Quoted and color-emphasized for irony.
My dad lives in Queens. Bank ATMs near his house are in Russian as well as English. For that matter, the NYC subway system card vending machines have touch screens in Russian, and IIRC Chinese, as well as Spanish and English. Yes, it would be nice if everyone living in the U.S. were fluent and literate in English, but hell, not even all the native-born U.S. citizens are fluent and literate in English, so I think we should start with them before worrying about, say, people who immigrated here as adults with imperfect literacy in their own native languages.
Generationally speaking, Hispanic immigrants are learning English faster than were earlier waves of immigrants.
The pattern used to be:
Immigant: Monolingual not-English
Immigant’s child: Biligual
Immigant’s Child’s Child: Monoligual English
Now it often goes like this:
Immigant: Monoligual Spanish
Immigant’s child: Passively Biligual (Speak and understands English, but only understands Spanish!)
(The reason that the Spanish-speaking population in Spanish Harlem is relatively constant is not because the people aren’t learning English. It’s because the people who learn English move out, and then are replaced by new immigrants.)
Don’t be fooled by the fact that many people with a Hispanic English dialect do not actually speak Spanish.
Also don’t forget that in some German-Speaking towns in the US before WWI, people didn’t learn English for generations.
They do.
The real issue is not a moral one about what people should or shouldn’t do, but about what the long-term impact of this immigration will be. There is a possibility that the US will eventually be divided into two parts divided by language, as some other countries are. (I’ve read that there are already parts of Miami where unilingual English speakers are at a severe disadvantage because most business is conducted in Spanish.)
And my point here was and is that you can’t project into the future based on past waves of immigration, since no past wave of immigration had such a small incentive to learn English as the current one.
That doesn’t mean that they’ll never learn English. And, as I’ve noted before, it does seem to me that the children of illegal immigrants tend to speak English. But you never know, and again, past experience is not a guide.
I find this hard to believe. What could explain that?
Do you have any data in support of this?
I think you may be referring to Mennonite religious sects, which keep to themselves in any event. (The same might go for some Hasidic Jews.) If so, it’s not really a valid comparison.
Who, exactly, are you talking about?
Are you using the word “immigrant” to mean only a person who was born in another country, is/was a citizen/national of that country, and has permanently moved to (as opposed to visiting) the U.S.?
Or do you consider their descendants, “many generations removed”, also to be “immigrants”?
Your source does not address the question we are discussing.
The source says that children of immigrants speak English better than their parents. No one ever questioned that.
Jamaika’s claim, that I challenged, was that (the children of) current Hispanic immigrants are learning English faster than those of earlier waves of immigrants. The linked study does not discuss this.
To be quite honest, i have no simple solution for the issue of illegal immigration.
On the one hand, i’ve never been much of a nationalist. If someone from India or China or Mexico gets a job, i don’t generally consider than an inferior solution to an American or an Australian getting a job. On the other hand, i recognize that national governments are elected to represent the interests of their citizens, and that the American government has some responsibility to consider jobs for Americans a higher priority than jobs for Indians or Chinese or Mexicans.
I also realize that it would be pretty much impossible for America to take every single person who wants to come here and at the same time maintain the standard of living that we have.
My main point in this thread, i guess, has been largely to counter the doomsayers who see the current levels of illegal immigration as threatening America’s very existence, and to point out the hypocrisy of an immigration policy that caters to xenophobia while not enacting policies and punishments that might actually check the demand for illegal immigrant workers here in the United States.
In the short run, it seems to me that there are two avenues that might work. One is more draconian, the other more of a concession to current reality.
The first would be to institute, and then actually enforce, much harsher punishments against those who employ illegal immigrants, rather than just giving them a slap on the wrist, as has so often been the case in the past. If you raid a factory and there are a bunch of illegals working there, don’t just deport them and leave it at that; arrest the factory owner and manager, and if they can’t show that they made a good-faith effort to establish that their workers were here legally, then give them a prison sentence. Same with people who rent houses to illegal immigrants. (As Miller pointed out earlier, we probably don’t want to extend a policy like this to medical care, both for the safety of the illegals themselves, and for reasons of public health.)
A somewhat different approach would be to implement some sort of amnesty program for those already here, in conjunction with laws requiring that illegal workers must be employed under the same wages and conditions as Americans, including payroll tax, social security payments, etc., etc. And then punish any employer who doesn’t comply. As someone pointed out, this has the potential to bring more illegals, attracted by even better pay and conditions. But it also has the potential to dry up the available work, as American employers realize that they can’t cut corners (in terms of money, benefits, workplace safety, etc.) to hire illegals.
