ABSTRACT
The presence of immigrants from developing nations has become a major policy issue in most industrialized countries (Chapter 1 ) . Some charge that this presence places an unacceptable cost burden upon the native popula tion, others that educational underachievement by the children of immigrants threatens them with permanently subordinate status. Concern with class is paralleled by a concern with culture: Does the presence of a large number of immigrants who are culturally very distinct from the majority threaten to distort or corrupt the host society? Or will immigrants form an inassimi lable minority within that society and threaten its security or ability to act in a coherent way? Ironically, all of these concerns were raised in the 1 840s in the United States, when many opinion-shapers were deeply worried about the Irish and German Catholic immigrants who were believed to threaten the loss of the American character and democratic political system (Glenn, 1 988b) .
