How can we help immigrants assimilate?

We all understand why immigrants want to come here. We know what this country can offer them.

We understand why our ancestors came here. They were living in terrible conditions: poverty, religious persecution, war, famine. Whatever their reasons were, we understand. We might do the same thing if it happened to us.

We also know that to be successful, immigrants have to learn to live in this culture, the way our ancestors did. They learned the language, figured out the laws and what they had to do to make a living and did better than they would have if they had stayed home.

There are so many immigrants now who are living in small communities of their own, they don't learn English and don't find any need to learn it. A major problem with this arrangement is that they don't solve the problems they were trying to escape. They bring them with them and often live the same way they did in their home country. The only difference is that they are able to find work and make more money than they did before and their children get a good education.

How can we help them assimilate into our country? How can we convince them it is important? If they learn English, not only will they learn the laws and all their rights, but they will also have many more jobs open to them. The papers are full of ads for bilingual workers.

When these people become permanent residents they should be persuaded to work quickly to become citizens. Since English is the main language here, they must learn it. They must learn about this country and form a loyalty to it. They must take part in the most important part of their citizenship - voting.

If people just live here and work here and never become citizens, they will never be more than guests, with no feeling for what this country has given them. They won't have any of the benefits that citizenship can give them.

Their children who were not born here won't have a country to belong to either. The parents have loyalty to their old home, the children have loyalty to this one but can't take part in many things because they aren't citizens. So the children won't belong to either one.

How can we convince the immigrants here now that this is important and necessary?