitative data corroborates such a pattern. When asked explicitly about whether their Somali heritage protected them from racial discrimination, ethnic Bantu focus group participants were more likely than ethnic Somali to report that it did. For example, an older Somali Bantu man told us, “Yes. I am not Black American. With my Bantu origin, I have not had anything bad done to me.” Another ethnic Bantu emphasized the protective importance of their cultural identity, explaining, “we want our children to get education, and to learn the culture of our people…we have some kids that want to be gangsters; we want them to be protected.” 26 Our quantitative data also reveal ethnic differences in perceived risk of racial discrimination. In particular, Somali Bantu survey respondents perceive their ethnic identity to be more protective relative to African Americans than do ethnic Somali: while 64% of Somali Bantu respondents believe that African Americans face more discrimination than do their own coethnics, only 20% of ethnic Somali think the same ( χ 2 = 66.9, p < 0.001). 27 In addition, when asked to rank the degree to which four different identities expose each respondent to discrimination, Somali Bantu respondents ranked their racial identity significantly higher than did ethnic Somali ( t = 4.75, p < 0.001). 28 Together, these results bolster the claim that Somali Bantu resist assimilation more than ethnic Somali because of their heightened concern about race-based discrimination.

Third, if Somali Bantu immigrants invest more in ethnic cultural markers than do ethnic Somalis in order to avoid being misidentified as African American, then we should also observe concerted efforts by ethnic Bantus to distance themselves – both attitudinally and behaviorally – from African Americans. Our focus group data suggest that Somali Bantus enact such distancing more strongly than ethnic Somalis. When asked whether they identified as African American, all four ethnic Bantu focus groups said no with full consensus, while three of the four ethnic Somali focus groups responded affirmatively, with only a few dissenters. An older Bantu woman exclaimed, “we cannot be like those people! We want peace in our household and protection for our kids so that they may get education and be in high positions.” We observe a similar pattern in two behavioral measures we obtain from our survey. The first looks at the make-up of the respondent’s five closest friends. We find that Somali Bantu respondents are much less likely to report having at least one African American friend than are ethnic Somali respondents (10% vs. 43%, χ 2 = 67.03, p < 0.001). 29 The second measure looks at where respondents live within the Columbus, Ohio area with respect to African Americans. Respondents reported their residential zip code, which we then linked to US census data to calculate the proportion of residents who are African American (see Figure A.6 of the appendix). We find that Somali Bantu live in areas of the city with much smaller African American populations than do ethnic Somali (15% vs. 39%, t = 15.41, p < 0.001). 30 The greater propensity for Somali Bantu to distance themselves both socially and physically from African Americans is consistent with our interpretation that their resistance to assimilation is driven by fear of being misidentified as African American.

We have drawn from insights in the literature on immigrant assimilation and resistance to assimilation to develop an argument that explains variation in Black immigrant assimilation in the racialized American landscape. We advance theoretical expectations of immigrant assimilation by challenging the assumption of a homogenous Black immigrant experience, and thinking through factors of differentiation. In particular, we build on theoretical understandings of marginality, and resistance to assimilation, by proposing one mechanism to explain some of this variation: groups differ in their likelihood of being miscoded as members of certain groups in the host community; when their proximal hosts are themselves a marginalized community, this creates incentives for them to reify the ethnic boundary they believe protects them from discrimination.

We use a variety of empirical approaches and original data sources, and find that Black immigrants who are likely to be ascribed an African American identity based on their physical appearance invest more in distinct ethnocultural markers. These results corroborate the intuition that not all immigrants seek to assimilate, and that incentives to resist assimilation derive, at least in part, from the racialized social and economic hierarchy in the US. Immigrants from the same country of origin, but with differing risk of being categorized as African Americans, therefore respond differently to the prospect of assimilation into this marginalized community. As such, our study has identified one key condition under which resistance to assimilation is a preferred strategy for immigrants: when immigrants are at risk of being classified as members of a marginalized host community, they rationally resist assimilation.

