Becoming American: Why Immigration Is Good for Our Nation's Future (27 page)

6. Ross Douthat, “When Assimilation Stalls,”
New York Times
, April 27, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/douthat-when-the-assimilation-of-immigrants-stalls.html?_r=0
(accessed July 24, 2013).

7. Hanes, “Immigration: Assimilation and the Measure of an American.”

8. Hanes, “Immigration: Assimilation and the Measure of an American.”

9. Kris Olds, “Global Citizenship—What Are We Talking About and Why Does It Matter?”
Inside Higher Ed.com
,
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalhigh ered/global-citizenship-%E2%80%93-what-are-we-talking-about-and-why-does-it-matter
(accessed July 24, 2013).

10. John Fonte, “New Hudson Study: America’s Patriotic Assimilation System Is Broken,”
Hudson Institute
, April 8, 2013,
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=9569
(accessed July 24, 2013).

11. Dowell Myers, “The Next Immigration Challenge,”
New York Times
, January 11, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/the-next-immigration-challenge.html
(accessed July 24, 2012).

12. Hanes, “Immigration: Assimilation and the Measure of an American.”

13. “The Migrant Integration Policy Index,”
Immigration Policy Center
,
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/migrant-integration-policy-index-mipex-iii
(accessed July 24, 2013).

14. “The Migrant Integration Policy Index.”

15. Tarini Parti, “‘Assimilation’ a Flash Point in Immigration Debate,”
Politico .com
, June 10, 2013,
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/assimilation-a-flash -point-in-immigration-debate-92469.html
(accessed July 24, 2013).

16. John J. Xenakis, “World View: Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, and Analysis of the Boston Bombers,”
Breitbart
, April 20, 2013,
http://www.breitbart.com/Big -Peace/2013/04/19/20-Apr-13-World-View-Generational-analysis-of-Boston-Mara thon-bombings
(accessed July 24, 2013).

17. Michael Cooper, Michael S. Schmidt, and Eric Schmitt, “Boston Suspects Are Seen as Self-Taught and Fueled by Web,”
New York Times
, April 23, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/boston-marathon-bombing-developments.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(accessed July 24, 2013).

18. Michael Wines and Ian Lovett, “The Dark Side, Carefully Masked,”
New York Times
, May 4, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/us/dzhokhar-tsarnaevs -dark-side-carefully-masked.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(accessed July 24, 2013).

19. Wines and Lovett, “The Dark Side, Carefully Masked.”

20. “Timeline: A Look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Past,”
CNN.com
, April 22, 2013,
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/21/us/tamerlan-tsarnaev-timeline
(accessed July 24, 2013).

21. “Timeline: A Look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Past.”

22. David Caruso, Michael Kunzelman, and Max Seddon, “Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, Mother of Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects, Says She’s Just Someone Who Found Deeper Spirituality,”
Huffington Post
, April 28, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/28/zubeidat-tsarnaeva-mother-boston-marathon-bombing-suspects_n_3176009.html
(accessed July 24, 2013).

23. Caruso, Kunzelman, and Seddon, “Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, Mother of Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects, Says She’s Just Someone Who Found Deeper Spirituality.”

24. “Timeline: A Look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Past.”

25. “Timeline: A Look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Past.”

26. Wines and Lovett, “The Dark Side, Carefully Masked.”

27. Wines and Lovett, “The Dark Side, Carefully Masked.”

28. “Family of Accused Bombers Divided over Allegations,”
CBSnews
, April 19, 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/04/19/boston-marathon-bombing -suspect-profile.html
(accessed July 24, 2013).

29. “Family of Accused Bombers Divided over Allegations.”

30. Karen Grigsby Bates, “How Koreatown Rose from the Ashes of L.A. Riots,”
NPR: National Public Radio
, April 27, 2012,
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/27/1515249 21/how-koreatown-rose-from-the-ashes-of-l-a-riots
(accessed July 24, 2013).

31. Bates, “How Koreatown Rose from the Ashes.”

32. Bates, “How Koreatown Rose from the Ashes.”

33. Bates, “How Koreatown Rose from the Ashes.”

18

Next Generation, and the Next, and the Next

B
y the time George Washington became our first president, his family had deep Virginia roots, but his great-grandfather, who never returned to England and died on his plantation in 1677 at age forty-six, was known as John Washington, “the immigrant.” He had come to America as the second master on a two-sailed ketch, after Oliver Cromwell’s cohorts—on charges that he was a “malignant royalist” and a drunk—had stripped his reverend father of his parish.

My own wife’s fifteenth great-grandfather, Isaac de Turk, came to this country from Germany in 1708, and when he died nineteen years later, his tombstone was inscribed with only the date and “Joseph the immigrant.”

