AT THE national and state levels, America's immigration policies are coming to a head. Currently in Congress, there are proposals to completely fence off our Mexican border and to prosecute businesses and charities for employing and aiding illegal immigrants. Various states have also proposed denying illegal immigrants drivers' licenses and public education. While the media focuses on this seemingly growing intolerance in America for the foreign-born, less attention is given to the opposite problem -- the failure of many immigrants to respect the institutions of their host country.
Undoubtedly, some proponents of anti-immigration measures are motivated by bigotry and xenophobia. On the whole, however, America remains one of the most welcoming and diverse societies. The sheer direction and magnitude of global immigration bears this out.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank, more than 1.3 million immigrants -- legal and illegal -- entered the country last year. Immigrants now constitute 11.5 percent of the population, which is more than double the previous peak at the turn of the 20th century. One is at a loss to name any Latin American, African or Asian country which hosts even a fraction of the immigrants we do. I can speak for all of my family who came here over the past 40 years -- and millions like them -- when I say that foreigners come to America because it is a better country than the one they left.
Immigration, however, is a two-way street, where foreigners must do unto the native-born as they would have the native-born do unto them. In order not to squander their welcome in America, immigrants must in turn welcome its culture and institutions, the first of which is its laws. Citizens of foreign countries surely wouldn't welcome Americans who come and go at their leisure without going through the proper authorities. To the extent that our laws are not meeting our economy's demand for a greater foreign workforce, we must reform them so that the first thing immigrants do when they enter our country is not to break our laws.
Second only to obeying the law is learning the language. The demand that immigrants learn English stems not from intolerance, but in fact the opposite: We want to fully integrate immigrants into our society as co-equal friends and colleagues. In order to do that, we must share a common linguistic currency in the same way we rely on the U.S. Dollar as our unit for commercial exchange.
Americans could not rightfully demand to speak only English if they intended to relocate to Bogotá, Beirut or Beijing (although practically, they can, given our language's global reach). Why, then, should Americans have to bend over backwards to try to accommodate every language in the world when it comes to applications for voting and driving? The real victims of this supposed respect for multiculturalism and diversity are the immigrants who remain in ethnic seclusion because they are linguistically impoverished.
Aside from its laws and language, immigrants should also respect their host country's culture. By this, I don't mean they must listen to Britney or Beyoncé. I surely don't. Rather, they must be more open-minded and tolerant of the way Americans do things.
For example, The Washington Post reported last month that more than a quarter of new doctors surveyed by the American Medical Association felt "insufficiently prepared" to treat immigrants unaccustomed to Western medicine and incapable of communicating their ailments. The article urged doctors to adopt "a more sensitive approach." This burden shifting, however, seems entirely arbitrary and wrong. Why, after all, didn't the AMA ask immigrants whether they felt prepared to accept Western medicine? In a medical emergency, wouldn't it be more efficient and appropriate for a patient to communicate his problems in English, rather than to scrounge around for a doctor conversant in Farsi?
Ironically, it is sometimes immigrants who have more common sense than native-born multiculturalists. In the Northern Virginia town of Annandale, Korean immigrants are now fighting to prevent the town from becoming an enclave of ethnic separatism. In a Washington Post profile, Michael Kim called shopping centers dominated exclusively by Korean signs for Korean retailers "a very limiting factor." Instead, the Fairfax real estate developer called for more businesses that serve "the good of the community and not one specific ethnicity."
America has, and always will be, the clichéd nation of immigrants because of our tolerance for foreigners. That tolerance, however, must be a two-way street where immigrants are also welcoming of their host country. Otherwise, we may all soon find that welcome wearing thin, and that would be disastrous for all Americans, whether born stateside or abroad.
Eric Wang's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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