You are the epitome of what immigrants were in my youth. We all had either parents or grandparents who had a foreign accent. And when they said, God Bless America, they meant it from their hearts. Europe was behind a door they closed behind them. They called this country the Goldene Medina, the Golden Land. And they wanted their children and grandchildren to be Ameicans. Not hyphenated Americans. They just didnt think that way.

I share your “depression” about the future. And I too read some light stuff between doses of reality.

My grandparents came from Lumza, so we have a little bit of commonality.

I don’t know if its still true but as recently as the late 90′s the Hispanic population showed the same assimilationist tendencies as previous immigrants. However, since we are in the middle of a large Hispanic immigration wave you tend only observe the newcomers. Hispanics come in, Americans come out. Polls of Hispanic immigrants continue to show that they place a high priority on their children learning and being schooled in English not Spanish.

The non-assimilation movement is sponsored by a combination of post-modern anti-western multi-cults, bureaucrats who see an opportunity for job security and the Democratic Party that would like to make Hispanics as poor and dependent as African-Americans on the Party so they get a lock on the vote. Polls now show about a 60/40 split D/R in the Hispanic electorate. That’s the same way that Italian-Americans split in 1960.

I lived in the US long enough to understand why you choose your handle. But is may be my rigid Euro upbringing that makes me wince slightly when I use it addressing somebody whom I like and respect; I would rather address you as a Knuck if you donít object

Ted,

You may find it surprising (or not), but I very much concerned with the phenomenon that you describe. I perfectly understand the uniqueness of the melting pot concept. VHD too has a book on the subject, ìMexifiorniaî. I have not read it yet, because I did not want to get even more depressed. I am capable of working myself into very lively anxiety over these things, so I try to pace myself. But I will get to it and will also read the book you recommend.

BTW, full integration of my ancestors into the American society does not worry me one bit. I myself always get annoyed when people ask me: “where are you from” (damn bloody accent of mine always betrays me!). For years I was responding: I am an American, but this never stopped anybody from pushing: but where are you REALLY from. And we are not talking about friends or business associates: every clerk in the grocery store asks me that. I know ñ they are just trying to be friendly. But it never seem to occur to anybody that being an American is more important to me than the accident of my birth. Once I really got upset because an ITALIAN-american guy at a orchid show lunched into a lecture about how I should be proud of my ethnic ancestry at the expense of my American citizenship. It was not terribly good marketing technique because I left ñ without buying anything from him.

Other things that annoy me are ballots printed in 3 languages ñ I thought that passing knowledge of English was a requirement for citizenship. Apparently, not anymore.

Re: wackiness of San Francisco: I live here! It is my opinion that this place will only get better when all the old hippies will die out.

I’ve been meaning to pick up Huntington’s book but haven’t tracked down my round tuit. I will read it.

We do need to have a national “conversation” about immigration but Americans have gone completely bonkers on this issue.

I am the ONLY person I know who was genuinely glad when Bush threw that immigration proposal on the table. Everybody else I had any discussion with about this went into spitting screed mode in ten seconds flat. I was astonished by the reaction. He got splattered and smashed from both sides of the spectrum and every point in between as far as I can tell. I did some quick scanning of the proposal and it seemed far from ideal, but it sure looked like a valid starting point for a discussion.

There are two things I know we, the United States, are not going to do any time soon:

1. Seal the borders. Its not going to happen.

2. Round up and deport all the illegal immigrants. Not gonna happen.

So let’s start figuring out how we want to handle the borders and what levels of immigration make sense and whether or not we want to profile or give preference. And we need to start figuring out what the heck we want to do about “documentation” and public services and welfare. I have no animosity toward any would be immigrant but I don’t see how making a dive into the endzone for a entry level touchdown entitles one to an education at taxpayer expense. And if one wanders down to wherever it is your local goverment handles things like “head start” and “language training” and “know your benefits” type agencies (this will typically be something like the county capital) you might be surprised to find that these programs are swarmed with immigrants and the “legal vs. illegal” is handled as “don’t ask, don’t tell”. I happened upon this in my area by accident and did a shallow little look into it and it was mind boggling how we handle this sort of thing.

