If you want to be an American...

The Washington Post had an article today on assimilation in the United States by immigrants. It pretty much confirms what is going on. Some immigrants get it and some do not and our government and some corporate (especially media) interests are not helping the process. Here are some of the money quotes:

"Communications and travel revolutions have enabled immigrants to keep closer ties to their homelands, perhaps creating more transnational identities. Unlike in the 1920s, when foreigners were all but prevented from immigrating to the United States, today's immigrants keep coming, and most speak one language: Spanish. That means generations can maintain contact with ancestral cultures and tongues."

There is no better illustration of this than Tale of Two Immigrants.
But, some immigrants get it. Like Alcides Orellana from El Salvador who studies American History on the internet who said:

"If you live in America, you have to be American."

Which is exactly what Teddy Roosevelt said one hundred years ago:
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."-Theodore Roosevelt 1907

If Teddy Roosevelt were to meet Mr. Orellana he would say "Bully for you Alcides"!
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