Now, the immigrant issues are becoming hotter and hotter. “According to the 2016 Current Population Survey (CPS), immigrants and their U.S.-born children now number approximately 84.3 million people, or 27 percent of the overall U.S. population” (Zong 22). This trend is not only appearing in the U.S., but also in most Western countries as well. Immigration issues are drawing more and more international societies’ attention since there is an increasing population of immigrants. For most Western countries, as a nation’s perspective, the Western countries have been modifying the immigration polices to adapt to this multicultural trend. It is fair to say that integration is very important in order for a nation to deal appropriately with immigrant issues. According to Christian Joppke, “for over decade now is “civic integration policies that seek to bind newcomers to majority institutions and culture by requiring them to learn the host-society language and acknowledge basic host-society norms and values” (124). 

Cultural assimilation is highly necessary and important for immigrants. It matters to every individual, because when one cultural group adopts the beliefs and behaviors of another group, the new groups have to learn to behave to fit in to cultural norms to avoid having troubles in terms of living everyday life. In this way cultural assimilation is very important for immigrant people. In particular, young immigrants have the most difficult experiences in terms of processing cultural assimilation. Basically, young immigrants’ cultural assimilation is affected by their new living country’s cultures and their household’s cultures. There are some factors shaping young immigrants’ unique lives, such as social attitudes, education backgrounds, religions, ethics, and social behaviors. For most young immigrant people, finding their cultural identity can be an arduous task since they are living in the two disparate cultures. It is highly important for society and immigrant families to understand young immigrants’ difficulties of assimilating cultures and how these factors affect their cultural assimilation in order to provide them a harmonious growth environment. 

When the young immigrants are living under a different cultural background, they have more difficulty identifying themselves. Their set of morals and values may contradict with the morals and values of the new culture they are living in. They might feel like they do not fit in. This happens to most immigrant youths when there are conflicts between their families’ beliefs or behaviors and other people’s in their living country. The adolescents become confused when their family’s values do not agree with the values of their new culture. Who should immigrant youths believe? I believe a lot of the young immigrants are growing up with this question and struggles. The more cultural differences there are between their family and living country the more serious cultural conflicts will happen for immigrant children. Different religions, languages, ethics, life styles, and social behavior are factors that accumulate as conflicts, which will eventually affect young immigrant people’s cultural assimilation. 

Firstly, the religious differences are a serious issue for people who are religious. As we all know, different religions have their unique beliefs and behaviors. This is where the conflicts come from in in terms of cultural assimilation. Ronia Arab, an Iraqi immigrant teenager who is growing up in Canada, tells a CBC news reporter, “My parents don’t like the way I dress. They want me to be like them, but I don’t know anything about their culture” (CBC news 4). She’s been fighting with her parents over the "Canadian" way she dresses and carries herself. In this case, from Ronia’s Iraqi parent’s perspective, they think highly of the Muslim culture and obey it fully. For the Muslim parents, their traditional customs and lifestyles are very important. On one hand, it is understandable how parents would be disappointed when their children just ignore or even deny their religion. The parents expect their children to maintain the family’s heritage. On the other hand, from the child’s perspective, it also makes sense that they don’t want to follow their parent’s traditional culture, because the environment that they grow up in doesn’t have common values with their parents’ religion. When some religious clothing requirements make children look different from other children, young people will feel they are less accepted in the society, bringing negative effects when they want to adapt to the living country’s society as well as they can.  It is highly possible that they don’t want to accept their family’s culture in terms of religion. Yet there is no denying that the family has a significant effect on a child’s growth. As a result, in this circumstance, the children are pressured toward cultural assimilation. 

