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The opposition in Congress to making English the official language of the United States is a near perfect example of the failure of the current leadership in Washington to adopt a deeply held value of the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans want the federal government to join with 30 states in making English the official language of the United States, and yet our elites consider the adoption of this value as a distraction or worse.
Consider the Democrat presidential debate Sunday . When asked for a show of hands, Mike Gravel was the only candidate to express support for English. Barack Obama said that the question "is designed precisely to divide us" and that "when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people." If 85% of Americans support English as the official language of government, the only division is between Senator Obama and the American people.
Evita Clinton responded that she supported English as the "national" language but not the "official" language of the United States, since making English the official language would prevent the printing of foreign language ballots for U.S. elections.
It seems that only the elites can possibly see 85% support for a deeply held American value as divisive and think it is acceptable to express support for English as long as it does not actually have any meaning.
I think EVERY IMMIGRANT should be forced to conduct GOVERNMENT business in English.
No matter how good your arguements, when you say people should be forced to your way of thinking, then you better back it up, with a bigger gun than mine. Forcing people to do your will is what dictatorships are all about and goes against my concept of an America worth dying for.
Nobody is forcing anyone to learn any language they don't want to learn.
I don't agree with the government forcing anybody to do anything.
BUT.. if you want to do business with the government and they only do business in English it certainly would be in your best interest.
In Canada which has two official languages we have more than our fair share of governments forcing the politically correct view of the government at the time.
Did you know it is against the law to sell or buy a pound of hamburger meat?
If you sell gasoline by the gallon your business will be shut down.
In parts of Canada if your sign in the window has lettering in English bigger than the lettering in French you will be shut down.
Not really a business friendly environment.
With more than one official language how long before the US government starts mandating that business MUST accomadate whoever happens to be shopping in their store?
It can be easily argued that the Canadian government is Racist towards the english population, if they want a job with the Federal goverment they must learn French.
The vast majority of French Canandians speak English which gives tham a tremendous advantage in getting government jobs.
I very much enjoy my visits to Quebec and have never had any problems with the people in Quebec.
The political climate of having the French provincial government however is a different story. Inciting hatred at every possible opportunity with the sole intention of breaking up the country, I can't see any reason for the US government not taking the opportunity to prevent this happening somewhere down the road in the US.
My husband is in the military and says that there are some people that he works with speak to eachother in a different language. I dont personally have a problem with other languages being spoken here, but I think in the military in ANY country one language should be spoken. You cant be too careful and I think everyone in that kind of a circumstance should be able to understand eachother.
1. The information about Hispanic businesses was provided in response to your tax- burden comment and in response to your depiction of Spanish speakers as wanting to live on the dole.
3. The military info I provided was in response to your casting doubt on Hispanic loyalty due to their refusal to unlearn Spanish and stick solely to English as other immigrants have done.
4. Your insistence that Hispanics are demanding that everything be printed in Spanish is, simply stated, a lie. In fact, it's not even an issue in the Hispanic community and isn't even mentioned on Univision. So your argument is strawman.
5. The Puerto Rican 65th Infantry was militarily trained using Spanish because that's the language which they speak on the island. It did not interfere with their fighting ability.
6. Present-day American born Cubans are doing better than those who arrived in terms of salary. That is true. But English proficiency isn't the only factor. Those who first arrived here faced a discriminatory hostile environment despite their being very highly educated. American employers, for example, were unwilling to pay them the same salaries which their American born professional counterparts were earning. Also, those Cuban Americans born here enter a society where the Hispanic social infrastructure is there to give them a hand. So in addition to knowing English, they are also not under the discriminatory pressure of those who first arrived.
Excerpt
The new Miamians formed a very close and cohesive community, and they quickly began founding businesses, banks, and Cuban American institutions, as well as finding jobs for later arrivals. By 1970, 50% of Miami hotel staff members were Cuban American, and in 1980 half of all Miami-area construction companies were Cuban-owned. Cuban immigrants soon gained a reputation for success, in part because of the relative affluence of the first, “golden,” generation. However, most Cuban immigrants faced the same struggles as all other immigrant groups.....Even the most successful Cubans had to overcome language discrimination and religious intolerance in their time in the U.S.
BTW
The Catholic Irish Immigrants spoke English and were still discriminated against.
The Black Americans knew English and suffered horrendously anyway. Discrimination against African Americans
Nobody is forcing anyone to learn any language they don't want to learn.
I don't agree with the government forcing anybody to do anything.
