Immigrants and Cultural Groups

During last Wednesday, Professor Baldwin showed us a picture of people sleeping in a car during the 20's-30's. This picture demonstrated what I think to be an outcast of these people in society, just because they stake their new life in America as immigrants. This picture, while taken many decades ago, still resonates with the same type of scenarios we encounter in today's modern America. Illegal Mexican immigrants live in the same packed crowded living conditions, and while we may not seem them specifically in cars as much as past times, their presence is still very much there. They are merely another wave of needing self-acceptance in America, just as the Germans, Italians, Jews, Greeks and etc, needed it as well. These groups aggregate into parts of a city which serves as a connection back to their homeland (such as Flushing for Asian groups, and Astoria for Greeks), but it also serves a negative purpose in discouraging less interaction with other cultures which is the absolute essential ingredient for increased tolerance in the newer generations. My parents are both immigrants, and I grew up in Queens for a few years, but in those few years I still managed to interact with a variety of cultural groups and are open to interaction with any of them, as opposed to screening out others and etc. In my opinion, for any integration to happen, this interaction has to happen (like a law).