Kristen Bird

First World Immigrants & The American Dream.

One of the most insightful and interesting areas of immigrant literature are accounts describing Old World immigrants and their struggle to assimilate.  I have been saddened and shocked at the difficulties many of them faced as they attempted to simply survive each day, much less “fit in” to America’s dominant culture.  The reason the narratives surprised me was that in today’s culture, many immigrants – particularly from First World countries – have made assimilation seem relatively simple as they embrace elements of America’s dominant culture and conform to the “American dream.”  One of my best friends, whom I met in college, was a Canadian immigrant.  And despite slight cultural differences, she was a typical college student in many ways.  My friendship with her caused me to pose the question: Do immigrants today from First World countries find the process of assimilation fairly simple compared to Old World immigrants’ accounts read during this course?  To answer this question, I interviewed immigrants from three different countries that are considered First World.

Lindsay Kuefler was my roommate in college, and she came to the U.S. from Canada with her parents and two younger sisters when she was nineteen years old.  She completed college and worked as an elementary school teacher for two years before returning to Canada to work and live near family and friends.  Lindsay said that before coming to America, she learned about most of the dominant culture through television, since many shows are the same in both countries.  But she still encountered some surprises during college living in what she termed “University culture.”  She said, “Here (Canada) nobody lives in dorms.  You live at home, take the bus, and if you’re not at home, you’re studying. There (U.S.), that was the time of your life.  You moved out, were surrounded by friends, and had a huge social life.”  She added that children in America seem to have a “sense of entitlement” that is often lacking in Canadian young people.  Part of this sense of entitlement may be a reflection of an aspect of America’s dominant culture, the concept of the “American dream.”  Lindsay had heard the term before coming to the U.S. and defined it as, “anything is possible; anybody can achieve it.”  After living in America, she doesn’t believe that all immigrants have a fair chance to realize it.  “I don’t think it’s impossible, but I think there’s a lot more roadblocks put in their way,” she said.  But in her mind, the reason for this has more to do with immigrants’ financial status. This is part of the reason she believes immigrants from First World countries, particularly those with a solid financial background, are able to assimilate more easily.

Adam Stone, whose Hungarian name is Laszlo Sztonak, had a similar view.  He and his family immigrated from Hungary to Yemen in the late 1980s, about a year before the Iron Curtain fell, attempting to escape the communist way of life and so his father could continue important medical research.  Adam learned English in Yemen by attending a Pakistani English school and by spending most of his free time looking up words from his homework in a Hungarian/English dictionary.  After about three months he was fluent in his comprehension and at sixteen years old, he immigrated to America, where he struggled to fit in with other high school students but pressed forward.  Today he is a thirty-year-old American citizen, training to become an anesthesiologist and planning an August wedding to Sarah, an American.  He said learning English was once a necessary part of assimilation, but it has recently become possible for immigrants to stay within cultural communities without assimilating.  He doesn’t like this concept.  “I don’t think it’s beneficial to American society.  American society is about bringing elements of your culture and adopting American ideals and making America a better country.  And if you don’t like the American culture, I don’t think you should be here.  I think you should go back home,” Adam said.  Adam’s definition of the American dream was also straightforward: “living in comfort and wealth and good health.”  He said that immigrants struggle more than Americans to realize this dream.  “Automatically, when someone with an accent goes to get a job, he will be favored less.  (Also) a lot of the resources – speaking, writing, typing, social skills to establish a network of friends - that you get in middle class American family, you don’t get those.”  Despite this view, he said he feels that today he is living the American dream along with most of American society.

My final interviewee, Ruby Allen, is seventy nine years old and an immigrant from Plymouth, England.  Ruby came to America as a war bride when she was twenty one years old.  Like Lindsay, she too felt that she first learned about aspects of America’s dominant culture through the media.  “I had seen American movies, so I knew a little bit about it; England was quite different from America, but people welcomed me with open arms,” Ruby said.  Back in England, she had endured effects of World War II, including surviving the bombing of a building while she was inside and the loss of family members.  Like Adam and his family, she was happy to leave behind political unrest and join her American husband, who was in the Navy and whom she hadn’t seem for approximately a year.  Before being shipped to him on a boat carrying 10,000 other British war brides, she went through a camp that included lessons about living in America, physicals, and some interrogation (since the war was ongoing).  But even after her preparation, she was surprised by the fast-paced culture of American life and by the excess surrounding her after living in a war-ravaged country.  “To come to America with all the lights and see all the things in the shop was just like fairy-land,” Ruby said. She added that she struggled with adjusting to the excess at first.  For example, after living on rations, her appetite even struggled to conform to the large portions her husband wanted her to eat to grow healthy again.  Overall, Ruby said she believes America has been good to her and that she is fortunate to live in the country she, her three children and ten grandchildren now call home.

All three of my interviewees offered unique perspectives from their personal experiences.  And during the course of the research, the focus of my interviews narrowed to one aspect of assimilation, specifically to belief in the American dream.  After evaluating their responses, I believe that for many First World immigrants, the attitude about and the goal to achieve the American dream has more to do with the political and economic climates of their native countries at the time of their immigration.  Although Hungary and England have been First World nations for the past century, they were enduring communism and World War II respectively at the time of Adam and Ruby’s departures.  Even though these countries are successful today, neither immigrant has a desire to return to live in these nations. They both feel they were able to assimilate after overcoming minor struggles and are now living the American dream.  Adam and Ruby also seem appreciative of America as a whole.  In contrast, Lindsay came from Canada, a consistently stable and peaceful nation, and she assimilated easily.  But she was happy to return to her heritage and did not seem particularly interested in embracing America’s dominant culture or the American dream.  Therefore, the answer to my research question seemed to be that in today’s culture, assimilation is easier for First World immigrants than it was for many Old World immigrants depicted in immigrant literature.  And today, the more political, economic, and social advantages an immigrant’s native country offers, the easier the assimilation process to America’s dominant culture becomes.  But on the downside (for America at least), it seems the easier the assimilation, the less appreciation of America that exists in the immigrant’s mind.