BUT.. if you want to do business with the government and they only do business in English it certainly would be in your best interest.
In Canada which has two official languages we have more than our fair share of governments forcing the politically correct view of the government at the time.
Did you know it is against the law to sell or buy a pound of hamburger meat?
If you sell gasoline by the gallon your business will be shut down.
In parts of Canada if your sign in the window has lettering in English bigger than the lettering in French you will be shut down.
Not really a business friendly environment.
With more than one official language how long before the US government starts mandating that business MUST accomadate whoever happens to be shopping in their store?
It can be easily argued that the Canadian government is Racist towards the english population, if they want a job with the Federal goverment they must learn French.
The vast majority of French Canandians speak English which gives tham a tremendous advantage in getting government jobs.
I very much enjoy my visits to Quebec and have never had any problems with the people in Quebec.
The political climate of having the French provincial government however is a different story. Inciting hatred at every possible opportunity with the sole intention of breaking up the country, I can't see any reason for the US government not taking the opportunity to prevent this happening somewhere down the road in the US.
The slippery-slope scenario you imagine might be true if assimilation were not taking place in the USA in reference to Hispanics. However, it is taking place. Children of immigrants quickly learn English and it eventually becomes their primary language. In fact, many have difficulty speaking Spanish fluently and if they do speak it they do so hesitantly and often make basic, serious, grammatical mistakes. The late Mexican American singer, Selena, is a case in point. When faced with Spanish speaking interviewers she had great difficulty. She is not the exception, she is the rule.
The only way to get impeached is have sexual relations with another woman in the white house. I guess misleading Americans isnt harsh enough for impeachment
Lying to a Grand Jury, obstruction of Justice had nothing to do with it.
I am starting to understand the left even better now.Talk about misleading!!!!
I don't suppose you listened to AlGores ten minute tirade condeming President Bush for ignoring Saddam Hussein's terrorist activities, his use of weapons of mass destruction, ignoring intelligence from around the world by trying to carry out diplomatic relations with Saddam. Chastising President Bush for allowing him to continue on his quest for Nucular(Is that spelled the way it sounds) weapons.
Back to the original question of this string. I guess it doesn't matter what language you use the left will never listen to reason in ANY language. Keep throwing out the perpetual lie and the race card until they get their way.
An old saying You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time has been changed by the left.
You just have to fool enough of the people enough of the time.
No matter how good your arguements, when you say people should be forced to your way of thinking, then you better back it up, with a bigger gun than mine. Forcing people to do your will is what dictatorships are all about and goes against my concept of an America worth dying for.
Would you feel more comfortable with me saying that the government should not conduct business in any language except English? It amounts to the same thing.
And democracies FORCE peope to go along with rules that are against their wishes all the time... not by force of arms, but by force of law. Excon and I have had discussions about making marajuana legal. Despite the fact that many Americans feel that at least medical marajuana should be legalized, it is not. That's because the majority of Americans have voted for legislators who do not wish to legalize marajuana. So those who are in favor of legalization are being FORCED to live without legalized marajuana.
I don't like 55mph speed limits. But I'm FORCED to go along with them because they are the law. If I want the law changed, I can lobby for change and try to convince the majority of Americans toward my way of thinking and vote for representatives who are of a like mind. And if I can, then those who are in favor of a 55mph speed limit will be FORCED to go along with what I want.
The majority in a democracy FORCES the minority to do what they wish by voting. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the way the system works. It may be FORCE, but it doesn't constitute a dictatorship.
Right now, roughly 85% of Americans want to see English as the official language according to some polls. With the power of our vote, we SHOULD be forcing this issue. We should be FORCING the government to conduct business only in English, and if people refuse to learn that language, they can either obtain a translator at their own expense, or they can live their lives without dealing with the government.
4. Your insistence that Hispanics are demanding that everything be printed in Spanish is, simply stated, a lie. In fact, it's not even an issue in the Hispanic community and isn't even mentioned on Univision. So your argument is strawman.
Let's start here, shall we?
First of all, it apparently IS a huge issue with the entire "immigrants' rights" community. And the La Razza community. And the Aztalan community. I saw the huge protests before the 2004 and 2006 elections where protestors (many of them illegal aliens by the way) were DEMANDING their rights, including Spanish language translation in government. So please don't tell me its not an issue within the Hispanic community. It's certainly a big enough issue to get national news coverage and effect election results.
