Why aren’t you speaking English?
In Texas, the State Senate held a hearing into their latest illegal immigration bill. Antolin Aguirre began his testimony in Spanish to the panel through an interpreter. Senator Chris Harris asked him why he was speaking in Spanish despite the fact that he’d lived in this country since 1988;
Two minutes into Antolin Aguirre’s testimony, Sen. Chris Harris, a Republican from Arlington, interrupted asking Aguirre’s interrupter, “Did I understand him correctly that he has been here since 1988?” Harris asked. “Why aren’t you speaking in English then?”
My grandfather was born into a Swedish immgrant household where only Swedish was spoken, yet he learned English after he went to school and conducted all of his business in English from then on. My kids were brought up on Spanish while we lived in Panama, learned German when we lived in Germany and learned French when moved to Vermont on the border with Quebec.
The Spanish TV networks have a vested interest in keeping the Latin population illiterate in regards to the language they speak and they push the ‘right to maintain their culture” bullshit, which not only harms the individuals, but the American tax payers, too – to make the Spanish networks rich. English is the language of commerce in this country and if you can’t speak English, you can’t conduct your business.
Thanks to Old Trooper for the link.
Category: Illegal Immigrants
Most everyone in America can point back to an ancestor who came to this county (colony) and had to assimilate. Most of them continued to honor where they came from, and keep their traditions alive, all the while acknowledging the fact they had become something more upon embracing the new land they had adopted. What I’m seeing today is a complete rejection of traditional American culture…and frankly, can we blame these newcomers? More and more, our own countrymen hate their country, it’s traditions and her people. Entire generations are bred to believe that everything awful in the world is the fault of the US, and they are aided in this line of thinking by those who exploit this thinking for personal gain. In our newsrooms and entertainment medium, tradition is barely tolerated if it isn’t being used as a punchline in a sitcom or other degenerate pursuit. Immigrants come here and find an entire subculture willing to coddle and enable them, and most of the time this is with official sanction. Beyond settling into a like-minded community where people of common origin can gain a foothold into American culture, entire sections of some cities have been transformed into surrogate foreign lands where you’d be hard pressed to recognize you’re even in the US. This is more than “Chinatown” or “Little Italy”…and it’s a shame. I couldn’t imagine living in a foreign country as an ex-pat for upwards of 30 years and not having absorbed at least the language of the locals. As noted, there used to be a desire of first generation immigrants to blend into the American melting pot, while holding true to your ancestry, but it’s not required anymore, so the hyphenazation of America will continue until there’s no America left to hyphenate.
English, motherfucker–DO YOU SPEAK IT?
Sorry, had to get the gratuitous Samuel L. Jackson reference in there somehow. Get off my ass, it’s Friday and I’m chained to my damned desk.
Nicely said, Claymore. This country used to be called “the melting pot” because no matter where you came from, everyone became an American that learned the common language being spoken. It wasn’t a matter of forgetting your family heritage, but more of finding common ground with your new country and new herritage that was being written every day. Then, along comes “celebrating diversity” and the hyphenated American. It became less about being an Amerrican and more about identifying yourself as “blank-American”. Celebrating diversity has done more to divide this country than to unite it. Todays immigrants, both legal and illegal, have gotten a pass to not learn the language and been given every excuse by the limp wristed do-gooder types as to why they haven’t and don’t need learned the language.
An example: The light-rail ticket kiosks in Minneapolis have at least 9 different languages programmed into them. A person complained that their language was not included in the program, so at a cost of $110,000 to the taxpayers, the language was added to the kiosks. No one desires to learn the common language of this country, which for 235 years has been English. They are not being forced to learn it, so they don’t. The rest of us have to push 1 for English.
IF only more of the pols had the stones Sen. Harris has. And, Sparky, I think that the Senator was saying the same thing, in a polite way.
Claymore,
And almost every one of us can tell the story of parents or grandparents who insisted their children speak English at home. These bozos? Not so much, apparently. Self-ghettoization FTW.
Politically-correct favored minorities don’t have to learn English because they’re special!
And why should they? They get bilingual education and press 2 for spanish. If you don’t HAVE to learn the language to survive, why bother?
