The decision, motivation to learn or not learn comes from within, not from the government. There have always been enclaves as you call them and there always will be.

What you haven't said, or aren't saying or are avoiding saying is whether you think such things are bad or good – I'm inferring that you think they're bad. I disagree.

Am I reading your writing correctly?

The decision, motivation to learn or not learn comes from within, not from the government. There have always been enclaves as you call them and there always will be.

What you haven't said, or aren't saying or are avoiding saying is whether you think such things are bad or good – I'm inferring that you think they're bad. I disagree.

Am I reading your writing correctly?

Comparisons to 100 years ago are not applicable. The U.S. put a stop to lage scale immigration for forty years and thus immigrants where encouraged to integrate. The Germans gave up the langauge duirng WWI to show that they were really Americans. The Italians did the same during World War II.

However, these days, with cell phones, DVD, and satellite television, it is much easier for immigrants to maintain their own langauge. Decades of unlimited immigration have create large aeras where only Spanish is used. Unless you can speak Spanish, you cannot get a job in El Paso, Miami, Harlingen, Laredo, etc. As immigrants are encouraged for political reasons to remain isolated and with unlimited immigration, many more cities will become defacto Spanish speaking cities.

There are also the enclaves of Korean, Tagalog, and now arabic speakers who have large enough support groups that they do not bother to learn English.

If Hispanic immigrants cannot be expected to learn English to live in the U.S., then why can the government expect American born whites to learn Spanish in order to deal with the illegal immigrants?

Comparisons to 100 years ago are not applicable. The U.S. put a stop to lage scale immigration for forty years and thus immigrants where encouraged to integrate. The Germans gave up the langauge duirng WWI to show that they were really Americans. The Italians did the same during World War II.

However, these days, with cell phones, DVD, and satellite television, it is much easier for immigrants to maintain their own langauge. Decades of unlimited immigration have create large aeras where only Spanish is used. Unless you can speak Spanish, you cannot get a job in El Paso, Miami, Harlingen, Laredo, etc. As immigrants are encouraged for political reasons to remain isolated and with unlimited immigration, many more cities will become defacto Spanish speaking cities.

There are also the enclaves of Korean, Tagalog, and now arabic speakers who have large enough support groups that they do not bother to learn English.

If Hispanic immigrants cannot be expected to learn English to live in the U.S., then why can the government expect American born whites to learn Spanish in order to deal with the illegal immigrants?

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alerts/358

The point is that English is the single most dominant language throughout the world and it remains entirely dominant in the U.S. I have heard of virtually no child who was an English speaker drop English to become a Spanish speaker in the U.S. The opposite happens in the hundreds of thousands all over this nation. My son's day care is packed with little children who respond to their parent's non-English question with an English answer. Almost every single position of prestige and power in this nation requires not just an ability to speak English, but an ability to speak a certain standard dialect of English.

All of this is already the case without the U.S. ever having an official language. The key to having a common tongue is having all children welcomed and participating in the society of the common language. Every action we take to keep migrants apart from the society at large retards the natural inclination of children to learn the language of their peers. An official language policy in the end does little other than say we don't like your language – officially.

The only purpose the bill is serving is political. This post does a good job of describing the Ohio situation. I suspect that in many states, it's the same thing going on.

That is a big reason for the objections: the anti-immigrant message it sends and its completely political nature.

Do you currently feel that the US is not operating as a free and Democratic country?

This law does appear to be too draconian, however. It seems to overshoot the goal of having a commong language into the range of making the necessities of survival here inaccessible to newcomers.
Whether English is required for employment, for example, should depend on the job, it seems to me.

It's possible to overshoot in the other direction, too. Making it too easy to get along in every situation without English removes the newcomer's share of responsibility in his adjustment.

On a personal note, my mother never learned to speak English properly (too shy), but my father and I aided and abetted by always being there to translate. Thinking back about how this limited her life, I'm wondering if we overshot as well.

How can the U.S. funciton as a free and democratic country if people cannot communicate with each other.

And last, Why should my children and grandchildren have to learn Spanish in order to work in the U.S.?