In my travels, I find that some people need reminding that immigrants didn’t come to the United States only with economic goals in their minds, but they also brought long-held values to their new country. In some respects, these values hearken back to the America of old. While many observers wonder where America’s values have gone, I’d like to say that these same observers might look to America’s recent immigrants to discover what might be missing. I’m talking about values like a strong work ethic and what are considered to be old-fashioned moral standards.

But while we welcome legal immigrants with their work ethic and their values and their morals?and encourage them to become new citizens, I am not sure we are doing a good enough job in training them as American citizens.

Think about it: What does an employer do when hiring a new employee? Train them, of course! Gives the new worker a good introduction to the company’s history and culture, makes sure the new hire understands the reason for the hire, introduces the new hire to his or her fellow employees, teaches about the company’s unique way of doing business, and so on. This way, the company will have more productivity from the efforts of the new employee, and the new employee will find more enjoyment in the new job.
On the other hand, what happens if an employer doesn’t train new employees at all? They will work according to the rules and culture of their former employers, because they don’t know the difference.

So, my contention is that America, in its role as host for the new citizens we accept every day, is obligated to invest more time and effort in guiding them to become the types of citizens American needs. Make sure they understand the reason we are granting the citizenship. Inform them about the rules and culture of this country. Teach American history and lore so new citizens can love and serve this nation like you and I do. If we don’t, they will live like in the old days in their former countries, with their old rules and priorities. Frankly, we might not like the results.

If we don’t start guiding these new citizens soon enough, and with the number of new citizens increasing, America could soon become more like the countries our new citizens left, rather than the America that they came to embrace and that we’d like to keep. By not training immigrants better than we do, we have a certain recipe for chaos.
But I will tell you one thing more. I am still so optimistic about America’s future! Our system has been improving over the last 229 years, and we will continue to prosper.