The Spanish Cable networks should be FORCED to provide secondary audio programming (SAP) on their broadcasts like the English speaking networks were forced to do. Although, some may question as to why audio is needed in the first place when all the programs seem to be dirty old men and women with big boobs – those transcend any language barriers…
It’s pretty bad that there are groups out there who are suing the states so that their native language is included in the “official” list of languages for printed documents. Same thing for driver’s license tests and tax forms. It’s effin’ nuts.
What Claymore said.
I am so often accused of being anti immigration. Totally false. This great nation was founded by immigrants, and has grown with immigrants. My problem is with ILLEGAL Immigrants, and those who do not assimilate. A Puerto Rican flag on a rear view mirror, a Meskin flag in a front yard, a person putting their home country ahead of the USA; none of this is proper conduct by someone wanting to enjoy the fruits of this country. If your original country is so damned memorable, go there. If your native language is so damnned important, go home and speak it. If you cannot read our roadsigns, ballots, examinations; TOUGH SHIT. Go to your country of birth and enjoy yourself.
Interesting that legal immigrants to the US of A generally require their children to learn English. It’s only the illegals who are coddled along. Of course, if you don’t know English, how can one be sure one isn’t being cheated in wages, hours, and so on?
Hmmm… cost-benefit anaylsis?
Hell, I’ll even play Devil’s Advocate on this one; think of the misery the illegals are enduring due to this pervasive subculture that caters to them. I can’t count the number of “pay day check cashers” that dot the landscape in the sections of town that I know illegals live in here in metro-ATL. You know they’re preying on their status to take advantage of these people. Same thing with the companies that knowingly hire illegals…I mean seriously, what are you going to do to someone who is screwing you out of hard earned wages? It’s not like you can call the cops. Then there are the “activists” who sit there and advocate for your “rights”, all the while they’re colluding to make sure you pretty much wallow in the mire else they’d have to take daddy’s trust fund somewhere else and find a new cause to champion. These supposed do-gooders think that by giving illegals an excuse, they’re helping them, but in truth, they’re perpetuating these people’s misery. They’re worse than slavers since at least the slaver has no delusion as to what he is.
I thought about going back to school for a Culinary Arts degree. One of the program requirements was to have completed 2 years of Spanish by the end of the program. What a bunch of bullshit. I want to become a chef, and I have to learn Spanish so that I can communicate with the staff. How about the staff learning English? You want to live and work in this country, then learn English! If I went to France or Italy to study and work, I would learn French or Italian.
“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, of birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
President Theodore Roosevelt, 1907
… what he said!!!
We had a controversy like this in Upstate New York about a month ago. The NY Civil Liberties Union challenged a small town’s “English Only” law. For some reason, they thought it was racist. Problem is, what race is French, or German, or Italian?
I was compelled to go to the meeting and speak in French only and see if the NYCLU people could see the value of English Only. My wife advised me to go to my son’s little league game instead.
Its kinda funny here in KC we have a bunch of LEGAL immigrants from west Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Philippines, and Vietnam. For some reason the second generation don’t have too much of a problem with english.
@Jonn L: where in Vermont did your children grow up? Curious as I grew up in Newport and lived in Island Pond and Averill for years and my grandparents and great grandparents on one side came from Quebec and spoke french but learned English immediately upon arrival in VT. We have many french people up here and our ATM’s have French on them not Spanish. Every French person I know in VT can speak english and does not expect you to speak Quebecois to them although a huge amount of Vermonters do.
JonP: We lived in Saint Albans…the high watermark of the Civil War (some Confederates rode across the Canadian border and robbed the bank in St Albans). I taught ROTC at UVM in Burlington.
During Christmas break, I taught some teachers in Newport how to teach land nav for their Outward Bound program. Nice area, but not in winter.
Victimization EPIC FAIL!
Jonn–you kiddin me? NH and VT in winter are PERFECT.
Case in point–when is the last time someone hassled you in the parking lot of Home Depot in Berlin, Colebrook, or Essex? Some French-Canadian standing out there going, “Shovel your roof off, eh?”