Other Voices: Before Hispanic, Latino immigrants there were the Germans

This second generation American is writing a local history of the German community and compares them to the current Spanish speaking immigrants. DP

George F. Wieland, a child of German immigrants, is writing a history of the local German community

By George F. Wieland

What mass of immigrants arriving in today's America is racially different, sometimes doesn't learn English, and settles in groups that don't always assimilate? The Mexicans, of course.

But if that question had been asked earlier in our history, most Americans would have answered "Germans." Comparing the two groups of immigrants shows that today's Mexican immigration will eventually lead to Americanization, as did the earlier German immigration.

Germans were almost 10 percent of America's population in 1790. They were also the largest immigrant group from 1820 to 1950, comprising 6.25 million immigrants. Today, German-Americans are 60 million, or one out of every five Americans.

German-Americans, with the exception of a few Amish, are quite invisible. Few, if any, march on German-American Day. German-Americans have assimilated.

The German-American story in Ann Arbor is similar. They were once a distinctive one-third of the Ann Arbor population and an even larger proportion of settlers in townships west of town. The Germans of today have merged into American society. Will the Mexicans?

Of the 37.5 million foreign-born in America in 2006, 47.2 percent reported Hispanic or Latino origins. This 17.7 million is only 6 percent of all Americans, not nearly as large a proportion as the Germans once were.

In addition, Hispanics are not a unitary group, since they come from different countries and speak different versions of Spanish. Mexicans are the largest contingent of foreign-born in America, at 30.7 percent, or 11.5 million. But this is only 3.8 percent of today's U.S. population.

Most Mexican immigrants are racially distinctive because of their Native American blood. Could this prevent assimilation? When the Germans comprised one third of the Pennsylvania Colony's population, they were distinctive, too. Benjamin Franklin complained that they were "swarthy."
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.