Immigration and Integration

Today John Mollenkopf talked to us about the politics of immigration in the United States through a historical lens and then drew points of comparison with the situation in the European Union. Mollenkopf explained the four major waves of immigration in the United States. The goal of this was to show that the United States has always been a land of immigrants. As a case study, Mollenkopf used his own genealogical tree to demonstrate that for some immigrants there are certain “critical junctions” in which they make the choice to assimilate. For the German immigrants, this moment came during World War I, when they renounced their culture and language and fought on the American side.

Furthermore, Mollenkopf highlighted a number of differences between the USA and the EU, making it seem as if the American immigration laws and policies have been more successful. In the United States, for example, everyone born on US ground is legally considered a US citizen, which is known as birthright citizenship, whereas in the EU immigrants can stay for successive generations without ever taking up European citizenship. Also, Mollenkopf pointed out that the welfare state can be an agent of inclusion as well as exclusion: on the one hand, it provides a safety net that immigrant populations benefit from; on the other hand, reliance on welfare renders the immigrants little more than second-class citizens in the host country, especially given the fact that immigrants in the US are commonly judged on the basis of their economic productivity.

From a European perspective, Mollenkopf’s remarks about the welfare system are for the most part ill placed, though not entirely wrong. Surely, the welfare system has the tendency to immobilize its beneficiaries, and perhaps Mollenkopf is also right to assert that the immigrant has the moral imperative to prove her worth through hard work or political commitment. But even if there were another great war to fight and, therefore, an opportunity for the immigrant population to prove once again its worth, what guarantees does an immigrant have that he or she will not end up like African-Americans did after World War II? The welfare system gives an immigrant time to negotiate her position and place in the host society, though this does not mean that the welfare system cannot make its own demands on the immigrant. The welfare system can and often does make its own demands, like the language proficiency requirement recently instituted in many European countries.

Peter Schuck explained the current immigration debate by hammering on the importance of the second generation. In his eyes, the second generation plays a fundamental role in the integration and assimilation of an immigrant community. Like Mollenkopf, Schuck painted an overly optimistic picture of immigration in the United States, often referring to anti-immigration policies in Europe as “xenophobic” and to those in the United States as “understandably necessary.” Schuck highlights that the public is not against immigration, although they are more selective about who gets in. Labor unions have traditionally opposed immigration, since immigrant workers undermine the union’s power by not caring much for labor rights. Another group historically against immigration is the African-American community, who have witnessed the new immigrants take away their jobs. This has resulted in the escalation of social and even racial tensions among different ethnic communities. Schuck talked about these tensions as “inevitable” and pressed for immigration reform. With the shrinking of labor unions, the opposition against immigration reform has dwindled. Even many members of the Republican Party have pushed for comprehensive reform to regulate the arrival and integration of new immigrants.

In the afternoon, Fatimah Muhammad came to speak about her work at the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, a non-profit organization fostering integration among the different ethnic communities that share the city of Philadelphia. The Center was established in 2003 in response to what many perceived were unavoidable tensions and rifts between the Black, the Latino, and the Asian communities. The idea was to create a public forum where cross-ethnic, cross-cultural encounters and exchange takes place on a regular basis as a means to resolve issues of importance for the entire community. The Center seeks to break the isolation of individual actors, whether people or entire groups, to address issues of community development.

As Peter Schuck had pointed out before, different ethnic communities oftentimes find themselves in the midst of a relentless competition for resources of all kinds: wealth, political power, prestige, among others. This competition creates a great deal of resentment, animosity, and, in some cases, even hatred among some of these communities. For many people, these tensions are inevitable and cannot be fully resolved except through comprehensive immigration reform. For others, like those working at the Center, these tensions create opportunities for the deployment of strategies to increase cultural awareness, dialogue, and the protection, legal or otherwise, of all local communities. In so doing, the Center seeks to create more inclusive, more tolerant, more accepting, and more democratic communities.

At the core of the Center's work lies the Conflict Resolution Training Program, a forum in which people are invited to express their discontent and their frustrations to one another in the context of a "civilized" conversation that representatives from the Center mediate. The Center offers also English as a Second Language classes for recent immigrants with a focus on business entrepreneurship, highlighting the crucial importance of "community-oriented businesses": small establishments that serve particular needs of the community, an example of which is a local beer deli owned and operated by a Cambodian family. In addition to these, the celebration each year of "Holidays Around the World" provides an incredible opportunity for the community to come together and learn about the different cultural expressions, music, food, and languages, that locals can find in their own backyards. The organization of community clean-ups also provides locals with the opportunity to work with each other towards cleaner neighborhoods.

Obviously, the Center has encountered a great deal of resistance to its agenda in the form of apathy, gentrification, real estate development of the area, and racial prejudice. Yet the challenges, though great, have not been insurmountable. The Center seems to have proven incredibly successful so far, perhaps because its ideas and basic goals are so simple and transparent. We were all incredibly inspired by Fatimah's testimony, and can only hope that this experience serves as the blueprint for more local, community-based projects like this one.