The new immigration and ethnicity in the United States

The article assesses the prospects for the assimilation of new immigrant groups and judges their likely effects on the society, culture, and language of the US. It places the new immigration in historical perspective and indicates the distinctive features that set it apart from earlier influxes. It appraises the structural context for the incorporation of today's immigrants and argues that because of fundamental differences, their assimilation will not be as rapid or complete as that achieved by European immigrants in the past. The article concludes by suggesting how the nature of ethnicity will change as a result of a new immigration that is linguistically concentrated, geographically clustered, and temporally continuous into an American society that is increasingly stratified and unequal. -Author