Political Incorporation of Immigrants, Then and Now, by Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, addresses the issue of immigrants coming to terms with American society. They propose that instead of the traditional method of studying waves of immigration separately, to utilize information and data from both immigration movements mentioned in order to create a more accurate and fluent representation of immigration in the United States. He explains how the approaches used by social scientists and historians should be incorporated, as in both perspectives should be considered when looking at this subject.

The writing introduces and compares the immigration during the turn of the 20^th century and from 1965 onwards. The turn of the century migration saw immigrants of mostly English, Scottish, Irish, German, and Scandinavian origins whereas the immigrants of present day are of mostly Caribbean, Latino, and Asian origins. Both immigrants lived in concentrated neighborhoods of their ethnicity in urban settings. The one of the main differences between the two waves of immigration was that the earlier wave saw slow integration overtime into white American society whereas the immigrants today don’t really have that option. It goes on to explain the works of other researchers who examined the role of the state and the effect of transnationalism and education on immigrant integration.

I agree with the authors’ arguments that both immigration periods should be compared together and not separately and that the approaches used by social scientists and historians should both be considered when doing this type of research. Social scientists looks at data and statistics, but in order to understand the numbers and patterns, historical context must be considered.

On the topic of transnationalism, in present day communication and global networking is much more efficient and accessible than it was at the beginning of the 20^th century. Therefore, immigrants are more inclined to embrace both American culture and the culture of their country of origin. I also believe that the accessibility of international communication and globalization also contributed to another issue. The authors mention the argument that schools nowadays taught only English and a hidden social hierarchy instead of conveying the values of liberty, independence, order, individual rights and duties, and patriotism. Perhaps this argument is wrong. English is taught merely as a way for immigrants to communicate with one another and this social hierarchy seems to resemble the ethnically concentrated neighborhoods immigrants tend to reside in. Perhaps this is just another way for children of immigrants to feel a sense of belonging. The U.S. is much more connected with the rest of the world today as a result of globalization. What was taught to students in the past may be considered outdated in terms of the situation America is in and meeting the needs of the students today. 

Nik Theodore and Nina Martin share several important ideas in “Migrant Civil Society: New Voices in the Struggle Over Community Development.” The one thing that stood out to me is the role played my nonprofit organizations to fill the void left by the US Government post 9/11 in policies regarding immigrants in the United States. Theodore and Martin mention how September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2001 recession, the fiscal crisis in state government, and the alleged challenge to state sovereignty that has been brought on by large-scale undocumented migration, has led to the withdrawal of many public services that migrants need in the US. This is why nonprofit organizations have stepped in to fill the void, to allow migrants to get the help they need to live a proper life. In a survey done on 182 different nonprofits showed that 133 organizations reported to have 30% or more of their clients be foreign born migrants. These migrants came  from various backgrounds such as: Mexicans, Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Poles, Indians, and Central American migrants. Interestingly enough the greatest problem migrant families face (56%) is the language barrier and substandard employment issues, as discussed numerous times in class. [Need for health and social services (36%), immigration-related issues (33%) such as family reunification and gaining citizenship, and access to quality affordable housing (16%) (Figure 1). Virtually every organization interviewed is engaged in raising awareness of one or more of these social problems. In Chicago, these advocacy efforts center on the following issues: immigrant rights (29%), access to health and social services (21%), access to quality affordable housing (14%), and access to education (14%)]

It is truly interesting to see the various obstacles immigrants in America faces, and it’s hard to envision where they would be without the lobbying of nonprofit organization looking out for their well-being.

I found this article to be very interesting because it made some claims that seem to go against what I had believed before reading it. Sometimes I wished Gerstle and Mollenkopf would give more reasoning to their claims or to the claims of the authors they discuss.

One idea that baffled me was Gleason’s idea of the American civic culture before the civil rights movement in his book “Sea Chnage in the Civic Culture of the 1960s”. This culture seems like the American Dream, but I don’t think people lost the American dream after the civil rights movement. If people no longer had dreams of equality, liberty, and individual opportunity when in America after the civil rights movement began, why would people bother coming to America? Also, during the time that this civic culture existed, the 1925 quotas were in place. I would think that these quotas would detract from this civic culture that Gleason talks about because it does not seem that the United States was very welcoming to immigrants before the Hart-Cellar Act. I wish Gerstle and Mollenkopf dove further into Gleason’s argument, so his argument made sense considering the laws that were in place.

Another interesting idea that I wish had been explained further is idea that Tyack discusses of schools emphasizing different ideas during different time periods in America. The first few time periods discussed make perfect sense. When the country was first born, teachers tried to get students to accept a republican form of government. Then when more ethnicities were introduced to the country, teachers tried to create a common culture and then when there were huge surges of immigrants teachers tried to Americanize the immigrant children. In the fourth wave there were progressive teachers who taught about different types of tolerance. I am confused on why Tyack believes that now teachers use school as “a form of human capital”, so students are taught more, so they can make money. What is specific about this current time period that is causing teachers to focus more on money rather than on creating good American citizens? Is it because immigration has been occurring for so long?

