The Economist: Hyphenating beats segregating

Right on the money:

Why Arab immigrants assimilate better in the United States

Mr Ahmed, the executive director of ACCESS, a social-services agency for Arab immigrants, reckons there are clear reasons why the sorts of immigrant-driven riots that have recently shocked and shamed France seem hard to imagine in Dearborn, or in other ethnic Arab communities across America. In contrast to the situation in France and in many other European countries, he points out, the children and grandchildren of Arab immigrants to America, both Muslim and Christian, climb the same ladder of education, income and advancement that other immigrant groups have scaled successfully, from Asians to the Irish.

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Yet in the wake of those [ED.: the 9-11] attacks, Dearborn's Arab-American leaders were also able to fall back on countless ties - social, educational, commercial, political-with the wider community, to defuse tensions…
Arab-American workers and businessmen are woven into the wider economy: making car parts, running petrol stations, and trying, like the rest of the rustbelt, to branch out into new white-collar professions. In September 2001, both the chief executive of Ford, Jacques Nasser, and the president of the United Auto Workers, Stephen Yokich, were of Arab descent.

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Immigrants from Lebanon or Iraq may head for Dearborn or the Arab section of Chicago because they have relatives there; or, when they arrive in a big city, they may gravitate towards an area with familiar foods and festivities. But that sort of clustering reflects immigrants' choices. Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, contrasts this with France, where North African immigrants gravitate to the grim high-rises of the banlieues because there is nowhere else for them to go.

The Economist isn’t just factually correct here, but must have some kind of mind penetrating radar.