America's melting pot cooling off - "situation similar as in Europe"
In the 19th and early 20th centuries when, for political or economic reasons, one left one's homeland for somewhere else, there was finality in the journey. People landing on Ellis Island, for example, had a one-way ticket. Their future lay in the land in front of them. The land behind them was history - an ever-fading memory. Nowadays, immigrants have it both ways. They move, mostly for economic reasons, to new lands, but remain strongly connected to their homelands. Cheap airfares, telephones and the Internet keep them tethered to the motherlands that bore them. They are psychologically bifurcated between the old and the new.
Modern transport and communications play a role in the duality of today's immigrants, whether they have moved from North Africa to Europe or from El Salvador to the United States. Today's immigrant assimilates slowly, or not at all.The larger the immigrant community, the more self-sufficient and the less pressure to assimilate. It is as true in the United States as it is in Europe. Do you think that the Somalis living in Maine will be New Englanders in one or two generations? It has not happened to Moroccans living in France, or Turks living in Germany. The famous American melting pot may no longer be on the boil. As if language and custom are not barriers enough to a new identity and way of life, the binding absolutism of Islam cauterizes its immigrants against new values, loyalties and possibilities.
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