Thảo luận nhóm TMU the muslim immigration in america with its influences on politics and the attitude of american

CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION

The population of the United States includes a large variety of ethnic groups
coming from many races, nationalities, and religions such as English, Irish, German,
Dutch, Italian, African, Asian and etc. Most of these groups have experienced various
degrees of prejudice and discrimination as they have gone through the process of
assimilation and managed to achieve social mobility. Today, U.S. society is
multicultural, although the extent to multiculturalism carries significant political
repercussions. It makes the United States has a unique culture that is interesting to be
discussed. The topics below will discuss how those races assimilate to the ‘Big
Culture’ and describe how several groups became part of U.S. society, as well as Civil
Rights movement in the United States.

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I.

Definition

1.

Definition of ethnic

Ethnic is used for referring to people that have the same culture and traditions
from a particular ethnic group (within a larger or dominant national or cultural group).
Individuals who identify with a particular ethnic group share the values, interests,
language and confine their interpersonal relations to group membership.

2.

Definition of racial

Racial is used for relating to a particular race of people or something that
existing, connected with or occurring between people of different races.

3.

Definition of assimilation

Assimilation is the process by which many groups have been made a part of a
common cultural life with commonly shared values. As a society undergoes
assimilation, differences among these groups decrease.

II.

Different term to indicate America

1.

Melting Pot

Literal meaning: The Melting Pot is the original fondue restaurant where guests
can enjoy several fondue cooking styles and a variety of unique entrees, salads, and
indulgent desserts.

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Figurative meaning: As we mentioned in Chapter 1, some have described the
United States as a 'melting pot where various racial and ethnic groups have been
combined into one culture.
The Melting Pot was a welcoming place for those of European descent. They
were the broth (or the base) that constituted what everyone else had to conform to. It
would be easy for one to distinguish between a broth and a non-broth item. If you
wanted to fit in and be a full member of American culture, you hoped to become the
broth. This can be seen within the Irish.
The Irish were initially big pieces, out of place in this melting pot. As time went
on, however, the Irish were faced with an enticing offer. If they chose to align with the
Democratic Party and assimilate, they would be allowed to melt into the pot fully and
be treated as equals and “white.” Their assimilation into this pot would end their
oppression in America and allow them to claim a sense of belonging in the society.
The blacks, on the other hand, were chunks that could not be melted into this pot
at all. They were bones perhaps, something that one did not want in the pot to begin
with. They were not meant to fit into society, just to be used as slaves and considered
to be property.
The Melting Pot theory requires that immigrants assimilate in order to become
one common culture American.
Example: Gulliver from Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is one example of a
character whose travels take him to societies that also conform to the melting pot

model. Like the Irish, he chooses to assimilate with the people that he comes across in
his travels (or at least attempts to as much as possible.) This can be seen in the

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adoption of the customs of the foreign land he sets foot on and the rejection of his
English identity in the process.
2. Salad Bowl

Literal meaning: dish consisting of green, leafy raw vegetables, often with radish,
cucumber, or tomato, served with a dressing.
Figurative meaning: United States - the various groups have remained somewhat
distinct and different from one another, creating a richly diverse country.
‘Salad bowl’ suggests that it might be a more inclusive and accurate
representation of how America’s culture developed. Unlike the Melting Pot, which is
homogenous, the Salad Bowl is a heterogeneous mixture. This heterogeneous mixture
was something that we were taught to promote diversity, as it allows one to recognize
the individual identities that contributed to the whole of American culture. This
concept, however, was more optimistic or idealistic than they realized. Perhaps the
Melting Pot theory is historically accurate because of how its problematic nature
reflects the problematic way in which American culture developed. Upon its analysis,
it more accurately and frankly addresses the injustices of the time, instead of sugar
coating it in the way that the Salad Bowl attempts.
The "Salad Bowl" theory basically calls for us to celebrate our diversity along
with our oneness.
Example: Since 1776, an enormous amount of racial and ethnic assimilation has
taken place in the United States, yet some groups continue to feel a strong sense of

separateness from the culture as a whole. Many of these groups are really bicultural.

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That is, they consider themselves Americans, but they also wish to retain the language
and the cultural Traditions of their original culture.

3.

