At Odds Over Immigrant Assimilation

Krikorian said the government is right to step in, but "unless we dramatically reduce the inflow of people from abroad, this kind of effort is just trying to wipe the ocean up with the sponge."

As director of the African Resources Center in the District, Abdul Kamus tries to teach immigrants the virtues of democracy. He bristled at the idea of a federal task force on assimilation. But he said organizations such as his -- on which he said he has spent his retirement money -- need more funding and help.

"There are not enough ESL classes. I would suggest to Americans, if they really want to help immigrants quote-unquote assimilate, they should teach a family English," Kamus said.

Assimilation patterns mean little to Mulu Zemikel, 49, even though her life fits into some of the traditional ones.

The Eritrea native immigrated more than two decades ago with no English skills. She and her husband settled in what was then an ethnic enclave for Ethiopians and Eritreans, Adams Morgan, where they opened an Eritrean restaurant that served foul, a fava bean chili, to crowds of compatriots.

Today, the enclave's population has dispersed to the suburbs. Her customers include Americans who have discovered foul, Zemikel said. Her three U.S.-born children are fully American, she said -- except that they are more "disciplined." Zemikel, a U.S. citizen, picked up her fractured English from them. She uses it to communicate with the restaurant's Salvadoran and Mexican cooks.

No government program directly aided Zemikel's integration. If anything made her embrace her new country, she said, it was the diversity that worries some critics.

Americans "want all the people -- black, yellow, green, Chinese," Zemikel said. "In other countries, they don't want them, like, equal."

At the Silver Spring citizenship class, Alcides Orellana quietly filled out his workbook. He is 34 and emigrated from El Salvador at 17. His conversational English is rocky, but his hobby of studying U.S. history on the Internet has made him fluent in such American mottoes as "freedom for all."

He knows few other immigrants who go to such lengths, but government assimilation projects might help, he said.

"If you live in America," Orellana said, "you have to be American."