Can old immigration theories be applied to new immigrants?

Joel Perlman and Roger Waldinger question in their theory the pessimism of the present scholarship on assimilation. These authors emphasize the duality of contemporary immigration and compare historical facts with new findings on contemporary immigrant research. Furthermore, they criticize the way scholars such as Alba, Hirschman and Falcon, and Lieberson and Waters, apply old immigration theories and how the results show prospects for contemporary immigrants in an unfavorable light. (226) Perlman and Waldinger argue that the …

…class society is affected just the same, because they struggle as well to assimilate to changes in the American economy. References: Perlman, Joel and Roger Waldinger. 1999. Immigrants, Past and Present: A Reconsideration," (pp. 223-238) The Handbook of International Migration. U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://stats.bls.gov/. May 2004 Waldinger, Roger. 1996. Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrant in the Postindustrial New York. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 4 (pp.94-136)