And if it isn't an issue, then what's the problem with English as a national language? Let's do it and be done with it if it isn't such a huge issue. Why are you against it if the Hispanic community isn't against it?
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5. The Puerto Rican 65th Infantry was militarily trained using Spanish because that's the language which they speak on the island. It did not interfere with their fighting ability.
Very nice. Perhaps they did train in Spanish, though nothing I have read actually confirms that. But when they fought or worked with other units, they did so in ENGLISH. Furthermore, when they had non Spanish commanders and noncoms (ei: Col. William Harris in 1950, and various non-Hispanic replacements for Korean War casualties in 1951) they trained and operated in ENGLISH only. And speaking Spanish in comat when evey other unit is speaking English is the way to lose a battle due to miscommunication. In the military, they consider that a Very Bad Result. I think that US military commanders were quite capable of avoiding that particular mistake.
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6. Present-day American born Cubans are doing better than those who arrived in terms of salary. That is true. But English proficiency isn't the only factor.
It certainly is a major one.
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Those who first arrived here faced a discriminatory hostile environment despite their being very highly educated.
How much of that discrimination was due to the fact that Americans expect "highly educated people" to speak English? How muh of that discrimination could have been avoided if they had learned English? (And how much of that discrimination was due to the crime wave caused by the number of criminals who came here as part of the Mariel Boatlift? The fact that the criminals were demonstrably a very small minority of the Cuban immigrants didn't really help matters. But that is a sepparate issue.)
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American employers, for example, were unwilling to pay them the same salaries which their American born professional counterparts were earning.
And how much of the payscale issues were due to language barriers and lack of language skills? That was certainly true in my grandparents case. Their lack of language skill made it hard for them to be paid a decent salary until they attained those skills. I won't get into the religious discrimination my grandfather faced as a tailor in New York in the Post WWII era. They wanted to make him work Saturdays, and since he was a Sabbath observant Jew he lost his job every week. Every Sunday he'd get a new job, and every Saturday he'd lose it because he wouldn't work on Saturday. Today we call that religious discrimination. Back then, it was just the facts of life. And yet they still managed to survive and thrive... and learning the language certainly made that easier.
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Also, those Cuban Americans born here enter a society where the Hispanic social infrastructure is there to give them a hand. So in addition to knowing English, they are also not under the discriminatory pressure of those who first arrived.
Certainly true. But would that infrastructure exist without members of that community who have good jobs and are productive members of the community? Probably not. And would that be true if they didn't speak English? It would certainly be less likely.
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However, most Cuban immigrants faced the same struggles as all other immigrant groups.....Even the most successful Cubans had to overcome language discrimination and religious intolerance in their time in the U.S.
EXACTLY!!! They had to learn English in order to become part of the American community in any meaningful way.
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BTW
The Catholic Irish Immigrants spoke English and were still discriminated against.
The Black Americans knew English and suffered horrendously anyway.
Care to explain?
Sure. Discrimination takes place all the time. It takes place regardless of language barriers. I speak English quite fluently, but I have experienced racism and racialy motivated violence. It happens. But how much worse would it have been if the Irish Catholic community had refused to speak English and demanded that the government and businesses deal with them only in Galic or Celtic? How much worse would the discimination have been? If Martin Luther King Junior had demanded that the government deal with the Black community in Afrikaans or Swahili only, do you think that the civil rights movement of the 1960s would have been as successful as it was?
I don't see why you are so willing to defend the idea that immigrants don't need to learn the local language in order to make their lives better? What is your issue with English as a National Language for government business. Do you truthfully feel that people are not better off for learning English when they come here? What part of not becoming part of the national community in the USA are you trying to defend?
Now for some statistics to ponder:
According to 2005 Census Bureau information, the Hispanic population is 14.5% of the total population of the USA. However, they make up 58.2% of the non-citizen population. 57.7% of Hispanics in America entered the USA in 1990 or later.
78.2% of Hispanics state that they speak a language other than English at home, compared to 19.4% for the rest of the population, and 39.4% of the Hispanic population in America state that they speak English less than "very well", compared to 8.6% for the rest of the population.
They have an unemployment rate that is 150 basis points higher than the general population, and the median family incomes are $36,278 compared to $46,242 for the general population. Per capita income $14,461 compared to 25,035 for the general population. Hispanic families have a poverty rate of 20.5% compared to 10.2% for the general population, and on an individual basis they have a poverty rate of 22.4% compared to 13.3% for the general population.
Given the information above, can you truly state that there is no connection between language, poverty rates and income levels? Clearly there is SOME connection between the two.
