America’s Problem of Assimilation: Are We a Melting Pot or a Salad Bowl?
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The current Supreme Court term has been dominated by the Constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the health-care legislation better known as Obamacare. But the Court has recently heard another case, this one concerning the controversial Arizona immigration law passed in 2010. Though five other states have passed similar laws, Arizona’s is the toughest one to date that attempts to get control of illegal immigration and its social and economic costs. The problems surrounding illegal immigration that this bill attempts to solve involve not just practical policies, but the very meaning of American identity and history.
For Americans, these issues have particular resonance; as we continually hear, we are a “nation of immigrants.” Many see the laws targeting immigrants as a repudiation of this heritage, an ethnocentric or even racist attempt to impose and monitor an exclusive notion of American identity and culture. Additionally, opponents claim that these laws invite the police to practice discriminatory “racial profiling,” creating the possibility that legal immigrants and U.S. citizens are unjustly detained and questioned.
As President Obama said in April 2010, laws like Arizona’s “threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” The greater significance of this case, however, is the way it touches on deeply held and frequently conflicting beliefs about the role of immigration in American history and national identity. These beliefs have generated two popular metaphors: the melting pot and the salad bowl.