Why The Children Of Immigrants Can Be An American

I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and live in the U.S. I went to Lowell High School and took all ESL because I didn’t know much about English. In order to succeed, I started to read and speak more English than my first language, yet I speak Khmer at home because my parent doesn t want me to lose my native language. In America, there are a lot of immigrants that are trying to come and to get a better opportunity. According to Joel Swerdlow, in â€Å"Changing America,† â€Å"before 1965 more than three-quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, owing largely to quotas that favored northern Europeans.† (313). In 1965 Congress removed those quotas, and since then more than 60 percent of immigrants have come from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Latin America. However, do the children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultural identity in order to be an American? Children of immigrants often feel they must lose their cultur al identity because they are changing their own cultural identity regarding three topics: Language, Dress, and Behavior. One way they must lose their cultural identity is languages. As we know that America is the country where people are blending together like a melting pot. So, children of immigrants might lose their culture language. For instance, DeJong who has taught ESL for 20 years, says, â€Å"About a fifth of the students now is nonliterate in their native language. That makes it much more difficult for them to learnShow MoreRelatedEssay about When Are Immigrants Americans Too?580 Words   |  3 Pagesto America, those that were here before them wondered why they came! Is it for freedom or for the idea that America is The Land of Opportunity? In this paper, I am going to look at the reasons Immigrants come to America. I will also discuss both their views of themselves and how Americans view them. 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