The myth of the melting pot.
Melting pot theory suggests that different cultural practices “melt” to combine into one healthy society with a common culture. Immigrants who converge in the United States come with other cultural practices and religious belief. There are immigrants from Africa, Europe and Asia in the United States. Continued immigration in this country has led to diversity in culture and beliefs. In the united states of America, there are all sorts of people from all over the world. The USA can be the home of many cultures. In this paper, we will able to understand more about the myth of the melting pot and immigration in the United States of America.
Historically, the myth of the melting pot has described the integration n of cultures of immigrants in the united state. The tale was first used in the 1780s describing the fusion of nationalities, cultures and ethnicities. The proponents of multiculturalism, however, have rejected the melting pot theory and assimilation. Under multiculturalism, American society is comprised of a mixture of cultures. In America, the issue of melting pot on immigration has been equated to Americanization, which means cultural assimilation and acculturation. In this regard, immigrants tend to be absorbed culturally by the existing natives in the US.
The melting pot theoty implies the melting of cultures into one and intermarriages between people of different cultures. Cultural assimilation or acculturation can take place without intermarriages. Therefore, the Africa-Americas are wholly integrated into the American institutions and culture, for more than a century after the abolition of slavery. Intermarriage between Africans and other ethnicities were few compared to the intermarriages between different whites or amongst the Asians ethnicities. The intermarriages between the white and the blacks were deemed as a taboo in the united states of America, and it was illegal until 1967.
In the melting pot ethnicities, the American identity is centred for all assimilation or rather acculturation where the white immigrant groups intermarried. The reason why whites intermarried is that the population of whites was perceived as productive compared to the black people. In the USA, the black men are associated with misfortunes like drug trafficking, robbery and other social crimes. Between the late 19th and 20th century, European immigrates increased in united states. In the begging of the 1890s, large crowds of Italians, Poles and Jews arrived in the United States of America.
Some of the European immigrants, however, returned to their homeland. Those who remained in the united states merged, adopting the American lifestyle. The process is what people refer to as the melting pot. In that period, Chinese ethnic people also arrived in America but faced a lot of hostility, and the new laws of the 1880s tried to discriminate them. However, many Chinese managed to close the border illegally but were a force to stay at “Chinatowns”. The popular concept of the melting pot was as a result of the ongoing debates of immigration in the USA.
The main idea behind the melting pot theory is on how immigration affects American society and how immigration was approached. Several scholars have equated melting pot theory to the assimilation of the European immigrants. American nativist restricted melting pot because they felt that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were undesirable. New laws on immigration were imposed on the 1920s, which stated that the number of arrivals should be small. National quotas were also established discouraging immigrants from countries like Poland, Italy and Russia. The law encouraged immigration from Britain, Germany and Ireland.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is an administrative body that protects eligible immigrant youths in America who came when they were children from deportation. DACA aims to protect young undocumented immigrants from being deported and secondly; they give these youths a work permit. The individuals are however required to renew the program after every two years. Eligible persons under DACA should be under 31 years as of June 15, 2012. The individual must have been in the united states of America before he/she was 16 years old.
Many families are freeing place like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to America for refuge. Families have undertaken dangerous journeys to seek safety in the United States of America. But the question is it right to harass these families willing to cross the border for safety purposes. Do these people have the right to request asylum without being separated from their children or rater getting criminalized? Should they be chased away to go back and face their problems? Food for thought. Asylum in the protection offered to families who demonstrates that they are unwilling and unable to return to their home country because of the underlying problems.
According to international law following the atrocities of world war II, it incorporated the right to seek asylum. United States Congress has also adopted critical provisions of the Geneva refugee convention into the USA immigration law, which as the Refugee Act of 1980. The refugee convention included the international definition of a refugee. According to this law, an asylum seeker is a person who has left his country in search of safety and has formally applied for protection in a foreign country as an asylum seeker can be of any age, gender, status, nationality or race. In most cases, asylum seeker comes from countries suffering from disaster, conflict and the weak rule of law.
Is to so humiliating as many individuals are separated from their family members and more so the children as they cross the USA border searching for safety. Many parents are separated from their children daily at the border. The children are labelled unaccompanied minors are sent to government custody for care. The parents later labelled as criminals who end up in jail. Data shows that between October 1, 2017, and May 31 2018, more than 2700 children were separated by police from their parents. That data also revealed that the government took more than 45 children from their parents. People can blame the Trump administration for mishandling children of asylums who seek refuge in the United States of America. This separation dramatically affects children psychologically. They even refuse to sleep as they wonder where the parents are—some cries as they want to see their parents. The separation of asylums and their children has caused psychological trauma. The society should review this vice as it severely affects many people in the USA.
Works cited.
Hogan, Jackie, and Kristin Haltinner. “Floods, invaders, and parasites: Immigration threat narratives and right-wing populism in the USA, UK and Australia.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36.5 (2015): 520-543.
Lind, Dara. “The Trump administration’s separation of families at the border, explained.” Vox. Retrieved June 19 June 19 (2018).
Orosco, José-Antonio. Toppling the Melting Pot: Immigration and Multiculturalism in American Pragmatism. Indiana University Press, 2016.