Why do immigrants cluster together with other people from their nation of origin in US cities?

Answer 1

Immigrants cluster together because they do not fit in American society, so they live together in urban neighborhoods to be with people of their own race and language. This happens because immigrants do not speak English, which means they don't understand each other.

These issues exist in cities of every country; the US is not unique in this regard.

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The above is a point of view, and while I take serious exception to it, it should remain as an arguable position. See discussion for comments.

Anyone, including me and everyone who reads this, would have a natural and very understandable tendency, when faced with living in a land other than the land of one's birth, to find others with whom language, food, and other styles of living can be effortlessly shared. This gives some peace and rest from the struggles, especially for adults, of coping with monumental changes in every aspect of life. Even immigrants who are making strong efforts to 'fit in' will need a break from the stress. Race is a complicating factor only in areas where race is already an issue for the native populations. Immigrants of the same race as the native people will still face all of these challenges. Children typically adapt more quickly, learning new languages more easily and finding themselves having to survive in new and sometimes scary school settings.

Imagine not knowing how to get by in the language spoken all around you, and having no idea how you are coming across because of things entirely off your radar screen. What kinds of things might you or do or say that the native people find offensive or interpret as ignorant uncivilized or threatening, that are nothing more than social conventions without much objective meaning? You may have to learn things on many different levels in order to feel at home, levels that you don't even know exist until something painful or cruel happens.

Everyone starting a new life in a foreign land wants to get along and to be accepted on some level or other. Exceptions might be people who have destructive agendas to begin with, or who are not particularly healthy socially and/or emotionally. In today's charged atmosphere of international tensions some groups may have a harder time in a new country than others. But you would have to be without insight to see that this can have something to do with prejudices on the part of the native populations.

It is a complex question, and the unease of some native populations is not always completely without reason. Most people living in their native or adopted lands and enjoying the country's given culture and mores would welcome immigrants who legally come and who are willing to operate within the given culture and mores. People are less likely to be comfortable with groups from other lands who give the impression, even unintentionally, that they are trying literally to expand a foreign culture within and to the exclusion of their own.