The power of this design is that it allows us to isolate one immigrant characteristic – phenotypic overlap with a marginalized host population – while holding many others constant ( Sen and Wasow, 2016 ). However, the gains in empirical leverage come at the expense of some generalizability. As a result, these findings raise a number of empirical questions. First, among the Somali population we study, many of the markers of recent immigrant heritage – including clothing, names, and cultural practices – are associated with the Islamic faith. A large body of research demonstrates that visible symbols of Islam are associated with perceptions of being foreign-born and racialization beyond the Black-white dichotomy (e.g., Selod and Embrick, 2013 ; Garner and Selod, 2014 ; Husain, 2019 ; D’Urso, 2021 ). Given that signals of being Muslim introduce an additional category of discrimination, their employment for the aim of reducing race-based discrimination may depend on the relative severity or con-textual relevance of stereotypes based on race and religion. In future research, assessing the activation of these two dimensions of discrimination will be important, as will a comparison of the assimilation strategies of Muslim and non-Muslim Black immigrants. Second, our study setting is a large urban center with sizable populations of both African immigrants and African Americans. In contexts with fewer African immigrants, in which the broader host community has less exposure to Black immigrants, signals of foreign heritage may be less effective at countering race-based discrimination. In contrast, in localities with very few African Americans – such as Lewiston, Maine, which has a proportionally large Somali population ( Besteman, 2016 ) – both the risks and consequences of being mistaken for African Americans are likely to be lower, which could also reduce incentives to resist assimilation. While the present study cannot evaluate such claims, the theoretical argument herein generates expectations about the ways in which demographic contexts condition assimilation outcomes, which should be evaluated in future research.

Our research also calls for more studies of stereotype formation and content among the broader American public. A central driver of our argument is expectation by Black immigrants that they face less discrimination when perceived to be foreign than when perceived to be African American. While immigrants’ belief in what Greer (2013) calls an “elevated minority status” is well documented (e.g., Chako, 2003 ; Foner, 1998 ; Guenther, Pendaz and Makene, 2011 ; Imoagene, 2017 ; Mensah and Williams, 2015 ; Ogundipe, 2011 ; Portes, 2004 ; Rogers, 2006 ; Trietler, 2013 ), it is an open question as to whether such expectations are actually borne out (although, see Schachter, 2021 , for a first cut at this question). Thus, future research should seek to identify whether white Americans systematically perceive Black immigrants and African Americans differently.

Finally, our findings raise new questions about how the changing racial landscape of the US will shape politics into the future. While race has always been a central feature of American political discourse, recent citizen mobilization has pushed discussions of racial inequality to the forefront. As immigration continues to diversify the population of Black Americans, it is important to understand whether and how race-based coalitions can address common aims of racial justice despite increased intra-racial diversity ( Austin, 2019 ; Greer, 2013 ; Rogers, 2006 ; Smith, 2014 ). Our research suggests that, rather than shaping a sense of shared experience and solidarity, the realities of racial discrimination in the US – and some Black immigrants’ ability to mitigate it through investments in ethnic distinctiveness – could actually form a barrier to race-based political coalitions that include Black immigrants. Our research also raises questions about the political trajectories of Black immigrants themselves. In particular, future research should address the degree to which the resistance to cultural assimilation documented in this paper has implications for the political integration of Black new Americans.

Acknowledgments

We thank Imnet Arega, Allison Cole, Amy Dierker, Ruth Elendu, Abdoulaye Fofana, Abdi Geesay, Jaleel Grant, Farah Holt, Mawa Konate, Mumina Madey, Yakub Mohamed, Kawther Musa, Nasro Nassan, and Kezia Ofosu for their assistance in the collection, processing, and analysis of the data used here. We also thank Jabril Mohamed for his assistance in field work planning. Funding support for this project was provided by the Ohio State University Institute for Population Research through a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, P2CHD058484. Human subjects review was provided by the Ohio State University institutional review board (protocols 2016B0373 and 2016B0118). The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Appendix to:

Figure a.1:.

Example of Stimuli

Lab-based measures of immigrant visibility by African region of origin.

Resistance to assimilation (No imputation)

Figure A.2:

Location of Interview

Note: n = 528

Figure A.3:

Interviewer-Respondent Relationship

Note: n = 526

Demographic Characteristics of the Sample

Figure A.4:

Zipcodes of Ethnic Somali respondents

Note: n = 291

Figure A.5:

Zipcodes of Somali Bantu respondents

Note: n = 242

Figure A.6:

Black Population in Zipcodes Represented among Respondents

Source: 2010 US Census

Summary statistics for resistance to assimilation

Resistance to assimilation (PAP controls)

Resistance to assimilation by time in the US

Resistance to assimilation by time in the US (No imputation)

Resistance to assimilation by houshold income and time in the US

Figure A.7:

Degree of resistance to cultural assimilation over time in the US by socioeconomic status and ethnic group.

Table A.10:

Perceived severity of racial discrimination by ethnic group

Table A.11:

Distancing from African Americans by ethnic group

1 We employ respondent-chosen pseudonyms throughout the paper.

2 We use African American to refer to American descendants of enslaved peoples and Black immigrant for more recent arrivals who are ascribed a Black racial classification. While these groups are not inherently mutually exclusive – African immigrants may very well self-identify as African American – we define them such that they are analytically mutually exclusive. In particular, we use “African American” to refer to Black Americans with four native-born grandparents, and we use “African immigrant” as a short hand to refer to individuals with recent immigrant heritage (typically, immigrants and their native born children), regardless of citizenship status.

