Immigration redux...

September 01, 2008 by Jon Silpayamanant

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Going back to the post about the immigration panel I served on, there were a couple of interesting things I wanted to note.

1) One of the educators took an opportunity to elaborate on what one of the parents was talking about--actually she practically interupted. Basically the parent was commnting on how much she had to learn about the host children's religion, as well as, how much they had to learn about her religion. The educator then interjected that the real parents couldn't even recognize their children the few times they visited them while living with their host mother.

She went on to talk about how much they "opened up"; were "more assertive"; started having some "interests"; became "individuals" rather than "[insert ethnic group here] carbon copies." This educator actually used her hands to emphasize her points by creating a box-like shape in the air at that last above.

It came so fast that I'm almost missed her comments as the parent picked up where she left off with her comments about the adjustment difficulties for her children (one biological, two host). What was interesting is that when she finished, she made sure to emphasize, at the very end of her story and with a chopping motion--one for each child--that each one of them is VERY different.

The implication of the educator was that until those children came to the states they were just generic ethnic stereotypes--they gained individual identities here. The implication of the [host] parent was a refusal to acknowlede that they did not have an identity before coming to learn in the states.

2) One of the questions posed by the moderator was how different they felt about the education systems of their home countries as opposed to the education system of the US. One of the parents, after giving his spiel of the dimilarities and differences ended with "...what we have here." He paused, and you could see a brief flash of corrective thinking go across his face before he amended himself, "I mean, than what you guys have here." This was a parent that was incredibly enthusiastic about being in the US and wanting to "fit in" here.

I guess the easiest way to talk about these things is to recognize them as instances of ingroup/outgroup behavior. The educator, mirroring the classic outgroup homogeneity [bias](

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outgroup_homogeneity_bias),:

was basically saying that it took some acculturation (or "learnin'" if you will) for the studnts to no longer be a part of the homogenous ethnic outgroup and get some of those much valued ingroup heterogeneity.

The second parent is caught up in the tension of sometime identifying with the ingroup he so longs to be a part of, and the outgroup that he is still partially a member of, in a nutshell. It's a tension that all first generation immigrants feel and have to work through. Usually it's the next generation that have a bit of an easier time with that issue.

I know I've personally dealt with both issues at some time or another though I've come to peace with the ambiguous status my being a first generation immigrant brings. These weren't the only issues that came up either explicitly nor implicitly, but they stuck out in my mind the most. I could probably write a whole book about the psychology of bi-culturalism, and the limited freedom that first and second generation immigrants have just using examples from this one session as a starting point.

Or, I suppose we could just talk about how people can only be president if they have a proper American name.

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