Mosaic

Definition: "Cultural mosaic" is the mix of ethnic groups, languages, and cultures
that coexist within society. The idea of a cultural mosaic is intended to suggest a form
of multiculturalism, different from other systems such as the melting pot, which is
often used to describe nations like the United States' assimilation.
Characteristics: People are more tolerant of other:
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Better for immigrants
People are allowed to practice their own culture
People are more likely to learn English
People feel welcomed
There is more recognition to minority groups
The ideas from diversity of view-points will strengthen the host country
A greater chance that the immigrants will fight for their host country
Attempts to create unity through differences
Provides the public sense of free speech
Democratic
Can help separate conflicting groups
Economically beneficial to immigrants and the host country
Example: In Canada, however, the cultural mosaic is present, where any and all
cultures to enter Canada are embraced and have a separate and respected place in the
culture. In a mosaic, all different cultures are present and recognized in different
aspects of society.
III. The establishment of Dominant Culture
1. What is Dominant Culture

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In societies where there are different kinds of people, one group is usually larger
or more powerful than the others. Generally, societies consist of a dominant culture,
subcultures, and countercultures.
A dominant culture is a cultural practice that is dominant within a particular

political, social or economic entity, in which multiple cultures are present. It may refer
to a language, religion/ritual, social value and/or social custom. These features are
often a norm for an entire society. It achieves dominance by being perceived as
pertaining to a majority of the population and having a significant presence in
institutions relating to communication, education, artistic expression, law, government
and business. The concept of "dominant culture" is generally used in academic
discourse in fields such as sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.
The culture that is dominant within a particular geopolitical entity can change
over time in response to internal or external factors, but one is usually very resilient
and able to reproduce itself effectively from generation to generation. In a polycultural
society, various cultures are celebrated and respected equally. A dominant culture can
be promoted deliberately and by the suppression of minority cultures or subcultures.
2. The census of America population
2.1. Population structure:
In practice, the first census of the new nation, conducted in 1790, counted about
4 million people, most of whom were white.
Of the white citizens, more than eight out of ten traced their ancestry back to
England. African Americans made up a surprising 20 percent of the population, an all-

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time high. There were close to 700,000 slaves and about 60,000 “free Negroes.” Only
a few Native Americans who paid taxes were included in the census count, but the
total native American population was probably about one million.

2.2. The Majority rule
It was the white population that had the greater numbers, the money, and the

political power in the new nation, and therefore this majority soon defined what the
dominant culture would be.
At the time of the American Revolution, the white population was largely
English in origin, Protestant, and middle-class. Such Americans are sometimes
referred to as “WASPs” (white Anglo-Saxon protestants); however, many people now
consider this an insulting term.

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White Anglo-Saxon protestants
Their characteristics became the standard for judging other groups. Those having
a different religion (such as the Irish Catholics), or those speaking a different language
(such as the Germans, Dutch, and Swedes), were in the minority and would be
disadvantaged unless they became assimilated.
3. The Dominant Culture grew out of the Nation's History
The Dominant Culture in a society is the group whose members are in the
majority or who wield more power than other groups. In the United States, the
dominant culture is that of white, middle-class, Protestant people of northern European
descent. There are more white people here than African Americans, Latinos, Asian
Americans, or Native Americans, and there are more middle-class people than there
are rich or poor people.

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Differences between rich and poor
The dominant American culture that grew out of the nation’s early history, then
was English-speaking, western European, Protestant, and middle-class in character. It
was this dominant culture that established which became the traditional values
described by de Tocqueville in the early 1830s. Moreover, Americans believed that
these newcomers would probably give strong support to the basic values of the
dominant culture, such as freedom, equality of opportunity, and the desire to work hard
for a higher material standard of living.

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IV.

The assimilation of different groups of immigrants into the main culture.
1. The assimilation of Non- Protestant and Non- Western European.
1.1 Overview
America used to be a colony of Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Britain.
These people soon brought their culture to America. Through a process of cultural
exchange and integration, the unique cultural identity of the American was formed.
Until the late 19th and the early 20th century, a third wave of migration broke out
in the United States, reaching the number of millions. These people mainly came from
poverty-stricken nations of southern and eastern Europe. They spoke languages other
than English, and large numbers of them were Catholics or Jews. The immigrants,
therefore, were accepted in the United States with some threats.
1.2. Demographic data of the immigrants arriving the US in the late 19th –
the early 20th
Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans migrated to the United States,

peaking between 1881 and 1885 when a million Germans settled primarily in the
Midwest. Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5 million Irish entered
America. Before 1845 most Irish immigrants were Protestants. After 1845, Irish
Catholics began arriving in large numbers, largely driven by the Great Famine.
After 1880 larger steam-powered oceangoing ships replaced sailing ships, which
resulted in lower fares and greater immigrant mobility. In addition, the expansion of a
railroad system in Europe made it easier for people to reach oceanic ports to board
ships. Meanwhile, farming improvements in Southern Europe and the Russian Empire