3 In response the protracted conflict following the collapse of the Somali government in1991, the Somali population in the US jumped from around 2,500 in 1990 to close to 150,000 in 2015 ( Connor and Krogstad, 2016 ).

4 This research design is similar to Adida, Laitin and Valfort’s (2016) study of two Senegalese ethnic groups in France that are similar in a number of key ways but differ on a variable of interest.

5 Some scholars use the terms assimilation and integration interchangeably to describe the processes by which members of immigrant groups and host societies come to resemble one another ( Brown and Bean, 2006 ; Waters and Pineau, 2015 ). However, we follow Harder et al. (2018) , who distinguish integration – “the degree to which immigrants have acquired the knowledge and capacity to build successful lives” – from assimilation – the degree to which immigrants “shed their home country’s culture in favor of adopting the cultural practices of the host country.” We focus here on cultural assimilation and behavioral practices that resist it.

6 In contrast, and consistent with the broader literature on Black immigrants, Afro-Latino/as who are ascribed a Black identity in the US context actively work to distance themselves from African Americans ( Howard, 2003 ).

7 Research suggests that African Americans’ ability to pass as white is limited and typically conditional on significant white ancestry ( Mill and Stein, 2016 ; Nix and Qian, 2015 ).

8 While Black immigrants may opt to adopt facets of white American culture ( Ferguson, Bornstein and Pottinger, 2012 ), such white acculturation does not allow them to escape a Black racial ascription and may even result in social sanctioning by African Americans ( Bergin and Cooks, 2002 ; Thelamour and Johnson, 2017 ).

9 While we focus on the potential costs of being misidentified as African American based on pervasive racial discrimination, we also acknowledge contexts in which identification with or as African American is beneficial. For example, embracing an African American identity could confer advantages in contexts of affirmative action ( Antman and Duncan, 2015 ), such as college admissions or employment decisions. However, research suggests that even within these narrow contexts of assumed African American advantage, Black immigrants often still benefit more than African Americans ( Brown and Bell, 2008 ; Onwuachi-Willig, 2007 ; Rimer and Arenson, 2004 ).

10 Tormala and Deaux (2006) , Krieger et al. (2011) , and Griffin, Cunningham and George Mwangi (2016) all find that Black immigrants report less exposure to racism than do African Americans, but direct data on the beliefs and stereotypes held by members of the host society are rarely captured.

11 Some research challenges the expectation that immigrants perceive their national or ethnic identities as protective against racial discrimination. For example, Clark (2008) argues that second generation African immigrants fuse their racialized American identity with an African identity, while Showers (2015) highlights that many Africans in the US attribute more discrimination to their African identity than their Black identity.

12 We also recruited and interviewed 17 African Americans, defined as anyone who self-identified as Black and with all four grandparents born in the US.

13 All 33 African immigrants, as well as the 17 African Americans we also interviewed, were given the option to have their name, photograph, and brief introduction via video used in a follow-up study. Twenty-four African immigrants and 15 African Americans agreed to our use of their information and images in the subsequent study.

14 Overall, respondents were able to correctly distinguish African immigrants from African Americans 75% of the time. One might be concerned that the ability of students to identify immigrants differs systematically from the broader population that is most relevant for the theoretical argument. To assess this possibility, we compare accuracy rates in the student sample to accuracy rates in a nationally representative sample of white, native-born Americans. The task in this broader sample, surveyed by the authors for a different purpose, was slightly different, as respondents saw a different stimulus pool, only evaluated photographs, and were not monetarily incentivized for accurate classification. Still, the accuracy rate for this national sample is 56%, only slightly lower than the 62% accuracy rate for white student respondents.

15 557 potential participants were approached, but 12 declined and 25 did not complete the survey. Among the 520 respondents who completed the survey, there is some missingness. Our main analyses rely on multiple imputation of four key control variables: age ( n = 6 imputed), employment ( n = 2), income ( n = 35), and education ( n = 6). Results based on case-wise deletion, which show the same patterns, are presented in the appendix .

16 The ethnic Somali male interviewer’s respondents were 68% men, while the ethnic Somali female enumerator’s respondents were 54% women. Cross-gender interviews were rarer among the Somali Bantu interviewers, with the male interviewer interviewing 93% men and the female enumerator interviewing 94% women. Although this gives us less opportunity to control for enumerator effects, this decision ensured the feasibility of the study, the protection of respondents, and the minimization of social desirability bias ( Adida et al., 2016 ).