President John F. Kennedy’s great-grandfather Patrick came to the United States from Ireland in 1848, leaving behind a country in the suffering throes of the crippling potato famine. Patrick Kennedy was a cooper—a maker of wooden casks, barrels, buckets, tubs, butter churns, and other such items. His son Patrick “P. J.” Joseph Kennedy became a prominent Boston businessman and eventually a powerful politician.

But it was P. J.’s grandchildren who would see unprecedented success; two became U.S. senators, and one became the thirty-fifth president of the United States, a milestone for all Catholics.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy, who admired his heritage, traveled to Ireland’s southeast coast, to the place where his great-grandfather set out for America more than a century earlier, and he told the residents of New Ross: “When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty. I am glad to say that all of his great-grandchildren have valued that inheritance.”

As time progresses, it also accelerates, and nowhere can this be seen in more clarity than in the assimilation and acceptance of President Barack Hussein Obama II. Born in Hawaii to a highly educated Kenyan father and an American mother, President Obama has written that “the opportunity that Hawaii offered—experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my worldview, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.” His multicultural experience is what the American experience was for the Europeans who initially immigrated here, and it is now the experience of the non-Europeans.

Obama’s presidency opens another door of opportunity for Americans of non-European descent. The future bodes well for Hispanics, Latinos, blacks, and Asians who may seek the nation’s highest office. Now anyone, regardless of race, creed, color, or gender, truly can become president, though certainly for any individual it will require great political skill, fortitude, and tenacity.

Obama possesses such qualities, but his presidency is more than just a continuation of the immigrant narrative. It serves as another link to the world at large. Where the presidencies of George Washington and John F. Kennedy connected America to England, Ireland, and in general, Europe, Obama’s connects the nation to Kenya and, on a larger scope, Africa and Indonesia, the homeland of his stepfather and where Obama once lived as a child.

Perhaps, considering his heritage, family, and life experiences, Obama is a connection to the world at large. This link is something that he shares with immigrants, who owe part of their success to this trait since time immemorial.

Because parents and children acculturate in different ways and at different rates, immigrant parents and children increasingly live in different cultural worlds. Immigrant parents often understand little of their children’s lives outside the home. For immigrant children, it can be difficult to live with the expectations and demands of one culture in the home and another at school.
¹

The world is becoming more and more diverse, with immigration continuing to have a significant role in the growth of the nation. Pew Research Center data show that in recent decades, “Immigration’s importance increased as the average number of births to U.S.-born women dropped sharply before leveling off.” Nearly one in five Americans will be an immigrant in 2050, compared with one in eight today, but by 2025, Pew states, “The immigrant, or foreign born, share of the population will surpass the peak during the last great wave of immigration a century ago.”
²

The children of the prior wave of immigration founded such household names as McDonald’s, Disney, Bose, Ford, and General Electric. We are currently riding the recent wave of the likes of eBay, Yahoo!, Google, PayPal, Zappos, and Amazon, and it is important that we plan a future that takes advantage of the next potential wave.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, was born in Detroit. Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft, were both born in Seattle. However, the birthplace of the next CEO of Microsoft could very well be Zimbabwe or India.

According to the 
Seattle Times
, Paul Maritz, a Zimbabwe native, and Satya Nadella, an India native, are strong contenders for the position. Both are engineers who have the technical and business background needed to succeed as the chief executive officer of Microsoft.
³
With generally stronger technical backgrounds, immigrants could become many of America’s future business leaders.

One surprising characteristic unites the majority of America’s top high school science and math students: their parents are immigrants. While only 12 percent of the U.S. population is foreign born, 70 percent of the finalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search competition were the children of immigrants, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. While former H-1B visa holders comprise less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, 60 percent of the finalists had parents who entered the United States on H-1B visas, which is generally the only practical way to hire skilled foreign nationals.

As history has proven with George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama, it will be the children and grandchildren of today’s immigrants who will go on to lead our nation.

NOTES

1. “Crossroads: The Psychology of Immigration in the New Century,” American Psychological Association, Presidential Task Force on Immigration,
www.apa.org/topics/immigration/immigration-report.pdf
(accessed July 1, 2013).

2. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “U.S. Population Projections: 2005–2050,”
Pew
Hispanic.org
, February 11, 2008,
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/

 (accessed July 9, 2013).

3. Brier Dudley, “Ballmer’s Biggest Success Was Out of the Spotlight,”
Seattle Times
, August 24, 2013,
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021682849_brierballmerlegacyxml.html
(accessed August 27, 2013).