It doesn't matter whether you assimilate or not. Yes, if you speak a foreign language or build a Hindu temple or wear traditional Indian clothing, the New Right will scream their heads off about it. But if you put on a University of Texas sweater and go to football games, they'll still scream "Alien invaders!!" when they see you in a photo. It's who you are that bothers them, not what you do.
Progressives in America and socialists in Europe still desperately claim that what angry working-class voters really want is more economic support. They keep offering more and more lavish promises of welfare supports and price controls, while staunchly opposing restrictions on immigration. The approach keeps failing, and the far right keeps rising.
Asian American culture is probably destined to be a sort of transitory, ephemeral thing. The classic second generation experience — 'My parents really drove me hard and kids made fun of my weird lunch, until I went to college and met other people with the same background' — almost never lasts beyond the second generation. Assimilation happens.
High-skilled immigrants don't compete with locals for a fixed pool of jobs; they lure investment to an area, so that the pool of jobs expands. This second effect, more often than not, outweighs the competitive effect, so that native-born Americans actually benefit from the presence of foreign skilled workers.
If you think the GOP will return to being the party of Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Ronald Reagan after Trump is gone, think again. MAGA is already morphing from a personality cult into an ideology — a deeply xenophobic, economically retrograde ideology obsessed with expelling immigrants, and convinced that wealth has made the West immoral and weak.
Fabrizio grew up in poverty in Huánuco, Peru, and moved to the US at age fifteen, where he worked the lowest level jobs—busboy in a Mexican restaurant, door-to-door sales, etc. He eventually found himself in Nashville, and is now ready to make his mark on the country music scene.
"Freedom means you can talk to your friend, criticize the government, and then forget about it and go home. Where I'm from, if you criticize the government, you're not going to make it home."
Immigration — even low-skilled immigration — creates a labor demand shock that balances out the labor supply shock (because the same immigrants who supply labor also demand products that are made with labor). Almost every study finds this.
These mothers face a double bind. They hope to raise children unburdened by the past, comfortable in their new homeland, enjoying opportunities they never had themselves. If they succeed – as with many immigrant parents around the world – their prize is a child who is unintelligible to them.
What if ICE was lurking at the parking lot or in the lobby? If he got deported, what would the family do? For two days, he didn't go to work. He lay in bed, hoping it would heal.
5mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
