"But then I came to the conclusion that no while there may be an immigration problem, it [is not] a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation" (Samuel P. Huntington). The late Samuel P. Huntington was a political scientist who had attended Yale University, University of Chicago, and Harvard University respectively and was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences of the U.S. and Canada. Huntington developed a clash of civilizations theory where the future international conflicts were anticipated to come from cultural disputes. "Living in America: Challenges Facing New Immigrants and Refugees" by Katherine Garrett and Robin Wood Johnson Foundation is a focus group study that explains the common challenges immigrants encounter when they come to America. "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" by Richard Rodriguez is a narrative of the author's childhood as he and his family learn to speak English and become more comfortable with their American identity. Both my father and my mother are immigrants from Palau; my father immigrated to Guam with his entire family, but my mom immigrated to Hawaii by herself. The largest barriers an immigrant will overcome are discrimination and a lack of English skills, which are caused by the community's little understanding of an immigrant's culture and the poor means of obtaining the ability to speak English effectively; however, these barriers can be overcome by offering classes that teach the students about various cultures and offering more convenient ESL classes where immigrants can learn English in a short amount of time. .
A common barrier an immigrant will face is discrimination, which is the act, practice, or an instance of categorical distinction rather than an individual. In "Living in America: Challenges Facing New Immigrants and Refugees," Arab immigrants from one of the focus groups stated that their children are often ridiculed because of their peculiar cultural habits (Garrett 289).
