“Assimilation” is in! “Integration” is out in Trump’s Washington

Here is a bit of good news from Washington.

I’ve told you a few times over the years about how the open borders left rejects the word and the process for immigrants to assimilate and instead has focused on integration for immigrants—most recently here (Sarsour says Muslims must not assimilate).

In Michael Patrick Leahy’s Breitbart story yesterday about this subtle, but important, use of words by the Trump Department of Homeland Security, we see one of the best descriptions of the difference between assimilation and integration described by a Trump critic.  Here it is and then I’ll give you the news:

Justin Gest a professor at George Mason University told Newsweek (emphasis is mine):

“The history of the words assimilation and integration are not necessarily that different,” Gest says, but “through selective use, and adoption by different idealogues and commentators, they have developed divergent connotations.”

“Integration implies a two-way process, whereby the immigrant adapts to their new environment, and those in the new environment attempt to facilitate the adaptation and co-evolve with immigrants themselves.”

“Assimilation has come to connote a one-way process, where there is a monolithic understanding—a static understanding— of what society is like, and that the immigrants hold all responsibility for adapting to it, and society is subject to no obligation to change to welcome or facilitate the arrival of newcomers.”

Now here is what Leahy is reporting about the change in focus at the Dept. of Homeland Security:

The Trump administration has changed the focus of a Department of Homeland Security immigrant citizenship training program managed by USCIS to “assimilation,” a significant shift from the Obama era focus on “integration.”

The change of focus was made official in the announcement on Tuesday that “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications for two competitive funding opportunities under the Citizenship and Assimilation Grant Program.” (emphasis added)

“Both funding opportunities aim to prepare lawful permanent residents for naturalization and promote civic assimilation through increased knowledge of English, U.S. history, and civics. Through these two funding opportunities, USCIS will offer up to $10 million in competitive funding for citizenship preparation programs in communities across the country,” the announcement said.

The program, which began in 2009, President Obama’s first year in office, was previously called the “Citizenship and Integration Grant Program” (emphasis added) and “has awarded $63 million through 308 competitive grants to immigrant-serving organizations*** in 37 states and the District of Columbia. The program has helped more than 170,000 permanent residents prepare for citizenship.”

The name change appears to have taken place this month. A screenshot taken from the Internet Wayback Machine shows the word “integration” was used to describe the grant program as recently as July 3.

Continue reading here.

This is a very good sign that at least internally things are moving in the right direction inside the administration, but here comes my wet blanket question and comment!

Will the far left federal refugee resettlement contractors continue to receive some of the millions of grant dollars? Aren’t there local government agencies that could do a more balanced training program? And, who will be policing their training sessions to assure they are teaching the New Americans about the need to ASSIMILATE?

***Who are the “immigrant-serving organizations?”

You guessed it! Some of our nine major refugee resettlement contractors and their subcontractors are getting some of that grant money.  You will see five of the nine represented in the FY2014 grantees list I posted here in 2015.

I’m sure you have been scratching your heads about how the contractors can survive on only a per head amount received for each refugee they resettle.  The answer is that they all get myriad federal grants for all sorts of things including training refugees for their citizenship tests.

For new readers:

The Federal contractors/middlemen/propagandists/lobbyists/community organizers paid by you to place refugees in your towns and cities are below.  Under the nine major contractors are hundreds of subcontractors.

The contractors income is largely dependent on taxpayer dollars based on the number of refugees admitted to the US, but they also receive myriad grants to service their “New Americans.”

The only way for real reform of how the US admits refugees is to remove these contractors/propagandists/community organizers from the process.