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created surplus labor. Young people between the ages of 15 to 30 were predominant
among newcomers. This wave of migration, constituting the third episode in the
history of U.S. immigration, may be better referred to as a flood of immigrants, as
nearly 25 million Europeans made the long trip. Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles,
and others speaking Slavic languages made up the bulk of this immigration. 2.5 to 4
million Jews were among them.
1.3. Anti-Catholicism in the US in the late 19th century
Between 1840 and 1924, over 30 million European immigrants relocated to the
United States. Many were Catholic, hailing from as far North as Ireland, as far South
as Sicily and as far east as Poland. In a country established principally by Englishspeaking Protestants who traced their ancestry to Northern Europe, these newcomers
often met with hostility and derision. From the burning of Boston’s Charlestown
Convent in 1834 and the rise of the single-issue, anti-immigrant Know Nothing party
in the 1850s (an organization that, for a brief moment, controlled dozens of
congressional seats and enjoyed extensive influence within the political anti-slavery
coalition)—to the No Irish Need Apply signs of the 1890s—immigrant Catholics faced
the brunt of Protestant America’s rage.

As the immigrant landscape grew more complicated in the late 19th century,
social scientists and politicians began attempting to classify Americans with greater
precision. Whiteness, it now seemed, was a matter of degree, and Europeans fell into
categories like “Anglo Saxon,” “Celtic,” “Hebrew” and “Asiatic.” Importantly, this
move toward racial classification drew heavily on the emerging fields of modern
biology and chemistry.

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In 1911 the famous Dillingham Commission on Immigration attempted to reduce
the mass of new immigrant groups to a simple five-tier racial scheme (Caucasian,
Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay and American). But it wasn’t always so simple. In
Volume 9 of its lengthy report, otherwise entitled A Dictionary of Races or Peoples,
the commission backtracked and acknowledged that the U.S. Bureau of Immigration
“recognizes 45 races or peoples among immigrants coming to the United States, and of
these 36 are indigenous to Europe.”
Critically, many scientists and social scientists (the Dillingham Commission
experts among them) agreed that race was determinative of behavior, intelligence and
physical endowment, and that racial groups could be arranged in a hierarchical
fashion. The Dictionary of Races or Peoples, for instance, characterized Bohemians as
“the most advanced of all” Slavic race groups. The Southern Italian, on the other hand,
it deemed “an individualist having little adaptability to highly organized society.”
Representative of this popular school of thought was the Station for the Study of
Evolution, a think tank established by the Carnegie Institution in 1904 at Cold Spring
Harbor (Long Island). The institute’s director, Charles Davenport, made it his life’s
work to document the relationship between race and comportment. “The idea of a
‘melting pot,’” he wrote, “belongs to a pre-Mendelian age. Now we recognize that

characters are inherited as units and do not readily break up.” From arguing that race
was both determinative and qualitative, it was no great leap of logic to suggest some
racial groups were better fit for citizenship than others.
Senator Ira Hersey of Maine lamented, “We have thrown open wide our gates
and through them have come other alien races, of alien blood, from Asia and southern

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Europe … with their strange and pagan rites, their babble of tongues.” (When he spoke
of “pagan rites,” Hersey almost assuredly meant both the Latin Mass and the Hebrew
service.) Congressman Earl Michener of Michigan only echoed conventional wisdom
when he argued, “the Nordic [race] laid the foundations of society in America,” and to
compromise Nordic genius was pure race suicide.
1.4. Anti-Catholicism in the US in the early 20th century
In the early 20th century, the backlash against Catholic and Jewish immigrants
found its most powerful expression in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization
born in the 1860s in violent opposition to the emancipation of black slaves.
Unlike the original Klan, the new organization sought a national profile and
identified several groups—not just African- American—as alien threats to family and
nation: Catholics, Jews, immigrants, “new women,” bootleggers, criminals and—of
course—black Americans. In effect, the Klan became the sworn enemy of all persons
who threatened, whether by heritage, race or behavior, the imagined ideals that had so
recently held a nation of small, Protestant communities together. Above all, the Klan
touted “one hundred percent Americanism” as an antidote to the social and cultural
decay that seemed to be rotting away the core of American values.
Klan members often infused their reflexive anti-Catholicism with a voyeuristic
interest in the Catholic Church’s rumored (and wholly fictitious) violations of sexual

propriety. Klan literature chronicled the delight that nuns took in whipping young girls.
It claimed that members of the Knights of Columbus vowed to “burn, waste, boil, flay,
strangle and bury alive [non-Catholic] heretics; rip open the stomachs and wombs of
their women and crash their infants’ heads against the walls in order to annihilate their

