Social Workers in the U.S. Essay

That said, if the U.S. House of Representatives cooperates with the U.S. Senate and passes reform legislation to offer those 11 million immigrants an opportunity toward citizenship, that will change for many of those people. Hence, acculturation will become -- and is now -- an important issue in how the majority population should relate to those immigrants.

For social workers (and other professionals in healthcare and welfare-related agencies) acculturation should mean a kind of "moving and mixing" within the larger U.S. culture rather than simply expecting immigrants to go from culture a to culture B, and basically become like Americans of European extraction, according to an article in the peer-reviewed journal Human Development (Bhatia, et al., 2001).

Why is the history of American immigration policies relevant to social workers today? That question can be answered by using Bhatia's research, which reflects that due to the "diasporas" in "First World" communities like the United States, there was a typically an attempt to take away the cultural identities of immigrants. Their self-identity, the communication between immigrant parent and child, the native language, along with the emotions and peer relationships that immigrants needed, those were often marginalized and displaced upon entry into the United States (Bhatia, 2).

Social workers don't provide human services based on whether an immigrant has a green card or is conversant with the English language. To the contrary, it is the job of a social worker to engage with clients in need, and provide access to services and to information that a person needs in order to have opportunities to succeed and be socially competent.

On page 4 Bhatia recommends how the acculturation strategy should be working for present-day immigrants, and even though the article is 12 years old now, Bhatia's narrative is absolutely pertinent in 2013. The "optimal acculturation strategy for immigrants is integration" and not "assimilation" as other scholars have suggested (Bhatia, 4). For example, Berry and colleagues (who have written books on psychology that have received attention) suggest acculturation strategies that a newly arrived immigrant should be subjected to.

To wit, Berry's is a "four-fold classification" which includes: a) "assimilation" (asking the immigrant to give up his or her cultural identity by "seeking contact in…daily interaction with the dominant group"; in other words, American culture is what is expected so you best learn our language and our values); b) "integration" (this is a tricky word but in its best light integration should mean simply being accepted into the majority culture by social workers, neighbors, etc.); c) "separation" (giving up one's cultural values and identity and blending into the dominant culture); and d) "marginalization" (like separation, marginalization alludes to abandoning one's original culture and trying to adopt the dominant culture's values and rules) (Bhatia, 4).In conclusion, for the first time in many years there is legislation brewing in the U.S. Congress that could pave the way for undocumented immigrants to become citizens. While the debate is going on, social workers and other thoughtful Americans should be certain to allow immigrants the opportunity to live their lives according to their own cultural patterns, so long as they obey appropriate American laws in the meantime. There should be a backing off of some of the hard-line, prejudiced rhetoric from conservatives in positions of leadership and instead there should be a sense of justice and fairness to all those living in the U.S., regardless of their status as citizens. Social workers know this, and they should lead the way to understanding and justice.

Works Cited

Alfred, T., and Corntassel, J. (2005). Being Indigenous: Resources against Contemporary

Colonialism. Government and Opposition.

Bhatia, S., and Ram, a. (2001). Rethinking 'acculturation' in relation to diasporic cultures and Postcolonial Identities. Human Development, 44(1), 1-12.

National Association of Social Workers. (2010). Human Rights and International Affairs

Division. Retrieved June 29, 2013, from http://socialworkers.org.

Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. (2005). The….....