There are probably dozens of problems with both of those scenarios, and i don’t claim to have all the answers. I just know that many people who currently whine about the situation don’t really seem that interested in fixing it, only in complaining about it.
I live in a reasonably conservative county (by California standards, anyway), right on the border with Mexico. Immigration is an issue here, the Minutemen are active in the area, and plenty of conservatives sound off about it. There are dozens of places within a 20-minute drive of my house where you see day laborers hanging out waiting for work each morning. I’ll bet most of them are illegals. And you also see them picked up for work by Americans driving pick-ups and SUVs and cars. I often wonder how many of the people in La Jolla and Del Mar and Encinitas, and Pacific Beach, whose houses and gardens and kitchens benefit from that labor, sit down in front of the news at night and complain about the number of illegal immigrants in the country?
‘Those illegals sure work hard. That can’t be good for the country’ :rolleyes:
Your position is that the kids of illegal aliens, lacking fear from the INS, are going to be signing up for the government dole rather than work long hours for minimum wages.
How is that any different than kids of US citizens, also lacking fear from the INS, signing up for the dole rather than work long hours for minimum wages?
I would suggest that the tendancy for anyone to go on goverment assistance is a function of economic class, not the legal status of one’s parents. Nothing wrong with holding the position that you are against the lower class because they go on welfare, but why not just say that rather than try to single out children of illegal aliens as subset of that group. It’s not as if the children are restricted to minimum wage work (hence my mention of a caste) although they may lack opportunities due to their economic class.
It’s not any different. Who claimed or implied it was any different?
What we are discussing here is the impact of illegal immigration. In that context my point is relevant, and yours is not.
Don’t look at me, I’m trying to figure out what Fotheringay-Phipps is talking about, maybe he can explain it to us both.
Oh my god, Bricker. I know we’re dramatically opposed in everything (you may not have ever noticed that. Or me, for that matter). And, hell, you’re a devout married Catholic, but you wanna do it right here, right now, on my desk???
This is likely a one-time offer and then I have to go back to despising your kind.
I’m not sure what your uncertainty is, but I used third generation immigrant to mean the US born grandchild of immigrants.
You can quibble with the technical accuracy but I was reponding to others who used the word this way - see Treis’ post #85.
Not true. My Swedish and German great-grandparents did not speak English. They didn’t have to. They lived and farmed in Swedish and German enclaves/communities in South Dakota. Ironically, quite close to each other. If they spoke English, it was rudimentary and only done when they had to go into English speaking towns.
Not neccessarily. Lots of first generation immigrants from whatever country did the same thing. They might have been in distinct areas of larger cities, or on farms like my ancestors. That generation could have easily never learned English and been just fine, out there on the Plains with no one around except people who spoke Swedish.
Somewhat?
They are. Faster and with greater fluency than the immigration wave of the late 19th century that brought my kin here.
There are areas of Houston where all the major commerce (major banks, for example) have all their signage in Asian languages. I betcha it’s true in lots of places, in lots of languages, in retail and government. You see a lot of Spanish because there’s more Spanish speakers.
Folks are catered to because it’s often in everyone’s best interest. In terms of public safety and commerce. There are also studies shown that kids do better intellectually if they can think in more than one language, that there are benefits to brain development to have that ability. My niece and nephew learn Spanish in their very rich suburban public school because there are benefits to learning a second language, not because they live in the barrio.
They learn Spanish because it’s a common second language here. It’s quite likely they’ll have an opportunity to use it outside of the classroom, or to watch Univision, or to hear Spanish language radio when they’re driving around with their parents. (And that’s not catering, that’s commerce, my friend. Ka-ching!! When this wave’s kids are turning off Norteno because who wants to listen to their parents music, watch their parent’s shows, it’ll be gone.)
No, you posted twice on the exact same subject. But now you claim you didn’t actually *understand *what it was you were questioning?
I hope you’ll understand why I won’t be replying to you any more.
Here’s an interesting summation at the end of an article regarding a study on German monolingualism in Wisconsin:
Oh no Jimmy Joe Meager! And I so look forward to your posts! I suppose I’ll just have to learn to live without your insight and wit.
Ok, let’s try again. You said:
You have been shown by a number of posters that the current wave of Hispanic immigrants is no different in terms of language assimilation than any other group of immigrants. Are you still uncertain? What will it take to remove the uncertainty? An English-only law?
No one has shown this. Can you direct me to what you are referring to?