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Author:
Mark7
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Date Posted: 00:57:10 08/11/01 Sat
In reply to:
Dana
's message, "Re: Interesting question" on 09:15:10 08/09/01 Thu
I'm impressed by your school district.
Here is an article for you from abcnews.com:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ucrr/20010809/cm/american_babel_it_works_fine_1.html
Thursday August 09 08:13 PM EDT
AMERICAN BABEL: IT WORKS FINE
By Richard Reeves
LOS ANGELES -- Census figures released this week indicate that a language other than English is spoken by families in 40 percent of the homes in this sprawling county on the Pacific Ocean. Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Armenian, dozens more -- all spoken here.
In Chicago last Monday, the first of a series of editorials in the Chicago Tribune on immigration reform began: "Stop by one of the houses going up all over Chicago and listen to the work crews. ... When the foundation is being dug you might hear Russian. That might become Polish when it's time for the bricklaying. The carpenters might speak English -- but with a singsong Irish brogue. When the Mexican drywall crews arrive, the language might change to Spanish. Finally, a SWAT team of Guatemalan, or perhaps Honduran, landscapers will zoom by to plant the sod. ... Chicago will have another house built in good measure by illegal immigrant labor."
In New York, in the cabs, candy stores and little markets where you once heard Yiddish or Italian, now it is Urdu and Korean. More and more on the streets you hear the clicking sounds of African languages. American Babel.
And it is not only in big cities. I came to Chicago and Los Angeles from Sag Harbor, N.Y., a village of little more than 2,000 people on the far eastern edge of the country, and you can hear most of the same languages as the construction crews, gardeners, maids, dishwashers and waiters arrive each day.
There are believed to be 6 million to 7 million illegal immigrants in the United States now, 60 percent of them from Mexico. Whatever that number, there are more legal immigrants speaking those languages, particularly Mexican-accented Spanish. Nothing indicates how fast the United States is changing than the panic of the Republican Party and its leader on immigration issues.
It was only a few years ago that Republicans, at least in California, believed that immigrant-bashing was the path to power. Gov. Pete Wilson was the driving force behind Proposition 187, an initiative designed to mobilize both white power and black power against Mexican immigrants -- cutting off welfare help, medical care and education to illegals. Voters went for it, but the courts did not. Perhaps more important, the people who actually mobilized were legal Hispanic and Asian families, registering and voting Democratic in numbers that turned California into a more Democratic state than Massachusetts.
Now Republicans, led by President Bush (news - web sites), have tried to compensate for that blunder by going as far the other way, granting amnesty (and eventually citizenship) to resident Mexicans, however they got here. Forget that one. What makes Mexicans better than Canadians, Ethiopians or Pakistanis?
Bush's panic is shared by politicians of both parties, though they tend to favor whichever immigrant group has the most voting power in their own precincts. In fact, the only thing they agree on often seems to be that it is better to do something than do nothing.
Why? It seems to me that U.S. immigration policy has worked well and served national imperatives over the past 30 years or so. To be crude about it, what that policy has done is make it difficult but not impossible for the most determined and craftiest of foreigners to sneak into the United States when their own countries seem incapable of utilizing their energy and ambitions. The best and the brightest find a way.
They may not have documents, but somehow they seem to have whatever our country needs at a given moment: the mathematical skills of the Russians and the Indians; the work ethic of the Mexicans and their willingness to do what Americans no longer are willing to do; the entrepreneurship and family values of South and East Asians -- and, most of all, the young people the United States needs to support our aging population. Besides, many of these immigrants contribute to global stability by sending money back to their home countries, which kind of makes up for American stinginess when it comes to foreign aid.
So, whatever our policy actually is, it seems to working very well -- at least to me. Why fix it if it's not broken?
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