[user104658]

Originally Posted by Brillopad

But don't you think many immigrants are their own worst enemy in this respect. If they make little or no attempts to assimilate i.e. learning to speak English or improving their language skills they will have problems. Learning to speak the lingo is a fundamental skill required to learn most other things.

I really don't see the problems - learning basic English and maths skills are free to non-English speakers, they have plenty of time to work on it and have others they can go to these classes with. We bend over backwards to help with these things. They need to adopt the attitude most of us do that, other than benefits, nothing is handed on a plate and they have to work for it.

It really is difficult to sympathise with people who have that mentality. So what do they do - as you say they often resort to gangs and violence and criminal activity, probably not that far removed from where they 'escaped' from.

Is it really simply a case of you can take the man out of the third world but you can't take the third world out of the man.

But plenty of the people in these gangs aren't immigrants. Large numbers are, simply because large numbers of people in the areas of cities prone to gang culture are, but it's certainly not confined to immigrant populations. And in fact, even when it is immigrant families, it tends to be 2nd/3rd generation youths born and raised in Britain, schooled in England, and who speak English as their FIRST language, who end up in these gangs. I'd say the gangs are more often than not "culturally English", in fact. So your final statement doesn't really explain why it happens.