Well then you come by your ignorance and xenophobia naturally, just as the prior generations of Irish, Italian, Russians, jews, etc did who came in facing the same ignorance and hate and yet as soon as they settled heaped that hate on the next group arriving.
Did you know that many of those Russians, Italians, Irish, etc arriving were criminals, and seeded organized crime as they arrived? they would take over docks and Ports of entry and drug trades in the inner cities. They came as here as criminals and continues to live like criminals???
That you do not think todays immigrants are 'shoved into ghettos' also due to a 'lack of being able to live anywhere else', just show how deeply ignorant you are on this topic.
Todays immigrants come here illegally and end up in shelters or anywhere they can find lodging, including the streets. During the immigration boom, the borders were open and immigrants were welcomed. It wasn’t easy for them and they faced scorn as well, but they assimilated quickly. They came here with the intention of finding work and realized it was a requirement to live. Now, they fight to get on public assistance as quick as possible.
Here is from an article on assimilation and integration. I don’t believe the recent influx of immigrants will face that same pressure to assimilate and thus, are less likely to do so. And as I posted for Andy, they are clogging up our court systems with 75% of arrests being migrants.
Having an American-sounding name was a badge of assimilation that conferred genuine economic and social benefits. We looked at census records of more than a million children of immigrants from 1920, when they lived with their childhood families, through 1940, when they were adults.
Children with less-foreign-sounding names completed more years of schooling, earned more, and were less likely to be unemployed than their counterparts whose names sounded more foreign. In addition, they were less likely to marry someone born abroad or with a foreign-sounding name. These patterns held even among brothers within the same family. The data suggest that, while a foreign-sounding name reinforced a sense of ethnic identity, it may have exposed individuals to discrimination at school or on the job.
Other measures reinforce the picture of early 20th century immigrants gradually taking on American cultural markers. By 1930, more than two-thirds of immigrants had applied for citizenship and almost all reported they could speak some English. A third of first-generation immigrants who arrived unmarried and more than half of second-generation immigrants wed spouses from outside their cultural group.
These findings suggest that over time immigrants’ sense of separateness weakened and their identification with U.S. culture grew stronger. The gradual adoption of American-sounding names appears to have been part of a process of assimilation in which newcomers learned U.S. culture, made a commitment to build roots in this country, and came to identify as Americans.
Some may have arrived with a strong desire to assimilate, but little knowledge of how to do so. They may not even have known which names were common in the U.S. Others may not have cared about assimilating at first, but eventually felt the urge to blend in. In both cases, as time went by, they may have started to navigate the dominant culture with greater ease. Their children may have attended schools with children from other cultures and have spoken with American accents.