The United States is, and has long been, a pluralistic society that includes a large immigrant community.

However, Migration is an issue that is actively debated, but little understood, and much of the conventional thinking and political rhetoric on the subject is based on myth, not fact.

Therefore, migration policies and strategies to facilitate acculturation, the process of psychological assimilation into a new culture, are often ineffective.

I work frequently with immigrant populations in my capacity as family therapist and as an acculturation scholar.

These are some of the most common misconceptions I encounter in my work.

The United States hosts more international migrants than any other country, surpassing the next four countries combined (Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Kingdom), according to 2020 data from the United Nations Population Division. While the US population represents about 5% of the total world population, about 20% of all global migrants live there.

A large number of these immigrants learn English, despite public perception to the contrary.

Immigrants and their children learn English today at the same rate as the Italians, Germans and Eastern Europeans who immigrated in the early 19th century.

According to US Census data, adult immigrants report better English skills the longer they live in the US. From 2009 to 2019, the percentage of people who spoke “very good” English increased from 57% to 62% among first-generation immigrants.

Contrary to popular belief that immigrants moving to the US have minimal education, many of them have a good education.

In the last five years, 48% of immigrants who arrived were classified as highly qualified, namely having bachelor’s or postgraduate degrees. In comparison, only 33% of those born in the US have a college degree or higher.

Besides that, the pursuit of higher education is valued and encouraged in immigrant communities, especially those from collectivist societies, which are common in South Asian countries. Migrants from these places tend to prioritize the learning process and the excitement of reaching educational milestones.

That’s not to say highly educated immigrants can easily slide into high-paying jobs. Many of them find themselves working menial jobs that do not require a degree, and underemployment among highly educated immigrants remains a major problem in the US today.

For decades, acculturation studies have highlighted the importance of immigrants embracing American culture. Policymakers, therapists, and educators who offer services to immigrants hold to a limited understanding of acculturation, which encourages immigrants to adapt to their host countries by moving away from the culture of their country of origin.

Then, in 1987, psychologist John Berry proposed an acculturation model that outlined a new strategy.

According to Berry, immigrants must strive to retain elements of their original cultural identity while embracing the new cultural identity that is incorporated into American culture and values.

Currently, Berry’s model is the most widely used to understand acculturation.

However, while the model acknowledges that acculturation strategies may evolve over time, it does not account for this a new form of transnational immigration in which immigrants maintain strong ties to their country of origin.

Advances in technology have made it easier for immigrants to maintain ties to their native culture. There are also cities, neighborhoods, and small towns in the US where immigrant communities make up the majority demographic. Places such as Hialeah, Florida, where Cubans and Cuban Americans make up 73% of the population, and parts of the Detroit metropolitan area, which have growing numbers of Indian immigrants.

For immigrants living on these “immigrant islands,” there is little obligation to go through a transformative acculturation process, either by Americanizing foreign names or by not teaching children the language of their home country.

However, many immigrants feel pressured to belittle their background. While conducting interviews with members of the Turkish community in Chicago, I spoke to many people who admitted to being uncomfortable flaunting their Turkish culture. This doesn’t surprise me. Immigrants are often exposed to a new set of prejudices and biases, for fear that they will not be able to access services such as health care and education.

This fear reinforces the need to assimilate to the dominant cultural values ​​which in the United States include individualistic principles such as independence, and suppression of one’s own cultural values., such as family oriented. This is basically a self-protection strategy.

In my work, I have found that immigrants who engage in so-called “cultural innocence” (behaving in ways that temper their ethnic and cultural expressions) have difficulty adjusting to their new homes.

For this reason, it is critical for social workers, therapists, teachers and policy makers who work with immigrant families to focus on the tensions between acculturation, ethnic identity and well-being.