The Progressive Significance of Immigrants to American Culture

From the British colony in North America to the founding of the United States, the United States has welcomed generations of immigrants for hundreds of years, which has also contributed to the assimilation of these immigrants by Anglo-Saxon political, social, cultural and economic traditions. The most typical example is that Russian immigrants who believe in great nationalism and immigrants from Nordic countries who believe in national welfare will adopt American concepts such as constitutionalism, civil rights and market freedom within one generation. Immigrants from China and India are as innovative as their American counterparts.

But things are changing. American scholars, especially native white scholars, know through statistics that 60% of the population growth in the United States is related to immigration; One in nine Americans was born abroad, and one in five American children was born abroad. About half of Hispanics and Asians were born outside the United States; In many cities, ethnic minorities are in the majority. It is estimated that in a few decades or longer, the proportion of white Americans in the total population of the country will be lower than the average. Among non-white immigrants, the birth rate of Asian immigrants with the strongest ambition and higher education is far lower than that of Hispanic immigrants.

A pessimistic view holds that the dominant position of Anglo-Saxon tradition will be overthrown with the fundamental change of the racial proportion of the American population. If this prediction comes true, it will have a far-reaching impact on the political situation and other fields in the United States. In fact, this influence has been initially reflected. In the 20 12 US presidential election, Romney, who had a bad impression on Hispanic immigrants and the second generation of immigrants, despite his efforts in the election campaign, was far less able to govern than Obama. This influence will also translate into changes in the policy style and content of American foreign policy. At the same time, white Americans have realized that non-white immigrants have a lasting impact on their values and lifestyles, which will inevitably affect the immigration policy of the United States and even the policy of recruiting overseas students through more skilled and active policy lobbying. Any change in these two aspects will affect people in China and China.

American John? Hao Lingxin, a sociology professor at Hopkins University, wrote The Study of American Wealth Stratification: Race, Immigration and Wealth, which brought together the theoretical viewpoints of immigrant choice, immigrant assimilation, social stratification and wealth accumulation, pointed out the changes brought about by the large increase of immigrants, especially non-white immigrants, analyzed the changes of American immigrant assimilation, and evaluated the problems of wealth stratification and wealth assimilation brought about by immigrants of different ethnic groups moving to the United States.

The book points out that the rapid expansion of non-white immigrants, especially Hispanic and Asian immigrants, has ended the years-long stalemate in black-white residential segregation and played a more significant role in promoting racial reconciliation and integration than affirmative action. However, it should be pointed out that the competition and exclusion between immigrants of different ethnic groups are far more obvious than the above reconciliation and integration. In the United States, illegal immigrants account for one-third of the total number of immigrants. These people are not protected by the labor law, and the wages they accept are far below the minimum wage. A large part of illegal immigrants in the United States are Hispanic immigrants, which will naturally affect the relationship with immigrants of other ethnic groups. On the other hand, the traditions of Asian immigrants, especially those from China (including China, Hongkong and Taiwan Province Province), Japanese immigrants and Korean immigrants, which attach importance to their children's education and have a high savings rate, are not only in sharp contrast with Hispanic and black immigrants, but also very different from American traditions, showing their rebellion against the existing assimilation methods.

The American government and the labor market adopt different procedures and give different treatment to different types of immigrants from different countries. For example, highly skilled professional immigrants (skilled immigrants), regardless of their race, are easily accepted by the US government. Correspondingly, American scientific research institutions or enterprises will also hire them in the scientific, engineering and health care industries, so that they can quickly obtain legal status. For another example, different immigration motives and cultural sources determine the income acquisition, consumption, savings and portfolio distribution patterns of the corresponding immigrant groups. Those immigrants who intend to return to their home countries will try to earn enough income in a short time, minimize consumption, send remittances to their home countries regularly and establish assets in their home countries; Those immigrants (mostly Asians) who intend to stay in the United States forever will try their best to invest in education and accumulate wealth in the United States. For these two types of immigrants with completely different behavioral characteristics, the American government has always maintained a differentiated immigration naturalization policy, but because the former type of immigrants are welcomed by enterprises, it is impossible to adopt a too strict exclusion policy.

The study of wealth stratification in the United States: race, immigration and wealth analyzes the assets and liabilities of Hispanic immigrants, Asian immigrants and black immigrants in the United States respectively. Latin American immigrants mostly keep Roman Catholic beliefs and ignore savings, which is regarded as a subversive factor to the existing social belief system (values) and public welfare system in the United States in the future. What is more noteworthy is that Latin American immigrants are more keen to try financial innovation business than immigrants from other ethnic groups in the United States, which makes them the biggest victims of the subprime mortgage crisis and intensifies the opposition and contradiction between such groups and local whites. Asian immigrants are relatively young, and the key factor affecting their integration into the United States and acceptance of economic and social assimilation lies in language barriers; Once this gap is resolved, they will quickly integrate into the lifestyle of local whites and agree with American values-as mentioned above, only the ethnic characteristics of attaching importance to education and high savings rate will be retained. Black immigrants to the United States come from the Caribbean and Africa respectively, and they are at the bottom of American social class.

Through a series of detailed data and case studies, the book concludes that in today's immigration environment, the continuous influx of immigrants and the differences in immigrants' adaptation to American society make the wealth stratification caused by race and education in the United States more and more complicated. First of all, race and education level are the primary factors of wealth stratification, and native birth is the secondary factor, which creates conditions for Asian immigrants to reach the same wealth status as native whites faster. Secondly, race and education are interdependent, and strengthening investment in education can partially resolve the difficulty of integrating into mainstream American society. Third, natives will divide immigrants of the same race and ethnicity. For example, the second generation of Asian immigrants born in the United States will be divided from the new Asian immigrants in terms of wealth stratification.