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, addi-tional steps are needed in the case of immigrants. This paper sug-gests 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 (Meeme-duma, 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 countrie