Hyphenated-Americans don't undermine American identity

Don't listen to the critics who say we fail to "emotionally assimilate"

(Image credit: (John Moore/Getty Images))

The assimilability of immigrants has been a perennial concern in this land of immigrants. Ben Franklin famously worried that admitting too many "Palatine boors" — his fond term for Germans — would mean that they'd Germanize "us" rather than "us Anglifying them," because Germans were incapable of "adopting our language and customs." Thomas Jefferson likewise worried whether Europeans from monarchies would ever acquire the habits of republican self-governance. And then there was the hysteria about the "divided loyalties" of Catholics who regarded the Vatican as a higher authority than Uncle Sam.

Today, a new twist on this old worry has emerged. It concerns so-called transnational immigrants like me who like to maintain what Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose parents are Indian émigrés, last week derisively called "hyphenated identities." If you want to be Indian, stay in India, advised Jindal, who himself gave up Hinduism, the religion of his birth, and embraced Christianity.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.