In the article, The Political Incorporation of Immigrants, Then and Now, Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf focus on two waves of immigration: one in from late 1880s to early 1930s and the second one, from mid 1900s to present day. In the earlier wave of immigration, most immigrants originated from Europe (mostly from Italy, Russia, Poland, Austria Hungary, Germany) and were basically “swept into” the blue-collar jobs (such as manufacturing) in America. According to the article, these immigrants’ children, who were born in the United States, overcame the economic crises of the Great Depression and the shaky political environment and eventually benefitted from the post World War II boom. The authors make a very interesting point by saying that the “line” between white protestants and the white Jewish or Catholics was blurred. And therefore, they were all now considered to be “white”.

The new “new immigrants” (as the authors call them) were part of the second wave of immigration and were labeled as “non whites”. Both the immigrants from the late 1880s and the new “new immigrants” settled in major cities like New York and gave that ethnic character to neighborhoods where a certain ethnic group was dominant. But the authors make the distinction that these new “new immigrants” were also highly professional and they did not enter the blue-collar job market unlike their predecessors. Instead, the more recent immigrants today are similar to the immigrants of the late 1880s and early 1900s due to their lack of English language skills and their lack of involvement in highly professional fields.

Also, according to the authors, the new “new immigrants” entered a more relaxed and multi-cultural society when compared to the new immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s. This relaxed and accepting environment was established partly due to the struggles of blacks against institutionalized discrimination. They also point out that America is more open to dual citizenship and the incoming of professional immigrants today than it was back in the early 1900s. A few weeks ago, in Michael Maly’s work, we read about the “Action Jackson” campaign and how it had an anti-immigrant agenda because they mostly targeted immigrant businesses in Jackson Heights. The authors even mention that the political environment did become very hostile towards immigrants in the mid-1990s. So although it is true that today’s society is a lot more diverse, this does not necessarily mean that the natives were “relaxed” about the non-white immigration into their neighborhood and easily accepted these new “new” immigrants into their society.

Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf’s “The Political Incorporation of Immigrants, Then and Now” studies the similarities and differences between two waves of immigration (1880-1930 and post-1965 to present), and how, in turn, each wave has interacted with civil society and the political sphere.

What most caught my attention was Gerstle and Mollenkopf’s commentary on Laurie Olsen’s essay, which honed in on the role of the education system in the U.S., and how, as a formal government institution, schools influence how and to what extent immigrant children, or the U.S.-born children of immigrants, are accepted by society. Olsen based her study on students in a California high school in the 1990s, and aimed to get the most accurate account of the students experience by approaching the students themselves. Olsen made some interesting observations, the most prominent being that “civic education” has, according to student experience, “become synonymous with learning English.” Taking this into consideration, it appears that assimilation to American society, is, first and foremost, based on the ability to speak English.

Other aspects of “civic education, [which include] learning about democracy, opportunity, or civic rights or duties” are put on the back-burner, if taught at all. Instead, students, both consciously and unconsciously, are subject to racial tensions that fill the halls, galvanizing students into aligning themselves with a specific racial category. This discourages unity and assimilation and, instead, gives students the impression that they can only relate to those with the same racial background as them.

From the beginning, America has been a country of immigrants. Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, in their article The Political Incorporation of Immigrants, Then and Now, critically analyze the transformation of immigrants as well as their involvement in politics. The authors note two specific eras of immigrants that share similar characteristics but are also different on some basic levels. The changes over the past century have lead to a transformation as to how immigrants and their progeny contribute to their community and their political involvement.

Gerstle and Mollenkopf describe what they call old immigrants and new immigrants, the former being mostly from Eastern Europe while the latter being mostly from Latin American countries. They bear many similarities, among them antagonism from native people and in the labor force. An interesting point the authors make was regarding the respective career paths of the two types of immigrants. Old immigrants became involved in specific work that, as a result, became ethnically distinctive, while new immigrants pursued jobs that involved unskilled labor. The two types of immigrants did not interact because of the obvious time gap and also because by the time new Latino immigrants came, the old immigrants already appeared less distinctive in society. As later noted, they had sacrificed their ethnic distinctiveness; they gained more acceptance into society but lost claims to their uniqueness. Immigrants may have felt that sending their children to public schools would smoothly incorporate them into society, but in reality they still had to deal with the reality of having a unique identity. Gerstle and Mollenkopf assert that now that Americans are more liberal, they are less hostile to new immigrants than they were to old ones. I disagree with this claim because there is still native-immigrant fighting, the only difference being that there is more government involvement toward promoting tolerance.

The immigrants themselves are not the ones who mostly take a role in politics and advocate for equality rights, but rather it is the second generation that feels responsible for doing this. They are involved in American politics, but some new immigrants are as involved in US events as they are in their native country. Those from the Dominican Republic, for example, have dual citizenship and can vote in both America and in the Dominican Republic. Such a powerful involvement with their homeland, Gerstle and Mollenkopf note, is actually more common in new immigrants than old immigrants. Upon reading this, I assumed that the connection must surely have been facilitated by the advent of technology, and not because of a deeper connection with their homeland. A question that popped into my head was: if email existed a century ago, would America’s economic relationship with various Eastern European countries be much stronger?