I'm a Latin American immigrant. When coming to the US, I decided to fully integrate myself in the culture: attain a high proficiency level in English, US history and culture, marry a native and raise my child in the local culture. I believe that if you are moving to a new country, you are deciding to an extent leave your old country behind and start a new journey helping build your adoptive country.
When looking at other Latin American immigrants, I tend to see a strong desire to do the same. Latin Americans often join the US armed forces, become patriotic and even conservative Americans. In particular with Cuban immigrants, there is hatred towards some of the original values (communist/revolutionary Cuba) and a strong embrace of the new world. While you can always find examples to the contrary, I believe that Latin American immigrants in the US have done a terrific job at integrating, perhaps because of our cultural and religious values being already somewhat compatible with the US.
This is not the same for all other immigrant cultures. I don't want to point fingers to not start flame wars. However, I've seen communities of different cultures refusing to mix with locals: they will not marry locals in general for religious and sometimes even racial reasons. For them, the US is just a convenient location with Costcos and Targets, but they often despise our cultural roots and don't even bother to learn the culture or language. Their children are of course better integrated, but their community still frowns upon departing their culture circle.
We Latin Americans still, of course, stay around our community and speak our native language with people sharing our cultural heritage. We still like "our" food. But when you talk to people in the community, they are complaining about how things are bad in Latin America and how much better they are in the US. In some other cultures, it's the opposite; they complain about how things are bad in the US, and how much better they were back home!
When looking at other Latin American immigrants, I tend to see a strong desire to do the same. Latin Americans often join the US armed forces, become patriotic and even conservative Americans. In particular with Cuban immigrants, there is hatred towards some of the original values (communist/revolutionary Cuba) and a strong embrace of the new world. While you can always find examples to the contrary, I believe that Latin American immigrants in the US have done a terrific job at integrating, perhaps because of our cultural and religious values being already somewhat compatible with the US.
This is not the same for all other immigrant cultures. I don't want to point fingers to not start flame wars. However, I've seen communities of different cultures refusing to mix with locals: they will not marry locals in general for religious and sometimes even racial reasons. For them, the US is just a convenient location with Costcos and Targets, but they often despise our cultural roots and don't even bother to learn the culture or language. Their children are of course better integrated, but their community still frowns upon departing their culture circle.
We Latin Americans still, of course, stay around our community and speak our native language with people sharing our cultural heritage. We still like "our" food. But when you talk to people in the community, they are complaining about how things are bad in Latin America and how much better they are in the US. In some other cultures, it's the opposite; they complain about how things are bad in the US, and how much better they were back home!