Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, doesn't believe in "hyphenated Americans," but he does believe that immigrants who are willing to become part of their new country can make that country better.
“It is my view that immigration can make a country stronger, or it can make a country weaker,” Jindal plans to tell the conservative Henry Jackson Society in London, according to prepared remarks provided to
Politico.
"It really depends on whether the immigrants coming to your country are coming to join your culture, your mores, your laws, and to become a part of your history.”
Jindal, a potential Republican presidential candidate, plans to tell the group that his parents have told him and his brother that when they came to the United States 45 years ago, they made the trip to "be Americans, not Indian-Americans ... If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India.
"It’s not that they are embarrassed to be from India. They love India. But they came to America because they were looking for greater opportunity and freedom.”
The governor is traveling through Europe as part of a 10-day economic development mission that includes stops in Germany and Switzerland.
As part of his talk in London, he also plans to speak on sectarian tensions in Paris, where some Muslims are seeking to live in "no-go zone" and under religious Sharia law, comparing the turmoil to the ongoing U.S. debate over immigration.
Scrutiny of the
walled-off Muslim communities in France intensified after last week's terrorist violence in Paris, where Islamist gunmen who lived near Paris in such zones and away from the city's culture and traditions slaughtered 17 people.
Immigrants need to assimilate, not live among their own countrymen in their own sections of a country, Jindal plans to say Friday.
"I do not believe in hyphenated Americans,” said Jindal, who does not speak often about his ethnic heritage, in his prepared remarks. “This view gets me into some trouble with the media back home. They like to refer to Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Mexican-Americans and all the rest.”
The United States was always meant to be a "melting pot," but a different philosophy has "crept in" that holds the view that it is wrong to expect immigrants to assimilate, "that assimilation is colonialist, assimilation is backward and assimilation is in fact evidence of cultural bigotry and insensitivity," calling that line of thought "complete rubbish."
Jindal does not think immigrants should be "shy or embarrassed about their ethnic heritage," but he does believe people who want to become citizens of the United States should learn English.
However, he said it's "completely reasonable for nations to discriminate between allowing people into their country who want to embrace their culture, or allowing people into their country who want to destroy their culture, or establish a separate culture within."