Even at 500 mil my guess is that the Australian Governments program only represents a few crisp or not so crisp pictures of the queen from your pocket. Best guess is that you might be able to get a Happy Meal from McDonalds if that money was re-directed back to your wallet. No you can not also get desert! It is probably not Halal anyway.

Not knowing too much about were on the political spectrum your PM is vis Right / Left we will have to guess he is not trying to achieve a Borg like conformity in Australia. So no “resistance is futile, you will be assimilated and eat Vegemite sandwiches for lunch.” Can’t go with “you will be hopelessly dotty about the pointless sport of Cricket.” because that actually covers most of South Asia.

As to past waves of immigrants not being assimilated, well that argument can be dispelled quite quickly. Look at the kids, see if they speak the “mother tongue” most likely if the do at all it is to help mum or dad with coping with an English speaking majority. There is not a very good chance that the grandkids will pick up the language from their parents or grandparents. Just because you have mousaka for dinner doesn’t make you “Greek.”

On this side of the pond “assimilation” or “leaning the American way” or “Civics” was part of the governments’ responsibility. As stated the Government was in your face about it. For the most part the Immigrants did not assimilate, but their children did. This is why there were numerous Yiddish daily newspapers at the turn of the Century and only one now. Yiddish in the USA is a nearly dead language. The kids learned English (and the “American Way”) from the public schools. They learned what is the American civic religion, work hard, play by the rules, and you can make it in the USA. So competition and a puritan work ethic are part of the bedrock principles of the USA.

In the USA the schools are a local affaire. But it is still the government, and this part of the government does the heavy lifting of acculturation. In Australia schooling is perhaps a more centralized affaire. This is neither here nor there. In the USA there is ICE, DOE, DOD, and other departments and agencies that deal with Immigration and Naturalization. There is not Bureau for Muslim control or assimilation here. There is Homeland Security that deals with Immigration and Naturalization. So government in backhand way at least will always have some sort of assimilation agenda.

Governments at least in the Western models do at least attempt to serve the public. As Muslims are part of “We the People” the government should keep its ear to the ground to find out how to better serve them. Now in Australia there might be a particular cohort of the Muslim Ummah that have ended up on those shores. So “Muslim” is maybe shorthand for something else, something less politically correct. Here you would just be O.T.M. in Border Patrol speak. (Other Than Mexican) So here it would be O.T.M. assimilation efforts with Muslims being a tiny fraction of the 16 million “undocumenteds.” So here it is ESL and other initiatives that are part of the debate.

If you have been hiding under a rock, the USA has been dealing with the question of assimilation of millions of new immigrants. There had been a huge hullabaloo over how to recognize the fact that some 16 million folks set up housekeeping here with out bothering to get a mother-may-I from the federal government. Underlying the whole debate is the question of how to plug these folks into the greater American commons. Underlying is a debate about how these folks will assimilate. The question is what part of their culture gets added to the greater American culture and what gets tossed. Me I’m rooting for the USA getting some good footballers so we don’t get bounced after the first round of the of the World Cup. Hum, free citizenship for ANYONE with mad football skills we might be on to something here.

What will you guys ask next week?

Dear Mr Austrolabe my imaginary friend wants to know why Muslims should not be put in gas chambers, or ethnically cleansed?

Actually, French mechanisms for assimilation work as well as ever on the traditional material — Poles, Spaniards, Italians, Rumanians. Or for that matter Chinese and Vietnamese and Creoles from Reunion or Martinique.

They just don’t work nearly as well on Muslims.

The problem is not with the mechanism of assimilation, but with the raw material; a machine designed to crunch up limestone has been given a load of ball-bearings.

How would you reply to those who say that “Muslim immigrants are unassimilable by virtue of their Islam”?

That’s a good question.

Firstly, the problem with these calls to ‘assimilate’ different groups is that nobody seems very clear about which qualities exactly they need to adopt in order to be considered ‘100% assimilated’. For example, is it necessary that new migrants to the UK eat pork pies, learn to Morris dance and lay down carpet in their bathrooms (perhaps the most confronting aspect of British culture) Or, to use a similarly extreme Australian example, must every new arrival drink beer, like BBQs and take an interest in either rugby league or Australian-rules football? Of course, it’s neither necessary or possible for any of this because even ‘mainstream’ culture is heterogeneous..

Secondly, Muslims will, like everyone else, be influenced by the culture they live in (and vice versa). Cultures are not static and that applies as much to the minorities as it does to the broader community (just look how diets have changed over the decades, for example). This doesn’t mean we will start swilling beer, eating pig and shift jummah prayer to Sunday, but it does mean that Muslims will adopt those things that don’t conflict with their religious beliefs and appeal to them personally (and individual tastes will differ). The same can, of course, be said about other immigrants and the same can be said of other Australians/British people who come into contact with other cultures. All this talk about Muslims somehow being excluded from the normal social processes which have influenced everyone else (including Muslims in other societies) is a complete red herring.

Lastly and more importantly, why is assimilation (as opposed to integration) a desirable thing anyway? I can see more advantages (economic and social) in an integrated but organic multicultural society in which individuals are free to pursue their own cultures, ideas, values, etc.