17 Our sampling strategy relied on enumerators’ ability to identify Somali respondents: this means that our sample excludes members of both ethnic categories who are so assimilated that they are no longer perceived to be Somali. Our sample is therefore truncated and, as a result, our results are only generalizable to members of the Somali population who are still identifiable as such, based on appearance, social networks, or commercial activity.

18 Prior to the collection of the survey data, we registered our study and a set of expectations with EGAP ( http://egap.org/registration/4332 ). While the pre-registered hypotheses focused on how an immigrant’s propensity for misidentification as African Americans would shape political and cultural outcomes, we did not pre-register hypotheses specifically related to the investment in ethnic markers by immigrants. The expectations evaluated here, however, are nevertheless consistent with the general argument made in the pre-analysis plan that immigrants with greater propensity for misidentification would resist assimilation. Our larger project considers the outcomes included in the pre-registered hypotheses, which are farther down a causal chain, including racial self-identification and political engagement.

19 These two groups do not differ significantly in terms of the proportion who are foreign-born immigrants (50% among those with Horn origins vs. 37% among those with non-Horn origins, t = 0.616, p = 0.544).

20 See appendix Table A.1 for t-tests. Table A.2 shows that the difference in immigrant visibility among Horn and non-Horn immigrants is robust to controlling for the immigrant’s religion, generation, and sex.

21 The two communities overlap religiously and commercially, but tend to be residentially segregated within Columbus. Figures A.4 and A.5 of the appendix show the concentration of our survey respondents by zipcode. The maps comport with commonly held perceptions that the two groups reside in different parts of the city.

22 However, these two groups differ beyond just their perceived phenotypic overlap with African Americans. Thus, our research design relies on the claim that most of the confounding ways in which the groups differ are observable and measurable: the Somali Bantu are, on average, less educated, poorer, and more likely to have immigrated to the US later than many ethnic Somalis. We can account for these differences at the individual level, comparing ethnic Somalis to Somali Bantus conditional on education, income, and time in the US.

23 Results for these estimations with non-imputed control variables are reported in Table A.6 , while Table A.5 of the appendix presents our main results using pre-specified control variables. Our main specification includes only a subset of these variables, in an attempt to exclude variables likely to be outcomes of assimilation themselves, but we note here that our results are robust to using the pre-specified set of controls.

24 Results using non-imputed data are reported in Table A.8 .

25 Forces within the US other than racism could of course also shape the assimilation choices of immigrants. For example, frustration with the lack of economic opportunity within the American workforce could drive a retrenchment in ingroup identification that increases over time. However, resistance to assimilation among Somali Bantu is in fact stronger among more economically advantaged immigrants, as shown in Table A.9 and Figure A.7 : this casts doubt on this mechanism. It is difficult to understand the causal order of these factors: it could be that resistance to assimilation among Somali Bantu has economic returns or that the economically advantaged have the most to lose from being misidentified as African American, both of which are consistent with our theory.

26 Research shows that the expression of stereotypes about African Americans by Black immigrants often accompanies – or even constitutes – efforts to mark themselves as distinct (e.g., Habecker, 2012 ; Waters, 1999 ). It is challenging to empirically disentangle the relative impact on assimilation of immigrants’ own stereotypes about African Americans from their fear of being subjected to them by others.

27 This gap is robust to controlling for age, sex, education, household income, employment status, and immigrant generation, as shown in Model 1 of Table A.10 of the appendix.

28 The four identities were racial (Black), national (Somalia), religious (Muslim), and foreign heritage (immigrant). The higher ranking of racial identity by Somali Bantu is robust to controlling for age, sex, education, household income, employment status, and immigrant generation, as shown in Model 2 of Table A.10 of the appendix.

29 This difference is robust to controlling for age, sex, education, income, employment, and immigrant generation, as shown in Model 1 of appendix Table A.11 . Model 2 shows that the gap also holds when we consider the overall number of African American friends.

30 This gap is robust to controlling for age, sex, education, income, employment, and immigrant generation, and clustering standard errors by zipcode, as shown in Model 3 of appendix Table A.11 .

Contributor Information

Claire L. Adida, UC San Diego.

Amanda Lea Robinson, The Ohio State University, 2130 Derby Hall, 540 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210.

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To Assimilate or to Acculturate?

