Reword it this way in your mind: "If you go to Italy, should you respect Italian laws and customs?" Replace Italy with nearly any country. Many people hold other countries to a different standard than their own. This applies whichever side of the issue you are on.

I think this statement is too general. * Immigrants can respect a country’s laws and customs without completely assimilating. * No one should have to sacrifice their own culture in order to blend in with the dominant culture of a country they move to. A connection to one’s homeland can be extremely important to their mental health, familial ties, and overall wellbeing. * Cultural diversity can make a country more interesting, inclusive, and safe.

**TL; DR - Expecting immigrants to assimilate is unhelpful and reductionist.** • I accept the fact that many people want immigrants entering the country to respect and adapt to their customs and traditions. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with this. But what I do have a problem with, is the enforced expectation for immigrants to assimilate, alongside the consequential exclusion of their cultural heritage. • This is obvious when considering immigration to the United States, where a strong allegiance to _American exceptionalism_ prevails. The American people have a huge commitment and love for their country and ultimately many believe this makes them superior and unlike any other nation on earth. This has resulted in much of the right-wing of America, being extremely anti-immigration and therefore against the integration of new people to _‘their land’_. • With regard to citizenship in the US, acceptance is particularly specific and has a reputation for being somewhat ridiculous. An organisation called the _Immigrant Archive Project_ took to the streets of Miami, to test out the difficulty of some of these citizenship test questions and the results really make you think about the difficulties involved in assimilation for so many immigrants. It can be found [here](https://www.vox.com/2014/4/26/5654020/awkward-americans-cant-pass-our-own-citizenship-test) if you want to check it out. • There isn’t anything wrong with encouraging immigrants to learn the language for example, to widen their job prospects and allow them to engage and participate as part of society, but to demand that they do so seems completely wrong and unjustified. • Assimilation can bring with it [prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination](https://www2.gvsu.edu/klitzkee/efforts/schoolwork/theunblended.htm) which in itself can make the process of entering a new country difficult. I think we need to work towards _compassion and participation_ as opposed to assimilation and the preservation of a singular national identity.

**A balanced assimilation minimises the social stressors associated with immigration.** According to [Berry (2005)](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-15905-005) integration strategies result in the lowest levels of stress. Integration, contrary to complete assimilation, is when an immigrant assumes a 'bi-cultural' presence - preserving their roots while adopting the new culture. Assimilation and separation, the complete rejection of the new host culture, result in intermediate levels of stress. Marginalization, which is the rejection of the root culture but the inability to assimilate as a result of discrimination from the host culture, results in the highest levels of assimilatory stress. We can examine these results using social identity theory, a way of viewing how our [identities are shaped by our group memberships](https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html) posited by psychologist Henri Tajfel in 1979. It seems that the more connected an individual feels to a group (whether that is the new culture, the old one or both), the less stress is experienced. This may be due to the protective factor of social support—those with connections to both cultures will have access to more social support than others. In this light, complete assimilation or complete marginalisation are unadvisable, but it may be beneficial to an immigrant to assimilate to a _certain degree_, seeking the dual benefit of a balanced integration.

It is difficult, not to say impossible, for a first-generation adult immigrant to become fully assimilated, as the history of immigration shows, and they should not be expected to do so. It takes more than one generation. I am an immigrant myself, to Japan. I have worked for Japanese institutions throughout my time here, and still do. I do not regard myself as being fully assimilated. Had we (my Japanese wife & I) had children, those children would have naturally become assimilated, though, because of their background, probably not so fully as a Japanese child born to Japanese parents.