Another immigration discussion

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OK, I tried really hard (ha ha) to not get involved in the derailing that occurred a while back, but just for joacqin, I decided today to post this hilarious little piece (ha ha HA!) that I found while cruising through "11 points". Here it is from his list of 11 Most Awesome Useless Body Parts:

LINK

Too freaking funny. Now, back on topic, you shameless derailers!

 

Is that what you meant by not having a choice but to immigrate? That is a very small proportion of immigrants as far as I know. Still, most countries would prefer to return such involuntary immigrants to their homes; if the immigrants want to stay then it is a matter of choice.

It is unfortunate, that lunatics and wackos make that argument, but that does not necessarily invalidate it. Whenever people live together, they should have some social structure so they can live in harmony (more or less). This structure can and should occasionally be changed, but it should be done so it works better for all people, not just any one (still relatively small) group.

 

Sure, but if a change could be enacted that helps one small group without hurting or invalidating another, it should be enacted. Period. Put simply, discrimination is discrimination.

All people -- members of the "majority" or the "minority", immigrant aliens, naturalized citizens, or citizens by birth should reasonably expect to be free of pressure to "conform" to the un-codified "rules" of society. They should be expected to follow the law, to be sure, but all people have the right to try and change laws which they feel are unfair. Of the many reasons the US government is set up as it is, one of the most important was our founders' very real and very valid fear of the Tyranny of the majority. Just because the masses want it doesn't mean it is right.

If a society has immoral or discriminatory laws, foreigners, minorities, and even those members of society who benefit from such laws shouldn't just blindly follow them. They should try to change them. Sure, they should be expected to obey the law of the land, but they shouldn't be expected to keep their mouths shut when they have to go to the back of the bus, either.

 

No disagreement here.

 

Yeah, I don't think you'll get much arguement on that point. Unfortunately, it seems to be uncommon.

I would add one caveat, though. In some cases, the un-codified rules of society are necessary for proper functioning. For example, speaking english in most of the US today is something of a mechanical pre-requisite to getting anything done. English isn't the official language of the US, we don't have one, but it's so VASTLY common, and alternatives are uncommon and inconsistent enough, that it may as well be. I insist that any immigrant to the vast majority of the US (or native to the US; they need it, too) must learn to speak proper english or become very good friends with someone who can translate for them. This isn't to maintain any kind of status quo, this isn't to force them to conform, this is just so that they can properly communicate and function in society. If they've immigrated to a community that treats their language as a standard alternative (some in Florida and CA I think treat spanish that way), then it's not a necessity, though I would still strongly encourage it in the modern day.

Now, I imagine language is probably one of only a few issues that are like that: not always official and yet absolutely necessary for functioning.

 

I'm not saying that immigrants should take it up the tailpipe out of gratitude, but they should expect to be treated just like any other citizen. Some of the noisier ones cry "abuse, discrimination, racism" at the drop of a hat, often ruining the reputation of people who did not do anything wrong.

They should also respect their fellow citizens. This thread was inspired by a bunch of Sri Lankan Tamils who staged an illegal blockade of a major roadway in an effort to draw attention to the plight of their terrorist Tamil friends in Sri Lanka. Now I am not without sympathy for their cause, as the Sri Lankan government has not been angelic in their behaviours, but they seriously inconvenienced their fellow citizens and put lives at risk with their illegal acts. And for what? It's not like Canada has a helluva lot of jurisdiction over there in Sri Lanka (try none) and the Canadian government has already roundly criticized both sides in the conflict. What did these idiots hope to achieve? And can you really blame the thousands of people who were inconvenienced by this illegal blockade for saying "if you want to protest the actions of the Sri Lankan government, then go the **** to Sri Lanka and protest there -- effing up our lives in Canada won't accomplish a damn thing!"

Some call such an attitude racist -- I call it common freaking sense. If their protest had been a legal one (that didn't blockade a major roadway) or even at the Sri Lankan embassy, they would have gotten sympathy. All these fools did was alienate their fellow citizens.

