Immigration or amnesty

Most second-generation Hispanics that I grew up/went to high school with/live with, can read and speak English, even if they choose not to do so amongst themselves.

It's not necessarily a matter of not knowing. In a lot of ways, they're also not being encouraged to use it, by their own culture or by the dominant mainstream culture.

In the early 20th century, immigrants had a reason to want to assimilate, because they saw their assimilated friends and neighbors living better lives on a daily basis. Mainstream society encouraged assimilation. Our government encouraged assimilation. There were benefits to assimilation, tangible benefits that seemed easy to attain, even if there was a lot of poverty and prejudice to overcome to get there.

Now, I don't know if immigrants see those benefits anymore. They see a lot of their own people struggling, and it doesn't (on the surface) seem to make much difference whether they're assimilated or not. The American Dream is dead. It's still better than their lives back home, so they still come here to work and make the money. America always has the money, of course.

But why should they assimilate? What incentive do they have? What incentives are we offering? If they don't see any benefit to assimilation, and we're indifferent in encouraging it, then why should they? "Because you came to our country, and you should do things our way" isn't going to make me want to assimilate, either.

 

Ben: I don't know that the Italians learned English any better as a group than the Spanish-speaking immigrants of today. I think one difference is that before 1965, there were a lot of lower-skilled industrial and repair jobs where speaking English wasn't as necessary as people who work in something like fast food places and Wal-Mart. I remember some of the Italians in the 1960s who really didn't learn English all that well - I think if anything, the current immigrants might speak English better because of things like television which can help. It may be easier not to speak English in a lot of places in the US. One example - one of my wife's sister moved to a place in Reading, Pennsylvania where there really aren't many Spanish-speaking people 10 years ago. She also had her husband's family to speak to in English - the were second-generation Italians and were sympathetic to her situation. She learned to speak English better than any of the women because she really had to speak English and had less choice. One of my wife's other sister spend the first years of her marriage in Calgary Alberta, so she learned pretty well.

 

Why is it our responsibility to give them incentive?

These thieves -- and they are thieves -- don't care about our history, our nightmares or our dreams. They don't seem to care or invest themselves in anything. They send the money home to their failed culture.

 

Sure.

There's no irony in the fact that a nation of comprised almost wholly of immigrants and their descendants would deny anyone entry either.

Native Americans should force us all to take a test. Or marry one of them. And then farm us out to the casino and tax-free cigarette industries.

 

Are there sports books?

 

I qualify to be a member of the Cherokee Nation. I am now taking applications for husbands

 

There is no way in the name of the Great Spirit that this ends well.