Immigrants and cultural identity.
Basically, the reason why immigrants "cling" to the old ways is because emigration is a deeply traumatic experience. People don't really want to emigrate except out of desperation. What they're holding on to is their identity, most of which they have already lost. Short of gaining some kind of enlightened realization that your "identity" is a happenstance, that's the only thing you've got left, having lost everything else. The cultural desert that they find in the U.S. reinforces the longing for 'home,' added to which is the fact that the only people who will help them or value them are other immigrants -- so the cultural clinging reinforces that common bond.
Immigrants and the work ethic.
I don't know of a single immigrant who does not work their ass off. If you're the kid of immigrants, you absorb a daily mantra of work, work, work, work. Work in school, work at work, work, work, work. This is also necessary because a lot of immigrants come over with just the clothes on their back, so they really have to build from nothing. My father came here when he was nearly fifty with a couple of suitcases of clothes and two crates of linens and books. He worked for the next twenty five years six days a week 8, 9, 10 hours a day. Most of the immigrants I met at UCB and now meet daily at work -- a huge, hi tech company -- also work like mules. And that's saying a lot, since we're comparing them to Americans who work pretty hard.
It is not immigrants who are the enemy.
Joanna