It is very interesting to me that more and more immigrants are now moving to the suburbs and the Midwest instead of to big cities. I would think that immigrants would want to live in places where there are people already established from their culture. But because of the high costs of living in the city, it seems that immigrants need to find a cheaper alternative. Also, because of the improvement of transportation over the past a hundred years, immigrants no longer need to be directly in the city to make their livelihood. This was not the same in the 1900s where the immigrants were pretty much forced into the cramped urban areas, and now immigrants can commute from the suburbs to their jobs in the city.

There are definitely some benefits to more immigrants moving to the Midwest. Firstly because there are limited facilities such as schools, etc. the natives are sort of forced to interact with the immigrant population. The Midwest still lacks a lot of diversity, so this influx of immigrants is just what the Midwest needs. However, there are also cons of immigrants moving. The native Midwesterners are not always so accepting of immigrants, and the immigratns face racism and prejudice.

Finally, it was interesting to learn how assimilation is measured. The four factors are socioeconomic status, language assimilation, spatial concentration, and intermarriage with intermarriage being the ultimate test of true assimilation.