Furthermore, the young immigrant people’s cultural assimilation processing is tightly coupled with their usage of language. In “Adaptation of Immigrant Children to the United States,” McCarthy reveals, “Most educators and social scientists agree that it is crucial for immigrant children to master the English language” (McCarthy 9). Daily communication between people mostly depends on talking. Also, the language is also an important part of a culture. Most immigrants will face the situation of learning a new language. Christian Joppke mentions in “Rethink National Identity in the Age of Migration”, “In the U.S., functional necessity and resource scarcity tilt toward an assimilationist response with respect to language” (128). This implies that language is very important for adapting to a county’s mainstream society. But, for immigrant young people, they have to accept their parent’s language while also learning a new language. Mastery of English is more difficult for immigrant teenagers compared with children who grow up under the single language environment. Thus, learning a language is a challenge for young immigrant people. In the “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan was born to a Chinese immigrant family in America. She shares the experiences in terms of struggling with her mother’s English and standard English. Most immigrant young people have faced the differences and division in language.  Like Tan writes in her article, “I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well” (Tan 345). Here, Tan thinks non-standard English could bring negative affects to her life in some way. The nuances and difficulties of cultural assimilation are depicted by linguistic barriers that the immigrant children have to adapt to in American society since they will live there for a lifetime. As the result, it is necessary for them to assimilate into American culture. When people want to assimilate into a new society, being fluent in the society’s language is an imperative thing because language is necessary for daily life and academic achievement.

McCarthy states in his research, “Mastery of English can propel children into the educational mainstream, allowing them to excel in school and improve their chances of successful and meaningful post-graduation employment” (McCarthy 9). Most of the immigrant children become sensitive about their usage of language while adapting to the American culture, which is different from the culture of their family. The young people may not keep their family’s traditional culture since the immigrant family’s non-standard usage of English and the accent will not work well for the living country’s mainstream society. But, children will be affected by their family’s language environment more or less since the environment will have significant influence on children’s growth. It is fair to say that linguistic barriers affect young people as they assimilate. 

As we all know, living in two disparate cultures makes immigrants unique. The differences in the immigrant family’s religion, and language affect young immigrant people’s cultural assimilation. Besides these factors, there are also many differences in the two different cultures’ life style, ethics, etc. Certainly, the teenager could become confused between their family’s minority culture and the living country’s mainstream culture. The conflicts bring immigrant youth the concern of choosing which culture they prefer or should adapt to; meanwhile their unique ethnic identity is building up gradually. Sometimes, the living culture doesn’t work for parents, sometimes, the heritage of the family’s culture does not work well for the large society. “Immigrant children are often forced to make a painful, emotional choice between their parents’ culture and the mainstream norms they are exposed to in school” (McCarthy 9). In that case, the processing of cultural assimilation can be painful. Farag is a second generation immigrant in Canada, where she has been stuck between a rock and a hard place for a long time. Facing her parents’ strong wish to maintain their family’s heritage, she said, “I'm not going to turn my back and say 'OK, I’m an Egyptian in Egypt, but here I’m going to become Canadian, I can't do that, my parents can’t do that" (Riet CBCnews). Some young people feel shame in carrying on their family’s culture, which has different values and norms from mainstream society, even as they feel guilty about rejecting their parents’ cultures. Plainly, the young people’s culture assimilation will be affected by their family’s culture. 

In spite of some factors that have a significant influence on young people’s cultural assimilation from their family side, the social environment of their living country also affects young people’s thoughts and behavior as they assimilate into new cultures.  “The Familial and other forms of interpersonal values and relations are social factors that can affect the acculturation process. As Pasick et al. suggests, the extent to which behaviors occur is not solely related to familial influences, but also to the influences of new groups of persons” (Lopez-Class 1557).

Undoubtedly, young immigrants and first generation citizens will try to adapt to mainstream society as much as they can since they will spend the rest of their lives in this new country. Consequently, it is significantly important for young immigrants to assimilate into a new culture as well. However, the acculturation process of immigrants doesn’t just depend on their subjective consciousness; there are various social factors that shape subjectivity, such as social attitudes. 

Tan, a second generation Chinese -American, laments in her story over “the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, even acted as if they did not hear her” (344).  It was an impactful experience when Tan was child. In Tan’s case, her experience with American people made her question where she belonged by considering the others’ attitudes. This situation is the reality for many immigrants. From a sociologic perspective, “people turn to the avoidance of social interaction with immigrants in society. Based on statistics, approximately 21% of the general public wish to avoid such social interaction” (Coenders 5). Many Americans “favor ethnic distance,” and, as a result, self-doubt, worry, and confusion may take over immigrants’ minds while attempting to adapt to a new society when this kind of universal human social behavior takes place. Young immigrants’ struggles are especially difficult to overcome because they don’t have a default setting with which to understand both of their families’ cultures. In this circumstance, it is reasonable that immigrant children will feel uncomfortable, and doubt themselves while determining their own cultural preferences, which results in their cultural assimilation.

