"Here is my argument: After three months working with them, I spoke more Spanish than 90% of them spoke English, including several of them that had been in the USA for over 10 years. What does this tell me? These people are making no attempts to fit into our culture and have no loyalty to our country. In three months, I had made more of an effort to be inclusive than these people had made in 10 years. They feel that our country needs to adapt to them, and that the people of this country have nothing to make them worth getting to know or to make them worth putting any effort into. A situation like this one is very similar to what caused the fall of the Roman Empire."

How old were you? How old were the people you worked with? Were they 1st generation (born in Mexico) or 2nd generation (born in the USA)? Did you notice any difference in the amount of English spoken between 1st and 2nd generation immigrants (if both were present)?

For perspective (and your education) the following is optional: Please contrast this with another immigrant group like say the Irish during the potato famine. Please find me contemporary (to the immigration) writings about how the Irish were assimilating. Also, after the fact analysis of their contributions/detractions from American society. Also, compare the amount of English spoken by first and second generation Irish immigrants.

You don't have to pick the Irish, so feel free to pick the group of your choosing.

Also, I'd like a citation for your Roman Empire fact.

You certainly make some interesting points, and I commend you on that.

I was 27 years old this summer, and the people I worked with had a wide variety of ages. I do agree that many of the immigrant groups coming into America have been viewed in a poor light, and wrongly so. I would also like to say that I do not hold the Mexicans at fault for coming here.

The people that are coming in are generally people who were born in the harshest economic settings. And while I believe that any American born person with a work ethic has a chance to succeed in America, that is not true for the Mexicans coming in. Many of them do not work so that they themselves can be successful, but so that they can give their children the opportunity to be successful. As far as generations, I know that the vast majority were all first generation, though it wasn't their inability to speak English that bothered me, so much as their lack of desire to try.

As I said above, I do not fault the Mexicans coming here for their lack of loyalty, I fault the current system which essentially discourages their loyalty. They can easily come over illegally and make money, but it is much harder for them to bring in their family, so they send all of their money back to Mexico.

As far as a reference for the Roman Empire, I can look it up for you, but it is commonly accepted that the barbarian armies that defeated Rome were in fact Roman trained. A good reference would be the History Channel on that one. Let me know and I'll look it up further.

BTW, Kudos on bringing up some good points, I'll give them some further thought.

and I wouldn't describe it as commonly accepted. It is commonly accepted that diamonds are valuable. It is also provably false (they have no resale value and their price is fixed by a cartel). According to Bob & Tom (which isn't exactly the most reliable source) 66% of people surveyed believe poinsettias are poisonous. While "technically" true it would take so much as to be prohibitive. I'd view the roman empire part like that. The barbarian armies may have had roman training, but so did the romans. I'd say the fall of something as vast and complex as the Roman Empire being blamed on one thing (barbarian influence) is being a little naive... Wouldn't you?

And that is hardly a fact. It is one theory of the why. It was posited by Edward Gibbon, and his books are widely heralded for his use of primary sources. As in he used contemporary writings instead of the Church's Latin translations (which are at best secondary sources). It was apparently one of the first historical works to do this, which in my opinion lends undue credence to his theory. This undue credence is (again IMHO) based on the quality of his work instead of the accuracy of his conclusion.


I could (probably) come up with other example of scientists doing fantastic and thorough work only to come up with bunk conclusions or conclusions highly slanted by other motivations, but I'm all tuckered out for now.

"ACCULTURATION AND ASSIMILATION

In many respects, the Germans were slower to assimilate than their fellow immigrants from other countries. This was due in part to their size and in part to their overall percentage of the population. When a cross-section of basic needs can be supplied within an ethnic community, the need to assimilate in order to survive is less urgent. Germans had their own professionals, businesses, clergy, churches, and especially schools. However, second generation German immigrants were drawn more quickly into the mainstream and the survival of German communities depended upon immigration."

from http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/German-Americans.html

I found this on Germans. Partly because they had a very large immigration from 1840-1880 and partly because I am of German decent. Feel free to find you own examples...

Here's another http://www.theseverts.net/German.htm

There's plenty of incentive to learn English as is, without government mandates, etc. As you've noted, immigrants have historically been slow to acquire English proficiency, but eventually they recognize the financial and social incentives to learn the language of the majority.

It's also very difficult to learn new languages as an adult-- children are far better-equipped to acquire new ones. So you see what you see in the majority of immigrant-heavy areas-- the parents speak very little English, whereas the children who were born here are fluent in both languages. Given time, the tremendous financial and social advantages inherent to learning English do the work for you.

Mandating English might accelerate that process, though it would be an odd precedent-- we don't deny services to the illiterate, handicapped, severely retarded, or other groups that can't speak, read, and/or write in English. In the short term, however, it would definitely do a lot of harm to communities where English proficiency is low, and there's a lot of legitimate questions about whether this harm outstrips any longer-term gains.

If all government business must be conducted in English, what happens if an immigrant (or for that matter, tourist) is the victim of a crime? Would they have to hire a translator to report the crime to the police? (Presently, the police will generally provide a translator, by telephone if the language is uncommon.) What if the officer and victim both speak Spanish more easily than English? Why not let them speak Spanish to get the story?

That said, if the issue in question has a functional consequence, I think it's more open for debate. For example, I'm fine with the road signs on driving tests being written in English (even if the questions are in another language), because when you drive, the road signs will be in English. But most of the laws being proposed don't have those kinds of strong functional reasons for their existence-- they are very broad, and strike me only as convenient ways to force immigrants out of a town.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com