The United States of America has always been seen as a safe haven of opportunity. For this reason, many immigrants flock to this country in search for new beginnings and better lives. With this belief, when I was two, my family moved to the U.S. from India. My parents were the first of their generation to immigrate to America. Thus, they faced immense pressure getting accustomed to the new land. Initially, my parents wanted to adhere to a traditional Indian way of life, but due to the new atmosphere, they were forced to assimilate into the American culture with the hopes of becoming socially accepted. At the time, they did not realize how it would impact their own Indian culture, but as I grew older, they noticed the changes in my very own lifestyle.

Fearful that I would lose my entire Indian heritage, they sent me back to India to live with my grandparents, hoping that I could build a strong cultural foundation. After returning to America, I entered grade school. At first I felt like an outsider coming from an Indian home. Students used to stare in bewilderment when I brought  handvo , a traditional Gujarati snack, to lunch. Pointing fingers, they maliciously asked “Eww what’s that? What’s it made of? Why does it smell like that?” as I slowly pulled it out of my lunchbox.  Slowly I found it easier to disguise my Indian background by eating sandwiches and cookies, what “normal” American children ate for lunch. It was an easier task for me to adapt to my host nation rather than my host nation adapting to me.  By doing this, I was assimilating, and this way I felt more comfortable being a part of society and no longer felt like an outsider.

Many studies have been made about the roots of assimilation. Migration and the need to feel welcomed into a new nation leave no choice for the immigrants except to assimilate. In the article, “Migration, cultural bereavement and cultural identity,” Dr. Dinesh Bhugra, Dean of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and Dr. Matthew Becker, a practicing Psychiatrist in San Diego, CA, examine the cause and effect of migration and assimilation into the United Kingdom. Immigrants migrate due to a variety of reasons, including political, socioeconomic and educational motives. Assimilation is an innate behavior caused by migration. Some Immigrants “choose” to migrate and willingly interact with the majority culture of their host nation (19). Refugees, on the other hand, are forced to migrate, but still associate with the “majority” population unwillingly (19). My understanding is that regardless of the motive of migration, it is evident that this initial relocation initiates the process of assimilation.

The distinct loss of a certain part of one’s cultural background in the process of discovering one’s cultural identity can be referred to as assimilation. Bhugra and Becker claim that when immigrants feel “isolated from his or her culture, unaccepted by the 'majority culture' and has a lack of social support, a consequent sense of rejection, alienation and poor self-esteem may occur” (Bhugra and Becker 19). To avoid such feelings of despair, immigrants attempt to blend in with the rest of the society. Joining the major society gives immigrants an initial feeling of being welcome into the new nation.  Due to the difference in cultures, gaining acceptance by the major culture forces immigrants to resort to assimilation. While this initial assimilation may be beneficial allowing immigrants to fit in, it also comes at a cost, the loss of one’s unique cultural identity.

When I began to bring sandwiches and cookies more often to lunch, the other children were more willing to talk to me about other things, rather than ask questions about the whereabouts of my food. This social support from my peers made me feel more accepted. Slowly the sheer bliss that came from fitting in made me more enthusiastic towards going to lunch every day. From my own experience, as I began to adopt the American culture, I felt more comfortable among others in American society. Similar to the American society, many nations foster assimilation and readily welcome immigrants who want to follow their way of life. However, while these immigrants are engrossed in establishing this new culture, they are unaware that they are slowly losing their own identity in the process.

While primarily assimilation leads to a loss of cultural identity, it can also have severe psychological effects on the immigrant. At first assimilation might appear to be the best choice for immigrants but eventually, they come to terms with the loss of their own culture and begin to see the costs of becoming too influenced by the American way. The effects of assimilation range from depression, loss of identity, homesickness and even mental illness. Bhugra and Becker assert that migration leads to cultural bereavement, which is a form of psychological grief caused by the loss of one’s culture (19-20).  They state that, one’s identity is defined “one's [own] perception of self” as well as “how we as individuals view [themselves] as unique” when compared to others (Bhugra & Becker 21); one’s cultural identity encompasses his/her background and builds one’s character. Thus, losing cultural identity to join the majority culture does not enhance one’s uniqueness but can lead to misery due to lack of cultural identity in one’s existence.

Languages and dialects are very unique to each culture. When one loses his/her culture, he/she also loses the various languages learned. Bhugra & Becker explain that these languages are seen as “cultural marker[s]” (21). These markers are specific traits that distinguish between various cultures. I reaffirm that once these markers are eliminated, immigrants are left as one amongst a uniform crowd. Reflecting back on my experience, I once had learned to speak both Gujarati and Hindi, two Indian languages, while I was growing up with my grandparents in India. Ever since I returned to the U.S., the infrequent use of these languages resulted in the loss of this fluency. By only sparsely expressing these languages, I understand that I am losing my culture. I am also beginning to see how my attachment to my homeland is withering away as I struggle to communicate with my relatives from India. Assimilation not only makes immigrants miss their culture abroad, but also widens the gap between immigrants and their families back home. In the end, this yields further misery for the immigrants.