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execrable race.” Popular Klan lecturers like Helen Jackson, an “escaped nun,” regaled
listeners with tales of carnal relationships between priests and nuns and forced
abortions within convent walls.
Notably, the Klan was not just an agent of rural backlash. As Catholics quickly
came to forge demographic majorities and supermajorities in American cities, the
organization thrived in many urban areas as an agent of resistance to rising Catholic
political influence.
1.5. Americans' help to the immigrants
Firstly, Americans tried to meet what they saw as a threat to their values by
offering English instruction for the new immigrants and citizenship classes to teach
them basic American beliefs. The immigrants, however, often felt that their American
teachers disapproved of the traditions of their homeland. Moreover, learning about
American values gave them little help in meeting their most important needs, such as
employment, food, and a place to live.
Far more helpful to the new immigrants were the “political bosses” of the larger
cities of the northeastern United States, where most of the immigrants first arrived.
Those bosses saw many of the practical needs of the immigrants and were more
accepting of the different homeland traditions.
Many scholars believe that the political bosses performed an important function
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They helped to assimilate large

numbers of new immigrants into the larger American culture by finding them jobs and
housing, in return for their political support. Later the bosses also helped the sons and

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daughters of these immigrants find employment, but the second generation usually had
the advantage of growing up speaking English.
The fact that the United States had a rapidly expanding economy at the turn of
the century made it possible for these new immigrants, often with the help of the
bosses, to better their standard of living in the United States. As a result of these new
opportunities and new rewards, immigrants came to accept most of the values of the
larger American culture and were in turn accepted by the great majority of Americans.
The integration of immigrants and their children contributed to American
economic vitality and American vibrant and ever-changing culture. The US offered
opportunities to immigrants and their children to better themselves and to be fully
incorporated into American society and in exchange immigrants became Americans embracing an American identity and citizenship, protecting the country through
service in its military, fostering technological innovation, harvesting its crops, and
enriching everything from the nation's cuisine to its universities, music, and art.

2.

The African- American Experience

The process of assimilation in the United States has been much more successful
for white ethnic groups than for nonwhite ethnic groups. Of the nonwhite ethnic
groups, Americans of African descent has the greatest difficulty in becoming
assimilated into the larger culture.

In the mid-1500s, European mariners started bringing black Africans to America
as slaves. This forced migration was unique in American history.

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But the slave trade was not new to Europe or Africa. In the eighth century,
Moorish merchants traded humans as merchandise throughout the Mediterranean. In
addition, many West African peoples kept slaves. West African slaves were usually
prisoners of war, criminals, or the lowest-ranked members of caste systems.
An engraving depicting the 1840 convention of the Anti-Slavery Society, held in
London, people attended from around the world, including from the U.S.
The capture and sale of Africans for the American slave markets were barbaric
and often lethal. Two out of five West African captives died on the march to the
Atlantic seacoast where they were sold to European slavers. On board the slave
vessels, they were chained below decks in coffin-sized racks. An estimated one-third
of these unfortunate individuals died at sea.
In America, they were sold at auction to owners, who wanted them primarily as
plantation workers. Slave owners could punish slaves harshly. They could break up
families by selling off family members.
Despite the hardships, slaves managed to develop a strong cultural identity. On
plantations, all adults looked after all children. Although they risked separation, slaves
frequently married and maintained strong family ties. Introduced to Christianity, they
developed their own forms of worship.
Spirituals, the music of worship, expressed both slave endurance and religious
belief. Slaves frequently altered the lyrics of spirituals to carry the hope of freedom or
to celebrate resistance.
In time, African culture enriched much of American music, theater, and dance.

