Assimilation of Ethnic Groups According

Assimilation of Ethnic Groups

According to the Romanian-American Network, Inc., the first wave of Romanians came to the United States between 1895 and 1920. The Romanian ethnic group is considered today a fully assimilated group in the U.S. The second wave of immigrants of Romanian origins happened during the Second World War for fear of the Nazi occupation. After the Second WW and during the communist years up until 1989, the Romanians who came into the U.S. As immigrants were political refugees and exiles. After the change of regime in 1989, there was an increase in the number of Romanians coming to the U.S. To stay because they wanted to be rejoined with their families living here or just willing to have better living conditions than they still had in their homeland.

The first Romanians who came to the U.S. between 1895 and 1920 were mainly unskilled laborers who settled in industrial areas like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. There are also Romanian immigrants settled in Florida and California during that time. Those who followed during the Second WW, the communist regime and after the regime change in 1989 were also intellectuals such as doctors, professors, scientists, artists and during the last two decades, people from the computer industry.

The first thing the Romanian who immigrated in the U.S. gave up was their national costume. They understood that in order to adjust quickly, they had to mingle and become less obvious, so they started to dress according to the American fashion and kepp the national costume for festive occasions. An argument in favor of the theory that sustains the complete assimilation of the Romanians from its early stages of development is brought by Christine Avghi Galitzi who is citing an old man in those days: "I do not recognize my countrymen. They look just like others and unless I hear them talk our language, I think they are Poles or Serbs or Irish. The men have even clipped their moustaches, the sign of virile manhood. But such is the fashion here....I cannot understand how they are able to do these things and still claim that they are Romanians." Not only did they give up traditional clothing, but they slowly and irreversibly adopted American traditions related to the wedding ceremonies and religious and national holydays. They still celebrated their holydays according to the religious calendar, but in a more discreet way. They encountered difficulties in processing the changes they were more or less forced to adopt by the new living style, but these were not very violent from a psychological point-of-view. They proved to be able to understand that differences did not necessarily mean a negative approach and the diversity they met every step of they way convinced them of the positive effects of intercultural change and being open minded. As Galitzi cites another Romanian pondering the effects of change in tradition, especially from the religious point-of-view, a men who came from a country where his parents and grandparents taught him that he would go to Hell if he dared work on a Christian Holyday, he comes to a wise conclusion: "Sometimes I think I am getting to be a heathen. But then I see so many churches here and so many different ways of being a Christian that I say: well! those people who have more learning than myself must know better, when they work on Saints' days instead of going to church."