Fascination about western culture urges immigrants to assimilate quickly. Dr. Russell A. Kazal, Associate professor at the University of Toronto Department of History writes in the Journal “The Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter” about the effects of assimilation into the “white” American society. This article discusses how immigrants of multicultural backgrounds are lured into the American way of living by the “white” American society. Assimilation causes immigrants to abandon their own culture and become part of the larger crowd. Kazal claims that this process unifies the culture of the United States by creating greater homogeneity within society. Captivated by the superior crowd, assimilation forces immigrants to lose their cultural diversity and ways of their homeland. Because they feel like the minorities in the population, immigrants shun their own culture and attempt to be a part of the American society.  Not only does assimilation affect the interactions of people of different races, but it also leads to a dilemma within one race; assimilation has been shown to have increased over time and is creating a large generation gap amongst immigrants. While the younger generations seem to be ready to embrace the culture of America in order to gain  easy  acceptance in society, the elder immigrants are left to worry about preserving their traditions.

The overall impact of assimilation discussed can only be observed from an amalgamation of several personal experiences from the many immigrants. Wearing Indian clothes, eating Indian food, speaking an Indian language, all of these things made me a  unique  individual, but moreover, it made me a different individual. Since I was seen as different, I was hesitant to even participate in class or even talk to the other children. Fearful that they would judge me because of my background, I was mostly quiet throughout the early years of grade school. In order to lessen the daunting feeling of being an outsider, I chose to assimilate to the American lifestyle. While I built a relationship with my American peers, I subconsciously lost touch with the elders of family moreover my own heritage.

In order to cope with the nostalgia, Bhugra and Becker suggest that some immigrants resort to “acculturation” (21). This is a process in which an individual absorbs the culture of the host country, while retaining the traditions of their original heritage. I reaffirm that this is the best means of getting situated in a different environment while maintaining one’s inborn culture. Usually when an individual is placed into a new culture, he/she is forced to incorporate the ways of the new culture into his/her own life in order to be welcomed. By continuing to practice their own culture, immigrants cannot only stay in touch with their homeland but also add diversity to the new nation. Attending temple weekly for the past 10 years, I have been able to consistently maintain my heritage while also living in America. By acculturating, I am now able to express my culture comfortably while interacting in and appreciating the American society. Hence, I believe that by learning to acculturate, immigrants, like me, can avoid the negative consequences of assimilation.

Assimilation undeniably helps immigrants acclimate to a new land and feel more welcomed. However, looking back, though assimilation was preferred by the immigrants of my generation, my parents’ generation took this assimilation process to be a desperate transition just so that I could “fit in.” My parents were appalled at how easily I chose to cast away from my Indian culture and embrace the American culture. Growing older, and after becoming more involved in my local temple, I began to understand that assimilation contributed to abandoning my culture as well as my family. Hence, I realized that culture is a vital part of one’s life.  In short, I believe rather than resorting to assimilation, immigrants should acculturate and in this way add to diversity of their new host nation; otherwise, they merely become one among an alien crowd, eliminating their true heritage.

Works Cited

Bhugra, Dinesh, and Matthew Becker. "Migration, cultural bereavement and cultural identity."  World Psychiatry  4:1 (2005): 18-24.  www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov . Web. 07 Mar 2011.

Kazal, Russell. "Putting Assimilation in its Place: Some Notes on the Recent Career of a Concept." Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter . XL.2 (2008): 1, 8-9. Print.

Works Referenced

Bhattacharya, Gauri. "Is Social Capital Portable? Acculturating Experiences of Indian Immigrant Men in New York City" Journal of Intercultural Studies 32.1 (2011). 08 Mar. 2011 <http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/07256868.2010.524919 >

Choi, Jong Baek, and Madhavappallil Thomas. "Predictive factors of acculturation attitudes and social support among Asian immigrants in the USA." International Journal of Social Welfare. 18 (2007): 76-84. Print. Gopalasubrimanian, Sapna. Loss of Cultural Identity in a Westernized World. 2010. Print.

Sha, Bey-Ling. "Cultural Identity in the Segmentation of Publics: An Emerging Theory of Intercultural Public Relations Bey-Ling Sha."  Journal of Public Relations Research  18.1 (2006): 45-65. Web. 07 Mar 2011.