 In addition, the young immigrants’ experiences within the environment of education, especially in its social context, is very important. For the young immigrants, most peers around them have different values and ethics. However, these invisible, yet undoubtedly present, traces of value systems, are not usually considered by peers due to their naïve nature as young students. The immigrant children are excluded by their peers in schools oftentimes because of their different races, facial features, behaviors, and pronunciation of their names. The immigrant children may shift their values or ethics by adapting to mainstream society; however, they can not change any of the superficial markers of their race, nor can they completely abandon their primary cultural background or heritage. “Almost every student in her sample reported having been called names, pushed or spat upon, or deliberately tricked, teased or laughed at because of their race or ethnicity” (McCarthy 15). When the immigrant children are doubted by their peers, they would have more concerns with identity choices. Tamer points out in “The Education of Immigrant Children” that “classrooms in the U.S. tend to be incredibly focused on the United States. Simultaneously, immigrant youth enter into a highly racialized society in the United States” (37).  This situation can bring more negative effects to children’s cultural assimilation. 

As a matter of fact, not only for immigrant students does this situation have negative effects, but also for native students or students in the ethnic majority. If schools downplay the the facts and dynamics of the multicultural classroom, there are some issues that might become worse, such as “low academic achievement, adjustment to a new cultural environment, trust problems with self as well as the different culture” (Alsubaie 86).  So providing an open and accepting educational environment is not only necessary for immigrant students to assimilate into a new culture, but is also beneficial and essential for the majority students to grow healthily. The Pew Research Center projects that, “by 2050, more than one-third of the nation’s schoolchildren younger than 17 will either be immigrants themselves or the children of at least one parent who is an immigrant” (Passel 10). If the projection of this trend is prophetic, it is necessary that public society develops new strategies to address the dynamics of the multicultural classroom, since school experiences have significant effects for young people with immigrant cultural backgrounds. 

Generally, teachers should attempt to understand their students’ cultural backgrounds, pay more attention to the social and educational experiences of the multiethnic classroom communities, and judge (appropriately) the capabilities of students by considering some students’ difficulties with the dominant language(s). For immigrant students, this sort of attention will bring positive effects while they are adapting to mainstream culture. Moreover, enabling students to understand the multicultural classroom and stressing the importance of accepting difference openly are both necessary for the immigrant students and the ethnic majority to assimilate and foster a healthy society. Once students understand the dynamics of multicultural society, and once they establish common ground with immigrants in school, the social environment will change for the better. 

By the same token, the immigrant family should also be aware of their children’s challenges and difficulties in terms of cultural assimilation. Undoubtedly, it takes longer time for young immigrants to figure out their cultural preference and identification since their acculturations are affected by two different cultures. As a result, the young immigrants have values, ideas, and behaviors, which are different from their family cultures more or less; sometimes, those mixed values and behaviors may not be what parents expect their children to have. Therefore, the arguments or even fights between parents and children in immigrant families are almost inevitable. By understanding this point of view, the parents should have more patience to deal with their children’s cultural assimilation. Most young immigrants assimilate into both cultures since they grow up in the two different cultures. Despite these cultural differences, family support and approval is also necessary for children. So, the family would be better off informing their children about their traditional heritages by letting them understand it freely, rather than pushing them to accept everything from their original cultures. Immigrant parents should try to decide and understand the cultural differences, and compromise with children. A good way to let them grow up healthily is by giving their children the free option of being bicultural; as Rosenthal and Hrynevich argue, “children are influenced as well by messages from other adults and the ethnic community. A vital community provides a context in which children can form positive sense of their group” (as cited in Phinney, 2001, p. 501). 

Indeed, a successful assimilation for young immigrants would be illustrated by their ability to deal with the host country’s social relations and cultures and feel confident about their traditional heritages that are accepted by mainstream society. As Phinney states in “Ethnic Identity, Immigration, and Well-Being: An Interaction Perspective,” “with regard to identity, positive psychological outcomes for immigrants are expected to be related to a strong identification with both their ethnic group and the larger society” (502).  In a word, to help young immigrants grow healthily, we need the host country, the immigrant community, and immigrant families to make the effort together. 
