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There was the Ni’ihau Incident, in which the Japanese-Americans on the island immediately went to help the downed pilot — but in the context of, for example, the 442nd Infantry Regiment, this one incident can likely be counted as a rounding error.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder whether changing attitudes towards assimilationism also change the calculus. My cursory intuition: immigrants were far more pushed to assimilate back in the ‘30s and ‘40s than they are in these ‘20s, where metaphors like the “melting pot” are derided, the very notion of a “cricket test” is tarred as racist, and having a non-American (or better yet: non-Western) culture and family living in their Old Country is treated as a sign of moral worth. As such, I’d expect the number of “would-be-treacherous immigrants” to have risen.
(I recognize that this last bit contains a large number of rather unfounded assertions; I would like to provide concrete examples and details, but alas, phoneposting won’t allow me to do so.)
It seems to me that the only country we have a lot of immigrants from where these sorts of activities would be a major concern is China, and the young 2nd generation Chinese-Americans I know are at worst superficially anti-assimilationist, but in practice can barely speak the language and are made fun of by the tiny minority of truly anti-American Asian commentators/tankies within the community as "boba liberals."
The instances of corruption or treason I see with ties to the Chinese government are just as likely to be committed by white Americans and are usually done just for profit rather than ethnic solidarity. In the long run, the costs of unfounded suspicion are probably greater than that of treating people the same regardless of ancestry in these situations.
Very reasonable analysis. Thinking about the younger second-generation/first-generation-but-moved-at-a-young-age Chinese immigrants that I know, they tend to be rather anti-CCP (and although that doesn’t necessarily mean “pro-America”, it counts for something). And on the flipside, as you said, I’ve met young whites who are very careful to not say anything that might be recorded as being anti-China, lest it impair a future career eastward.
I suppose that in my original post, I was thinking more along the lines of young progressive second-generation immigrants I’ve met (often Latino) who loudly proclaim the evils of America (think “woke”, not “tankie”), put on affected accents, and declare their intent to return to their mother country — eventually. But lots of these progressive values that manifest as anti-Americanism are fundamentally American, and in the anecdotal cases I was remembering, it doesn’t look like the fabled return to the motherland is coming any time soon. I guess that I was conflating Blue-Tribe-ism with anti-Americanism.
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FWIW, my intuition would be that 1st generation legal immigrants are probably MORE assimilated than 1st generation immigrants in the early 1900s due to higher requirements for entry, but it does seem that young 2nd generation immigrants are much less pushed to assimilate / are less interested in assimilating.
I'll add the caveat that this impression is mostly from East Asian and African immigrant families I've interacted with in the US- the parents generally seem to want to emphasize their Americanness while their children seem to want to emphasize what makes them different, to the extent that quite a few of them resent their parents for trying to raise them as American rather than keeping up cultural traditions/keeping them fluent in their parents' native tongue.
What would your metric for this be? As far as I can tell, contemporary immigrants are assimilating just as fast or faster than historically as measured by things like language or intermarriage rates (e.g. my German ancestors moved to Iowa in the 1850s and didn't stop speaking German until WWI killed off German American subculture).
That's common with second generation immigrants everywhere (again, as far as I can tell) - first gen immigrants don't necessarily fit in as well, but they chose to uproot their lives and move to a different country, so they're eager to make it work. Second gen immigrants are more likely to be in an awkward limbo were they don't quite fit into their country of birth (often exacerbated by racism from their peers) and didn't choose it. For some, their parents' country of origin takes on conceptual role similar to how some adoptees treat their (unmet/absent) biological parents. Cue a soul-searching trip to the old country where they find out it kind of sucks and also they don't fit in even a little.
It seems like the US census information for bilingualism etc for 2nd gen immigrants doesn't start until 1940 (only for either 1st gen or those unable to speak English before that), which is of course after many of the European immigrant groups of the late 1800s and early 1900s had pretty well assimilated.
That is to say while this was not revealed to me in a dream, take this as basically my unsupported impressions from 1st gen immigrants vs 2nd gen immigrants in the 16-35 age range vs 2nd gen immigrants in the 50-80 age range (which of course also opens up the possibility that the older group are simply more assimilated due to age rather than anything generational) rather than any sort of rigorous analysis.
My own impressions are that children of immigrants are a lot more likely to claim a foreign identity than they used to be, but without actually having one. In their eyes, their parents' culture consists of a handful of traditional foods that trigger their childhood nostalgia, a colorful outfit they wear once or twice for an instagram photoshoot, a language they speak at best at the level of an unschooled toddler, and if they are progressive enough the right to blame systemic racism for their challenges in life.
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