Stiles, William. "Assimilation and the process of outcome: Introduction to a special section."  Psychotherapy Research  16.4 (2006): 389-392. Web. 07 Mar 2011.

Articles copyright © 2024 the original authors. No part of the contents of this Web journal may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission from the author or the Academic Writing Program of the University of Maryland. The views expressed in these essays do not represent the views of the Academic Writing Program or the University of Maryland.

Immigration and Assimilation in US Essay

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The lifestyle and culture in USA is totally different from our culture. So when we reached USA, at first we could not adjust with their culture and life. Especially my parents found very difficult to mingle with them; so they disliked staying there. But, after living there for some days we adjusted with them and also we enjoyed some of their culture. In this country there is no inequality between men and women. There is no restriction for women in any field; moreover, they are respected by everyone. In USA all the people live in their own way and lead independent life. Even though freedom is good, some people misuse their freedom. The children do not live in the control of their parents and the parents give all freedom for them to decide their life and career of their own choice. Everyone leads a very fast life and are busy with their job to make their life secure. Moreover, people are ready to work hard.

It took some time for me and my family to accept the living style of USA; we did not take a long period to adjust with their life. In USA there are more opportunities and facilities for everything than our country; so we started loving staying in this country. We also feel very secure and comfortable in living here. I think for most people there will be some difficulties to accept the living style and culture when they settle abroad from their home country. Especially the old people, who lived in traditional way, cannot accept the modern culture of USA.

Lots of differences can be found in case of America while thinking about its past and present. Plenty of changes took place. In the past, everything was not in orderly manner. There was no proper law and order in the country. Also there were no health insurance schemes such as Medicare, Medicaid etc. There were no strict rules in restaurants. Owners of the restaurants could admit any one even if they were smokers or drinkers. There was no identity proof for citizens and only for driving license there was a proof but it was without photo. But today, everything has changed. America has become one of the powerful nations. Strict rules and regulations are implemented. ID cards are very important. “Tightly controlling and punishing financial entrepreneurs has been an important step in the taming of reckless and the lawless.” (Lemieux 8).

Throughout the history of America, immigrants and minority groups are making room to broaden the meaning or definition of country. Henry James, while visiting Ellis Island, once mentioned that tide of these immigrants can change the idea of America. Main reason to highlight this is while immigrants are coming to America their racial and cultural styles are very different from American people. If more and more immigrants come to this country, then they can change the nation’s overall attitude. Society of America has often been described as a melting pot; it was because lots of immigrants are coming to America. Throughout 19 th and 20 th centuries their flow to America was very large. Their historic culture has got capability to re-image America. “Americans take pride in their “melting pot” society (a term coined by an immigrant, Israel Zangwill) that encourages newcomers to assimilate into the American culture.” (‘Melting pot’ America para 19).

The term melting pot is appropriate as it is just like tomato soup. Many ingredients are poured into it. Similarly, flow of immigrants into America has melted their own culture into the new one which was brought by immigrants. So use of this term melting pot is very appropriate.

Works Cited

Lemieux, Pierre. The Idea of America . Western Standard, 2008. Web.

‘ Melting pot’ America: Melting pot . BBC News,2006. Web.

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Immigration Identity and Assimilation, Essay Example

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Introduction

Several authors have confirmed the presence of conflict between first and second generation immigrants. The author of the current study will review how cultural assimilation, socialization pattern differences, and personality traits influence one’s ethnic identity and create conflicts between first and second generation immigrants. Reviewing several first-hand reports of second generation immigrants, the essay is looking to examine the following thesis:

Generational conflict between first and second generation immigrants originates from the different level of assimilation, and the differences in socialization patterns. Second generation immigrants become disconnected from their cultural and ethnic heritage, while first generation immigrants (their parents) tend to treasure their memories of the homeland.

Discussion of Readings

Conflicts Between Groups Within Second Generation Ethnic Minorities

Generational differences are represented in Lopez’ memoir regarding growing up as a second generation immigrant. Staying connected to one’s ethnic group, while trying to fit in the new country is challenging. Lopez (1998)  signifies the importance of looking for common traits instead of differences, when discovering one’s self-identity. Lopez (1998) first does not understand why his father keeps asking people whether or not they are Mexican, if he already knows the answer. He later understands that it is important to help each other, and preserve one’s ethnic identity, even after assimilation. He is not only a part of a group of “Mexicans”, but the American culture, as well. He wants to be a “surfer”, but foremost, he is a Mexican. When he meets the aggressive boy from the “other side”, he does not simply answer that he is a “surfer”, but he states that he is a Mexican, just like the other boy. Lopez learns something from his father: to look for ways of connecting, instead of being different.

Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles

Tohidi (2004) talks about how women experience immigration, and how their experiences with assimilation are different from men’s, as well  as the source of generational conflict within families. She confirms that after immigration, family conflicts (between parents and children, or man and wife) increase in number, and this often leads to divorce. Tohidi also confirms that intergenerational conflicts often arise within Iranian immigrant families. The acculturation of children, due to attending U.S. schools and having American friends makes them more American than their parents. They start rebelling against the traditional roles of family members. Male children refuse to take on the role of the “protector” and “provider”. Mothers, on the other hand, refuse to take on the role of the obedient wife who simply bears children. The author mentions that many families moving from Iran found themselves in a lower economic or social status than back at home. Women had to help out, and often started to work, as well as men. Their roles as a wife and mother expanded. They became active earners, and assumed that they had more rights than the traditions of Iran determine. At the same time, they wanted to “fit in”. Not only for themselves, but also for their children’s sake. Children often refuse to accept the authority of parents, in particular fathers. They demand personal privacy; something that is not acknowledged in traditional Iranian families. While women are more flexible in adapting to new family roles, men tend to stick to traditions. This creates a conflict in the family; not only between the two generations, but husband and wife as well. Children’s acculturation is generally faster than parents, and women are more ready to embrace western values than men.

Growing up in America – Experiences

Vargas (2011) talks about his experiences of growing up in America, assimilation, and finding out that he is an illegal immigrant. Vargas received U.S. education, graduated from high school and college, and even won a spelling competition. He is still not legally considered an American. For people who are left behind, the next logical step would be to return to the Philippines. However, his cultural values are now American. He would not be able to reconnect with his roots in a way. He would feel out of space. As the author states: “This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think  of me as one of its own” (Vargas, 2011, p.  2.) At the same time, he embraces liberal American values and confesses that he is gay in front of the school. He gets kicked out of school. While Vargas’ grandfather is assimilated and lives an American life, he has closer ties to cultural and religious values of the Philippines than Vargas, who grew up in the U.S. His grandfather is Catholic, and secondly, he was hoping that by marrying an American woman, the author could obtain a legal immigrant status. He hasn’t seen his family back in the Philippines for two decades. He is completely disconnected from his homeland. He is American, and finds it hard to connect with his roots. He decides not to pursue legal matters, as it would mean leaving the country for ten years as a part of a ban. He is more connected to America than his grandfather, who lived in the country longer than him.

Unique Culture And Assimilation – The Conflict

Lai & Arguelles (1998) talk about the immigration experiences of Hmong people originating from Southwestern China. Being family-oriented,  Hmong immigrants usually have more than two children. The second generation, however, consisting of well educated and assimilated individuals is embarking on a mission to modernize the social system of immigrant communities. According to the authors, the new leaders “support the reform of some aspects of Hmong culture that may clash with American customs” (p. 4). They are seemingly torn between American and Hmong traditions, and support the idea that – because communities are now living in the U.S. they need to adapt culturally. This creates a tension between the two generations. Women are embracing American values, campaign against domestic violence and polygamy: something that is not a custom, but mostly accepted in Hmong culture. The generations’ clash is likely to support the Americanization of the next generation. Cultural traditions of the homeland have little or no value for younger people who grew up to be American. They feel disconnected from the homeland and culture, even though it is nurtured by the older members of the community. They are Americans, and would like the whole Hmong group to be more “acceptable” by American standards. Pro-assimilation efforts seem to win over traditional views and attitudes.

From the readings above it is evident that the more time an immigrant spends in the United States, and the more early cultural influences of the U.S. society they receive at an early age, the greater the level of their assimilation will be. Going to a school in the U.S. will form one’s values, cultural identity, and attitudes towards society. Vargas chose living in America as an undocumented immigrant because he felt that he was already an American. His connection with the American culture was stronger than that with the Filipino one. The younger generation of Hmong people chooses assimilation over cultural segregation: Hmong traditions have a lower value for them than the values of freedom, democracy, and liberalism.

Lai, E. & Arguelles, D. (1998) A population without a nation. In: The New Face of Asian Pacific America: Numbers, Diversity, and Change in the 21st Century , eds. Eric    Lai and Dennis Arguelles

Lopez, J. (1998) Of Cholos and Surfers. In: Lopez, J. Cholos & Surfers: A Latino Family Album. Capra Press.

Tohidi, N. (2004) Iranian women and gender relations in Los Angeles. In: Jack Solomon and Sonia Maasik (Eds.) California Dreams and Realities . 3rd Edition, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Books,

Vargas, J. (2011) My  Life as an undocumented immigrant. The New York Times. June 22, 2011.

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