How far back in film history do you want to go and are you looking for a particular type of "immigrant experience"?  There are earlier, silent comedies like Chaplin's THE IMMIGRANT and melodramas like BROKEN BLOSSOMS.  There are films that are openly or implicitly warnings about "mixing" cultures and such things as the "Yellow Peril"--see the various films about Fu Manchu, for example, or something like the original and remake of SCARFACE.  There are later sound films like I REMEMBER MAMA or Jan Troell's THE EMIGRANTS and THE NEW LAND.  There are a number of Yiddish-language films and some others.  There's pure romanticization like the film version of FLOWER DRUM SONG or even WEST SIDE STORY and a lot of much grittier, low-budget stuff.  There are big-name, big-budget films like FAR AND AWAY and GANGS OF NEW YORK.  There are epics like THE GODFATHER, PART II, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.  There are more contemporary family dramas and comedies like Barry Levinson's AVALON and Paul Mazursky's MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON or Gene Wilder in THE FRISCO KID or Peter Weir's GREEN CARD.  LITTLE ODESSA is a darker view of Russians in New York.  Oliver Stone's HEAVEN AND EARTH deals with a Vietnamese woman who comes to America.  Louis Malle's ALAMO BAY deals with conflicts between Vietnamese refugees and native-born shrimpers in Louisiana. COME SEE THE PARADISE deals with a Japanese woman whose family is interred after Pearl Harbor Day.  Also see Wayne Wang's CHAN IS MISSING and DIM SUM.  Mira Nair's MISSISSIPPI MASALA features an Indian family that has fled Uganda to settle in the US.  You might want to look at Middle Eastern immigrants in Britain, for example in films written by Hanif Kureishi--MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID, and MY SON THE FANATIC.  A number of John Ford's westerns have a dual theme of immigration to the US as well as settlement of the west--see the Swedish father in THE SEARCHERS or all that horsing around with Victor McLaglen in Ford's cavalry trilogy--FORT APACHE, RIO GRANDE, and SHE W
ORE A YELLOW RIBBON.  For an interesting twist on the concept, see the original film and the better TV series of extra-terrestial aliens living in America in ALIEN NATION or John Sayles' THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET.

"Only connect" --E.M. Forster
Donald F. Larsson
English Dept., AH 230
Minnesota State University
Mankato, MN  56001

----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite