One of the things a city like Philadelphia would need to do is public education to convince residents that immigrants are not a threat. Immigrants commit the least amount of crime in Boston. For this reason, Poufong and his colleagues sponsored a voter registration campaign this past summer. We wanted to show that immigrants care about issues and can be politically active. Walking just one block north of the Vietnamese strip mall on Washington Ave., a neon sign shaped like a tooth advertises a dentist's office.
Chinese characters glow from inside the tooth.
Down the street, the Vietnamese owners at Sunshine Jewelry will gladly sell you watches, pearls and diamonds, according to a sign in the store's window. Next door, Asian American Auto Tags will help you obtain car insurance. And at the nearby Lo Banh Mi Sai Gon bakery, a petite Vietnamese woman in a red apron serves a menu that is literally all over the map. The concept of the American melting pot may be a myth, as sociologists Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan argued in their influential '60s book Beyond the Melting Pot. All rights reserved.