Let’s figure out what we want to do about the illegals already here. From the Otherwise Usefully Intelligent I here nothing between “open borders” and “round ‘em up and deport ‘em”. The last numbers I heard for illegals already here is somewhere between 6 and 14 million. Anyone who believes for one moment that we’re going to start kicking in doors and rounding up between 6 and 14 million people is smoking some really potent stuff. We’ll have “hands across America” conga lines in 30 minutes flat. We’ll have millions of Americans lined up a dozen deep protecting illegal enclaves. I’d be sorely tempted to join them to be honest. Despite the fact that I’m a jackbooted, brownshirted, charter member of the VRWC I don’t actually harbor any desire to see jackbooted brownshirt behavior in my nation.

Our police departments apparently want no part of dealing with immigration issues. Our welfare services people want no part of it or, conversely, see it as their job to help illegals. Our border patrol people are catching something like a million a year and missing another million. When illegals get here they find easy ways to get whatever documentation they need to look like a legal for all necessary purposes. And we have people who think its a good idea to give illegals the right to vote.

Completely baffling and what my mom always called “one mell of a hess”. But NOBODY seems to want to have the discussion. Its straightaway to the screaming and accusations. Sigh.

You can fully expect that your grandchildren will be full Americanized. They will have little or no knowledge of the Polish language. Through marriage, some of them may have last names like Goldstein or Benedetto or Oreilly. Such was the case with all previous waves of immigrants. That is not longer the case. Again I refer to Huntington.

What is really new is that the US now defacto recognizes dual citizenship. Historically, the UK and its dominions have always held once a brit always a brit. It caused no end of problems in the early days of the Republic. To American seaman the RN boarding party’s question of when and where were you born could have a major impact on your life. For someone born in Boston in 1781 it meant an immediate transfer from the US merchant service to the Royal Navy because you born a British subject and you would die that way.

I think we could use a whole new thread on this topic.

Ted

Please do get Hintingtons book.

There is something happening to our country which we are only semi-aware of. We get all in an uproar when we hear of San francisco trying to allow non citzens, both legal and illegal, to vote in school board elections. Or when we hear of a state granting drivers licenses to illegals. What we lose sight of is the rapidly growing number of legal aliens and naturalized citizens who hold both US and Mexican citizenship. The comparison is to French speaking Canada where there has always been a separatist movement. In 10 or 20 years we may face a situation where there are 2 Americas here. Spanish speaking border states, somewhat akin to the Kurds living across borders in the Middle East. Huntingtons point seems to be, if that is happening at least we should be aware of it and have a national conversation about it before it happens. Multiculturism , transnationalism, bilingualism, the education system, all enter into this discussion.

With elected officials and an important voting bloc, great influence will be felt on our national policies. The American Creed, which had been adopted by all previous immigrant groups, is in jeopardy. Not today, but in the coming generations. And that will have ramifications on our international policies.

I just feel this sense of unease about all of this. America and Americans are unique because of our historic development. And that will be changing. We have been discussing the attitudes of old Europe here. Perhaps we are following in their path? I don’t know, but I would hate for that to happen while we werent paying attention.

Don’t concern yourself about the handle. I think of it as truth in labeling

Thanks for your detailed answers. It didn’t wander or ramble from my perspective. It was coherent and made sense to me. A very good example of how someone looking from the outside can come to a different conclusion than someone with direct life experience.

I’ll have to go look up the naturalization oath. I know several Swedish expats who didn’t quite get around to naturalizing until Sweden altered its laws and allowed them to keep the original citizenship. That was the impetus for them to finally get off the dime and become naturalized US citizens. I don’t want start a discussion of the semi-bassackwardsness of that, but that’s how it was.

They had all the other pros and cons long since considered but never took the Big Step and actually pulled the trigger until surrendering their original citizenship was no longer required by that nation. I suppose that’s a very real form of allegiance, but for most of the people I know who did this, and its a bunch not just 2 or 3, their lives are here in the US but for whatever reason they couldn’t make the final cut.

But Swedes were never in the same boat as Poles, so keeping or cutting allegiances could be a very different thing.