Americanization Today
Alex Nowrasteh, a senior immigration policy analyst at the Cato’s Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, spoke on a panel discussing his work Open Immigration: Yea & Nay at the Center for Immigration Studies. John Fonte, Director of the Center for American Common Culture, another man on the panel and Nowrasteh disagreed on the effects of Americanization. Fonte argued that immigrants today are not assimilating as well as they previously had because there is no modern-day equivalent to the Americanization movement.
There is little to no data available from the early 20th century on immigrants and assimilation. Fonte said, “It’s true we don’t have data on how well assimilation worked, but I think we have plenty of anecdotal evidence that Americanization did help.”
Nowrasteh believes that the Americanization was not a well-meaning government program that sought to assimilate immigrants into American society but rather an avenue for American opponents of immigration to vent their frustrations. It created government-forced similarities, forcing immigrants to assimilate ethnic and linguistic minorities.
There is no evidence that the Americanization movement sped up civic and political assimilation. It served the interest of those who used it as a platform to complain.