Thomas Jefferson Quotes
As to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation.
Although Jefferson was a strong immigration enthusiast, he and others were concerned about the ghettoization. The early German immigrants did not universally adopt English, just as today’s immigrants do not all. This was a concern of Americans since the first immigrations. Yet it has always occurred despite concerns about it. However, the second and third generations all become fluent and literate in English.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA)
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is a complaint similar to that made by anti-immigrant Americans. France, like most other countries of the world, has never had the large scale immigration of today, nor have they had such a large proportion of the same ethnicity at once—in this case, Muslim North Africans. There were never, before the last decades, enough immigrants of any ethnicity in France to have a choice of maintaining their traditional languages and culture and not learning French or otherwise assimilating. America, in contrast, had large immigrations of different ethnicities, and despite the erroneous beliefs of immigration opponents, these blocs of immigrants have wherever there was sufficient density—usually cities, they maintained their old language and other customs. However, their children and the next generation in almost all cases have abandoned the language and many of the customs of the old country. This was true of the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the European Jews, the Russian Jews, the Scandinavians’, and the Hispanics with their different cultures.
She was referring to the Muslim immigrants who were then coming into Europe in large numbers. Europe in general, and Italy in particular, have never had the American experience of assimilation of large numbers of immigrants, and many Muslims came to Europe just for the economic opportunities but did not like or respect the culture or the values. Some even preached hatred of the Christian West and fomented terrorism. This was different from America where Muslim immigrants arrived and despite the difficulties of new immigrants most thrived and were able to assimilate yet maintain their religion and cultural customs. At the same time many American Islamic immigrants represented the more modern Islamic which valued freedom and pluralism and unlike most Muslim nations of today, appreciated the advanced, modernistic, tolerant Islam of 1000 years ago when tolerance and freedom of thought within an Islamic framework made some Muslim countries the most advanced in the world.
This is the origin of the “melting pot” term. Although British, Zangwill wrote this play for America and it was first produced in Washinton DC with Theodore Roosevelt in attendance. The theme was just the concept that most Americans think of relative to the large immigration of so many peoples to America.
Bourne was one of the first writers with a national audience to question the classic but never real “melting pot” theory of immigration and suggest the “salad” model though he never used the term.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