 

To be perfectly honest, though, this is one of those things that I feel should be codified. As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I'm of a mind that immigrants should be able to speak English reasonably well.

I am not, however, of the opinion that the government isn't obligated to provide translators or translated court documents to foreigners undergoing court proceedings. Refusing to do so ignores the reality that we have many people living legally within our borders who do not speak sufficient English to understand a court document. The argument could be made that we should not have allowed such people entry, but the point remains that we did, and they are now legally here. Fortunately, there is an easy solution to problems like this. If we made being literate (in my mind, just speaking English isn't good enough) in English a standard for immigration, the problem would go away on its own.

 

But that would be raaaaaaacist

 

Drew, many fluent and educated english speakers can't make sense out of court papers. Legalese is a foreign language, for which lawyers are the translators. Are you suggesting that the gov't should provide lawyers to everyone they serve papers of any kind to?

Other than that, I would LOVE to see the US make english our official language. I count the lack of it as an oversight, probably not an intentional omission.

 

Funny. I'm suggested that the government has an obligation to ensure that people who are served with a court order or other such communication from the government understand what they are being told. As Miranda has shown, the supreme court agrees with this. For example, evidence has been ruled inadmissible many times due to an arrestee's poor knowledge of English and the failure of arresting officers to provide the Miranda warning in the arrestee's language.

While it sucks that police and other government officials are obligated to have a translator on hand when necessary, this is a problem that would go away on its own if we merely made English our official language and required a reasonable degree of proficiency for immigration into the US.

 

I agree with this evaluation of things -- but I have a question -- legally speaking, would it be necessary to make English the official language of the US in order to require that reasonable degree of proficiency?

 

Probably not, but not making English our official language could open the door to a constitutional challenge of such requirements for immigrants...especially since our country also has its fair share of "birth-citizens" who don't speak or read English well enough -- so we would be applying a double standard. By making English our official language, it would inject some much needed accountability into the system and reduce the occurrence of such things (there's really no excuse for a product of our educational system to be incapable of speaking, reading, and writing english with a reasonable degree of proficiency).

 

Drew, here is a map list of the states that have english as the official language(though i'm not sure about a couple of them).
http://www.proenglish.org/issues/offeng/states.html

 

Curious to see California and Florida on there. Both of those states, when visiting, had me shocked to see the number of people speaking Spanish. Me, a poor ignorant foreigner, walking into a subway in Miami and not hearing a word of English.

 

Yeah there are a few on there that i'm just not sure about. Hopefully our california & florida members can fill us in if it is wrong.

 

The official language may be English, but the official language? Is completely irrelevant.

 

State rights are all well and good, but this should really be mandated by the Federal Government. States don't set immigration guidelines and without a uniform standard, we won't have uniform enforcement or accountability.

 

People have been coming to the US for a couple hundred of years now who cannot speak a lick of English, and I see no reason to change that now. Heck, I'm only a 2nd generation American, and had grandparents whose native language was NOT English. The only problem I have is that there are some schools in Texas and California that are actually teaching in Spanish - not taught in English with Spanish translators - actually taught by people who speak fluent Spanish. While I do not think it should be a requirement to speak English in order to immigrate to the US, enabling children to continue speaking Spanish and not learn English is just a very bad idea.

Most immigrants integrate into society within a generation or two. To do this, they need to learn the langauge. Kids pick up a new langauge faster than adults - it's inexcusable to have Spanish taught schools in the US.

 

The problem comes when immigrants come en masse from one language background. This can all too often cause a subcommunity to form that isolates the immigrants from both language and culture acclimation. When that happens, you can have numerous generations with little if any cultural and lingual acclimation, which leads to poor education and job opportunities, which leads to ghetto formation, further isolation, and all kinds of trouble, which is what a number of areas of the US are seeing now, especially with Spanish speakers.

I believe it should be a requirement to speak at least a decent amount of English in order to become a US citizen (for immigrants), and I think all official business (including education) should be conducted in English (outside of foreign language classes, of course).

That being said, I also think we should start foreign language classes MUCH earlier than we do (try kindergarted or first grade).