THE NEW IMMIGRATION AND ETHNICITY IN THE UNITED-STATES

The article assesses the prospects for the assimilation of new immigra nt groups and judges their likely effects on the society, culture, and language of the United States. It places the new immigration in histo rical perspective and indicates the distinctive features that set it a part from earlier influxes. It appraises the structural context for th e incorporation of today's immigrants and argues that because of funda mental differences, their assimilation will not be as rapid or complet e as that achieved by European immigrants in the past. The article con cludes by suggesting how the nature of ethnicity will change as a resu lt of a new immigration that is linguistically concentrated, geographi cally clustered, and temporally continuous into an American society th at is increasingly stratified and unequal.