The problems of immigration and assimilation in a multicultural society

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, University of Mannheim (Amerikanistik), course: A survey of contemporary America, 7 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The USA is sometimes called 'land of the immigrants' or 'the promised land'. In early times immagrants from different origins and nationalities immigrated to the USA. That's why the USA developed to a multicultural society. There is the great idea of all people from different nations living together. America is designates as a 'melting pot'. This term tries to discribe the assimilation of immigrants into American life. Its literal meaning is a chemical one: several different elements melted together to form a new product. The idea was that immigrants would fuse together with the 'old' Americans, giving up their old lifestyles and cultures to form one American nation. The motto ' e pluribus unum' which still appears on American coins today, has been used since 1782, reflecting how even the early Americans saw their conuntry. But does a mutlicultural society system like this really work? That's the main point I will try to work out in my research paper. To get through this topic it needs to be defined very clearly what immigrations means in general and to describe briefly the immigration process from the early times till nowadays. This should be explained with some facts and figures to build the foundation of the following analysis. I will also show the reasons and problems of illegal immigration which is an important topic in the American society. That brings us to the next point the Hispanic Americans, which representativ for American immigrants. I will use The Hispanic Americans as an example to mark the assimilation problem of immigrants in the USA. Furthermore you can use this group of immigrants to explain the multicultural situation in the USA today. I will round off my work with the part of the conclusion and I will try to give an answer to the question asked in the beginnig of the work.