First, I never said that there was aboslutely no connection between language and a person's economic potential here in the USA.
Second, averages can be used to mislead and can even become meaningless when used in a certain way. For example. Two employees earning $50,000 while the other three earn 10,000 a year. The average would make them all appear to earn $26,000 each. The same holds true for the statistics you give. Take the prosperous Hispanic community in Florida and other parts of the country, merge them with undocumenteds and recently arrived apply the averages and voila! Instananeous misinformation and misrepresentation. My opinion? Not at all:
Excerpt:
Mexican-Americans make up about two-thirds of the overall Hispanic population and have, for the most part, achieved solid lower-middle to middle class status.
When the government reports that 23 percent of Hispanics live in poverty compared with only 7.7 percent of non-Hispanic whites, the figures are somewhat misleading, since they understate the poverty of foreign-born Hispanics and overstate it for native born.
In short, Your statistics in no way negate the progress which Hispanics are Generally making in the nation as a whole and in Florida in particular. The difference is that you choose to focus on only the negatives and I choose to focus on the positives. Also, if indeed poverty is only caused by language then Afro Americans should be on equal par with Anglos but are not since poverty also plagues their communities. So there are nonlinguistic factors at work here which you prefer to ignore.
Speaking Spanish at Home
It takes time to learn a language and English doesn't lend itself to quick learning due to its illogical spelling/pronunciation inconsistencies.
Consider the double "oo" pronunciation inconsistencies in the following words: "food", "blood", "look", the puzzling identical pronunciations but different spellings of the "ph", and the "f " "Full", "Phil" and the silent letters such as "d" in "could," "should"-- letters which are included but are doing nothing but being there. No, it isn't easy and takes time. Is that believable? Could that be one reason why some say they can't speak it well yet and choose to speak Spanish at home?
Furthermore, that choice doesn't mean that those speaking Spanish at home can't effectively communicate with their employers as you seem to assume. In some cases yes. But not all and not in the majority of cases since as I brought to your attention before the jobs they do don't require them to be communicating in English all day.
Additionally, regardless of your annoyance, these people are breaking no law by speaking Spanish at home. In fact, it's a human right defended by the Constitution. Or are you privy to some Constitutional info the rest of us are not aware of. If so--pray tell.
Non Citizens
About the non-citizen info, it's a matter which our government helped to create by winking at immigrant exploitation for decades and which it is at present trying to resolve. In short, it is no secret. That you treat it as if it were some type of incriminating evidence really is of no account and is actually irrelevant to the subject.
Here are some statistics for you to ponder: English Dominant
As you can see the process is going along just fine. If you wish to accelerate it, why not make an effort to have English written more logically? I assure you--that would help.
BTW
Mariel Boat Lift
You are comparing apples to oranges.
The Marielitas arrived much later and coming from the lower classes in Cuba, were far less-educated. Any hardened criminals placed among them by Castro were promptly deported by USA authorities.
They were initially welcomed by the American Cuban community. But soon the educational and class social class and racial differences resulted in the first group to turn against the second. There remains a large rift between these two groups and it is unfair to lump them together that way.
Cause of Discrimination
How much of it was caused by language barriers is anybody's guess.
But certainly, not speaking English is a disadvantage in an English speaking country. I never said it isn't or wasn't. Neither have I said that immigrants shouldn't learn English, that is a strawman argument and is really a waste of time since I can't defend something I didn't say.
Perhaps I'm a bit leery in attributing all discrimination to language as you do because discrimination continues against minorities even after they learn the language. Then suddenly other things are latched on to and the discriminators continue along the same line without even breaking stride.
The 65th Infantry
You are missing the point.
I use the 65th Infantry as an example of people who speak Spanish and it doesn't interfere with their loyalkty to the USA. I did so as a response to your statement concerning language learning = loyalty. Hope that clears it up.
Big Issue?
Yes, in certain areas of the Hispanic community it is a big issue. To the illegal immigranmts themselves and their families-for example. However, the Hispanic community is not one homogenous group sharing the same political concerns and agendas to the same degreess. Puerto Ricans, for example, are born USA Citizens and come and leave the mainland USA as they please. The Cuban American community at present has no immigration issue which affects it DIRECTLY.
As for the agencies which might be making it a big issue, have you considered that it is their job? All agencies, after all, have a purpose. Correct? So showing surprize at an agency which does what it's supposed to do is rather illogical--don't you think?
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