African rhythms found their way into Christian hymns and European marches. The

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banjo evolved from an African stringed instrument. The sound of the blues is nothing
more than a combination of African and European musical scales. Vaudeville was
partially an extension of song-and-dance forms first performed by black street artists.
2.1. Abolition and Civil War
In the 17th and 18th centuries, some blacks gained their freedom, acquired
property, and gained access to American society. Many moved to the North, where
slavery, although still legal, was less of a presence. African- American, both slave and
free also made significant contributions to the economy and infrastructure working on
roads, canals, and construction of cities.
By the early 1800s, many whites and free blacks in Northern states began to call
for the abolition of slavery. Frederick Douglass, a young black laborer, was taught to
read by his master’s wife in Baltimore. In 1838, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts,
where he became a powerful writer, editor, and lecturer for the growing abolitionist
movement.
Frederick Douglass knew that slavery was not the South’s burden to bear alone.
The economy of the industrial North depended on the slave-based agriculture of the
South. Douglass challenged his Northern audience to take up the cause against
Southern slavery. “Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice,
embodied in the Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” he asked. “What to the
American slave is your Fourth of July?”
When the Civil War began, many Northern blacks volunteered to fight for the
Union. Some people expressed surprise at how fiercely black troops fought. But black

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soldiers were fighting for more than restoring the Union. They were fighting to liberate
their people.
2.2. Reconstruction and Reaction
With the defeat of the Confederacy, Northern troops remained in the South to
ensure the slaves newly won freedom. Blacks started their own churches and schools,
purchased land, and voted themselves into office. By 1870, African- American had
sent 22 representatives to Congress.
But many Southerners soon reacted to black emancipation. Supported by the
surviving white power structure, Ku Klux Klan members organized terrorist raids and
lynchings. They burned homes, schools, and churches.
When Northern troops left in 1877, the white power structure returned. Within a
couple of decades, this power structure succeeded in completely suppressing blacks.
African- American was excluded from voting. Southern states wrote Jim Crow laws
that segregated blacks from white society. Blacks lived under constant threat of
violence.
2.3. The Great Migration North
Beginning in the 1890s, many blacks started moving The North. World War I
opened many factory jobs. In the 1920s, strict new laws drastically cut European
immigration. The drop in immigration created a demand for industrial workers in the
Northern cities. Southern blacks, still oppressed by segregation, began to migrate
northward in increasing numbers. Young black men eagerly took unskilled jobs in
meat packing plants, steel mills, and on auto assembly lines in Chicago, Omaha, and
Detroit.

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Black workers unquestionably improved their lives in Northern cities. Indoor
plumbing, gas heat, and nearby schools awaited many arrivals from the rural South.
Discrimination also met them.
Yet black urban culture blossomed. Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll
Morton, and King Oliver brought their music north from New Orleans. In the
sophisticated urban atmosphere of Chicago, these jazz pioneers took advantage of
improvements in musical instruments and new recording technologies to become
celebrities in the Roaring ‘20s, also known as the Jazz Age.
Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant, preached black pride, racial separation,
and a return to Africa. By the early 1920s, Garvey had an estimated 2 million
followers, most of them Northern city-dwellers.
Harlem, an uptown New York City neighborhood, drew black migrants from the
South. Black commerce and culture thrived in Harlem. After World War I, a group of
black writers, artists, and intellectuals gathered there. Like Marcus Garvey, many
sought cultural identity in their African origins. Unlike Garvey, however, they had no
desire to return to Africa. They found creative energy in the struggle to be blacks and
Americans.
This gathering of black artists and philosophers was called the Harlem
Renaissance. Langston Hughes, a black novelist and poet, used the language of the
ghetto and the rhythms of jazz to describe the African-American experience. Jazz
continued its development as a uniquely American art form in Harlem, where
prominent nightclubs like the Cotton Club featured great jazz composers like Duke
Ellington and Fletcher Henderson. Their music lured whites uptown to Harlem to

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share the excitement of the Jazz Age. Zora Neale Hurston combined her writing ability
with her study of anthropology to transform oral histories and rural black folk tales
into exciting stories.
The Depression brought many blacks and whites together for the first time. In the
cities, a half-million African- American joined predominantly white labor unions. In
the South, poor black and white farmers joined together in farmers’ unions.
In 1941, African-American author Richard Wright wrote, “We black folk, our
history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America.
What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is.... The
differences between black folk and white folk are not blood or color, and the ties that
bind us are deeper than those that separate us. The common road of hope which we all
traveled has brought us into a stronger kinship than any words, laws, or legal claims.”
Today, black Americans make significant contributions to every segment of
American society — business, arts and entertainment, science, literature, and politics
and law. Though issues of discrimination remain, African- American who still endures,
achieves, and leads.

V.

Contribution of the new immigrants to the American culture and economic.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, millions of immigrants came from eastern and
southern Europe, bringing cultural traditions perceived by the dominant culture as
quite different. By the 1920s, Americans had decided to close the borders to mass
immigration, and the number of new immigrants slowed to a trickle. However, in
1965, the United States allowed many more immigrants to come and entirely
eliminating the older laws bias in favor of white European immigrants. As a result,

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more and more new immigrants who are nonwhite and non-European came to the US.
About 90 percent are from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Many worry about
what will be the effect on the traditional value system that has defined the United
States for over 200 years? Can the American economy expand enough to offer these
new immigrants the same opportunities that others have had?
Ben Wattenberg, a respected expert on American culture, however, believes that
the 'new immigration' will be of great help to the nation.

1.

Economic

In fact, immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy in many ways. They work at
high rates and make up more than a third of the workforce in some industries. Their
geographic mobility helps local economies respond to worker shortages, smoothing
out bumps that could otherwise weaken the economy. Immigrant workers help support
the aging native-born population, increasing the number of workers as compared to
retirees and bolstering the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And children born
to immigrant families are upwardly mobile, promising future benefits not only to their
families, but to the U.S. economy overall.
In 2018, the labor force participation rate of foreign-born adults was 65.7
percent, higher than the 62.3 percent rate for the native born, according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some 27.2 million foreign-born adults, 63.4 percent of all
foreign-born adults, were employed that year, compared to 59.8 percent of native-born
adults.

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1.1 Immigrants hold jobs that are important to the economy.
Immigrant workers without a college degree make up a sizable share of the
workers in certain industries. Firms in such industries will have a harder time hiring
staff if these workers can no longer come to or stay in the United States.
In March 2018, immigrants with less than a four-year college degree made up 10
percent of all persons (and 11 percent of all U.S. workers) in the United States, but
they reflected a large share of all workers in many important occupations and
industries, according to Census data. (See Table 1. )

1.2 Furthermore, immigrants help to provide business leadership in
developing new products and industries.
A recent study found that between 1990 and 2005, for example, immigrants
started 25 percent of venture-backed U.S. public companies, employing more than
200,000 U.S. workers. And some of the companies at the forefront of the digital
revolution were co-founded by immigrants: Intel, Sun Microsystems, eBay, Google,
and Yahoo to name a few examples. This entrepreneurial spirit is particularly

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important in the wake of the recent recession as we look towards the private sector to
find new opportunities for growth and to create new jobs for American workers

1.3 Immigration also helps drive growth in certain industries.
In the housing industry, for example, slowing growth rates in the U.S.-born
population mean that immigrant households make up a rising share of total growth in
U.S. occupied housing. Immigrants accounted for 8.7 percent of total growth in
households in the 1970s, 15.7 percent in the 1980s, and 31.9 percent in the 1990s.
More recently, analysis of Census Bureau data shows, immigrant-headed households
made up 39.5 percent of household growth.
1.4 Immigrants are an important part of our international competitiveness,
especially in technology-intensive and service industries.
Compared to U.S.-born Americans, immigrants are more likely to hold an
advanced degree and are almost twice as likely to hold a Ph.D. Many of our most
productive scientists and engineers are foreign-born, keeping the United States at the
forefront of global innovation. In 2006, immigrants to the United States played a role
in an estimated 24.2 percent of international patent applications. Innovation leads to
increased productivity for American workers and eventually a higher standard of living
for all Americans.
2. Culture
It can be said that the new immigrants greatly enriched the cultural diversity of
the nation, and they ultimately did not cause major changes to its system of
government, its free enterprise system, or its traditional values.

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Moreover, according to Wattenberg, with the contribution of new immigrants, it
is becoming the first universal nation in history. The United States will be the first
nation where large numbers of people from every region on earth live in freedom
under one government. This diversity, he says, will give the nation great influence and

appeal to the rest of the world during the 21" century
Perhaps the United States will be described not as a 'melting pot' or a 'salad bowl'
but as a mosaic - a picture made up of many tiny pieces of different colors. If one
looks closely at the nation, the individuals of different colors and ethnic groups are
still distinct and recognizable, but together they create a picture that is uniquely
American. 'E Pluribus Unum' - the motto of the United States from its beginning means one composed of many: 'Out of many, one.'

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