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Social work with immigrants: international issues in service delivery

The United States is historically a nation of immigrants, and since the 1970s has seen a substantial increase in immigration and a growing percent of foreign-born from around the world (Passell, 1990). For more than a century, social workers have played an important role in assisting immigrant families and communities. Over time, important advances have been made in understanding immigrants and immigration. In ’Americanization’ programs of the 1920s, it was often assumed that immigrant families replaced their traditional culture with an ’American’ culture, but today we know that immigrants do not forget their ’old ways’ in a kind of collective amnesia. Social workers are attuned to immigration as a complex adjustment that varies considerably among groups and among individuals within the same group (Chau, 1991; Lum, 1992). Social work practice has made important advances in recognizing the need for greater cultural awareness in policy and program design for ethnically diverse populations (e.g. Arroyo and L6pez, 1984; Lum, 1992; Watkins and Gonzales, 1982). Nonetheless, additional steps are needed in the case of immigrants. This paper suggests that understanding the context of immigrants’ former lives and their immigration experiences is important for social work. An international perspective (Healy, 1986, 1991; Hokenstad, 1992), allows social workers to be more effective in their work with people whose life experiences have spanned international borders (Meemeduma, 1992). From a practical point of view, this may seem a lot to expect. The knowledge base required of social workers is already extensive. How can social workers be expected to know about other countries