The "all immigrants" statement is one I like to make myself, but it's more a philosophical point than a legal or practical one. Right or wrong, the natives living on the North American continent were conquered. The forefathers did not immigrate legally nor illegally into the existing government. They conquered and made their own.

Beyond that, most Americans are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, but those immigrants faced immigration policies that were unfriendly and experienced tremendous discrimination and racism. Acknowledging that we're all immigrants, isn't a convincing argument to change the way our nation treats immigrants because, "If my grandparents could do it, why can't you?"




To be fair, English is not, and never has been, our official language. Just as we have no state religion, we have no state language. I personally feel we should all speak one language too, but for some, that's an impractical requirement. We have hard working immigrants in this country who simply do not have the time, energy, nor resources to pick up another language this late in life. We also have citizens who feel their native language is a part of their identity, so if they want to run a store where the signs and staff speak their language instead of yours, we've no right to tell them otherwise since English isn't our official state language. We could go to the polls and vote to change that, but a vast minority of our citizens are primarily Spanish-speaking and would find such a move offensive. If we'd made English our official language four or more decades ago, this wouldn't be an issue, but we didn't, and now we have a large number of citizens who don't want that. Democracy in action. In fact, if demographic trends continue, THEY may be voting for Spanish as the official language in a few decades' time. Maybe we'd better just let everyone keep their own language





There aren't enough economic opportunities for the average American (both in terms of employment and education) but that isn't the fault of immigrants. They're just an easy target to blame that can't defend itself when the real enemy is corporate out-sourcing.




What if you're trying, but no one will hire someone of your ethnicity?




There is plenty of evidence that police disproportionately arrest non-white people. I don't think this is fair at all.




I agree in principal, but it becomes so messy in execution. If a pregnant woman crosses the border just to have her baby born an American citizen, what then happens to that mother? Do you put the baby in foster care and deprive it of its mother, or do you let her stay, thus inviting immigrants to use pregnancy as a tool that can be exploited to earn citizenship?




I haven't considered this one enough to comment intelligently upon it.[/quote]

I have a brother who lives in Texas and worked 5 years as a Manager of a Burger King Restuarant - he said to me a thousand times; he'll hire individuals that can speak both English and Spanish because when you are working behind the counter the ability to speak both languages is a big bonus AND you'll be hired immediately. For five years there he had complaints from people that he didn't hire AND lawsuits of discrimination (all this in the 80's and in the 90's) and those lawsuits of discrimination were thrown out because because Cashiers at Burger King has to be fluent in both English and Spanish because 40% of his customers were Spanish Speaking Texans - He worked in South Houston about a hour drive from downtown Houston and that's why it is very important to for people to get employed in the Restuarant Businesses to speak both languages.

This opinion is from my brother and I highly respect it very much.

Sorry about a bit of rambling here.

If you follow the link it's a telephone survey done in May 2013.  Telephone surveys become increasingly problematic as less and less people have land-lines and those who do skew older and thereby more conservative.  

While the poll claims a +/- 3% margin of error with a 95% degree of accuracy (and I don't doubt, for these purposes, that that would be true under traditional polling statistics) I'm not sure if it's controlling for the very clear change in who has phones that are readily accessible to pollsters. 

Fascinating.


For what it's worth, I don't think shops and small areas that don't primarily utilize English is a threat to the larger culture. Past history shows that most immigrant waves establish neighborhoods that are rich with their own culture and often exclusively utilize their own language, but that their children unfailingly migrate towards the larger society and the more dominant language. My grandparents experienced this when they immigrated as Ukranian Jews in the 1920s. Neither my parents nor I speak a lick of Russian, Ukranian nor Yiddish (the three languages they knew and spoke within their community).

Didn't mean to imply that you did. Rather that, whenever the conversation about requiring English comes up, it's almost always because someone does feel threatened by the existence of these non-English speaking sub-communities.

Agreed.




1. When the person speaking another language is in a position of authority. If I drive through China Town, get pulled over, and the police there only speak Chinese, that's a problem. Granted, this is NOT the reality, but the fear is that it could be.

2. When a person who doesn't speak English needs to be able to communicate. Again, the situation with being pulled over, but now reverse the parties. I am an officer who pulls over a person who cannot speak English. This is a problem.


If a business utilizes a different language, and you don't like it, don't patronize them, but there are circumstances when people need to be able to communicate with one another. How about emergency warning systems? How many languages should we roll across the television screen at one time?

Also, I live in a community that literally has over 30 different primary languages being spoken, yet our voting ballots are English-only. Do we provide 30+ different ballots upon request? That certainly comes at a greater cost to the taxpayer, as we would need to have enough ballots in each language to accommodate the possibility that every person showing up to vote may exclusively speak Swahili.

Granted, but even that barely solves the problem, as Spanish is certainly not the only other language being spoken here. My school district had a huge influx of Ukranian immigrants over the past decade, and that posed a serious problem, as we didn't have a single staff member who spoke the language. Being bi-lingual did not prepare us for that.