Immigrant Commitment to America, Then and Now: Myths and Realities

In the past four decades, a massive wave of immigration has been transforming the United States, the vast majority of the new arrivals coming from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As Americans grapple with understanding the newcomers in their midst, they often hark back to the triumphs and tribulations of European immigrants who came in the great ine ux a century ago. The old-time immigrants are remembered as exulting in their arrival in the promised land, eager to assimilate and become part of a growing and great America. Against this image, present-day arrivals often fail to measure up. A popular fear is that they will have trouble, indeed often resist, e tting in; that their origins in non-Western cultures are poor preparation for American life; and that they are not committed to America or its institutions. In today’s multicultural era, many worry that immigrants are not ‘Americanizing’ the way they did in the good old days—and that even when they naturalize, new forms of dual nationality are weakening the meaning of American citizenship and the integrity of American civic traditions. As is often the case, such popular images give a distorted picture of the complex realities that underlie them. A century ago, many native-born Americans viewed newly arrived eastern and southern European immigrants with fear and loathing, as ‘repulsive creatures’ who menaced the very foundations of American civilization (Nadell, 1981, pp. 274‐75). These negative attitudes—as well as the strong allegiances that many earlier immigrants retained to their homelands—have been forgotten in a haze of history, replaced by images that glorify the past. By the same token, fears that contemporary immigrants are not e tting in, not learning about American history and customs, and not forming allegiances to the United States are signie cantly overblown. This article looks beyond the myths and images to discuss the realities of the immigrant experience in both eras. The focus is on naturalization—as well as dual citizenship—and on education for citizenship. The analysis draws on e gures and studies for the United States as a whole. I also draw on my larger study of immigration to New York City, which compares immigrants today and in the last great wave at the beginning of the twentieth century (Foner, 2000).