Thread: Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

Do I wish to compete with illegal slave labor? NO! It is a race to the bottom, what would I win?

Indeed that's the wrong race. Economically the illegal immigration in US, the way it currently is, is affecting negatively the most unskilled people and pretty much positively everybody with more than high-school education.

Since we were just on the topic of international trade etc., I want to say that this to me seems a rather complex problem and I don't think anybody has a good solution that will make everyone happy. However, there was one US politician in the presidential primaries who said that that is something he is concerned with - how to reconcile these opposite requirements. I liked that. And I am not going to even be commenting why propaganda works, but it does, always did and probably always will. As the main character in one of my favorite movies would say 'Bummer'.
May be there will come the international equivalents of trade unions (I doubt it), since in the old days that's what counterbalanced the exploitation. I think at one point the unions have been helpful, but when few years ago I found my job in a multimillion UAW-initiated push to convert it to unionized I most certainly voted 'No'. Somehow the idea of fighting the various beurocratic problems with more, but different beurocracy didn't quite add up for me. Instead when a beurocrat decreased my pay by 30% and restricted the ways I could do a certain job I was doing, I just told him that I'm done - I even found and trained my replacement but warned the beurocrat that in 6 months he will either have to reverse things back to where they were, or everything will start costing him 2x more. Six months later it turned out I was correct and he had to reverse the salary and also spent 2x the money he thought he'd saved. But why I'm telling this story? Ah, yeah just to illustrate that the market does work fairly well without too much regulation.


In any case back to the original topic - there are 2 separate issues that I see getting mixed
(1) Should there be a language requirement for legal immigrants? Apparently that's the only thing that can be enforced, so let's look at it. Well are legal immigrants not wanting to learn english? Is it worth the overhead administering a test and deporting back those who fail? I suspect that the answer to these is 'No', meaning not worth having such requirement as the vast majority of legal immigrants are more than willing to learn at least working level english. Those who don't are naturally confined to jobs where this doesn't really matter, and it's really their own problem. I don't see why the society needs to intrude on everybody's life to deal with these few cases. If you believe the numbers are significant we can discuss that.
(2) Illegal immigration (aliens/felons/criminals...). Obviously these people are not going to be affected by any requirements to learn english - if the authorities can enforce the language thing they clearly could enforce their immigration status before that.

Perhaps the second group is the one that isn't being liked for not speaking english, or may be for all kinds of other reasons and the language part is just the fuse.

I agree with much of your statement.
I have issue with the idea that illegal immigration helps just about everyone with a high school diploma or above-it hurts all of us, because all of our taxes etc. pay for the social programs such people exploit, and an already taxed Social Security program is being paid to people who never paid into it at an alarming rate. This affects everyone equally. Unscrupulous employers, regardless of their intent or education, are ultimately at the root of this. If such employers did not hire people under-the-table "Oh they just want to work" they say-then everyone would be on an equal footing. One business would not be able to have unfair advantages over another due to illegally cheap labor, or various laws and restrictions being ignored because the employees do not exist, at least on paper...and when 40 illegal aliens clog the emergency room of a local hospital, using it for a clinic for stubbed toes and the sniffiles, which is required to treat THEM but will ask you sure as day for your proof of insurance-it comes out of someone's pocket. When that hospital later goes out of business, EVERYONE's hospital is out of business, and we all lost a service, not just the illegal aliens.
It hurts all of us, is what I guess I'm saying here.

The second part of your statement makes a lot of sense, although I want to point out that often people do not attempt to learn the language because, well, it is not required, and they never get around to it therefore; These are not the ones refusing to speak the language or even try. There is a difference IMHO.


John P.

Originally Posted by JohnP

Hi Scott.
Sorry in advance, btw for the off-topic bit, but here goes:
I personally have never had any issue with a "living wage". I am however skeptical that it would help. Saying a company has to pay U.S. citizens a particular amount, without requiring that company to pay its employees in OTHER countries the SAME equivalent amount-does nothing IMHO to solve the problem, but instead encourages companies sitting on the fence to send labor overseas. Raising the minimum wage here does nothing if workers have to compete for their livelihoods with products produced by those who work for so much less that were it done here the people in charge would be dragged out in handcuffs.
It's dirty and most of them do it. It doesn't make it right. Tariffs on such products might not raise what they pay their workers, and no doubt they'd have attorneys find ways around the laws, but eventually perhaps some of them would realize that if they have to pay the same, an American is just as competitive as a Chinese person, and if not, at least they would pay the foreign worker a fair wage.
Now, back to regularly scheduled programming, as I know this has nothing to do with languages spoken....



John P.

I would think that many manufacturing jobs in the US already pay a living wage, so those companies that find that too expensive are already being driven out by current policy. Construction, by definition, needs to be local. Agriculture, service, and some other labor would probably be the main impacts. Crops need to be picked, hotel rooms need to be cleaned, and paying a living wage for such jobs would do away with the argument that citizens don't want them. It removes any incentive to hire illegals into them, especially if penalties for violations were quite high. We would need to be a bit more protectionist on Agriculture. Obviously, some things would get more expensive-- nothing is free.

Originally Posted by ScottS

I would think that many manufacturing jobs in the US already pay a living wage, so those companies that find that too expensive are already being driven out by current policy.

As a former occupier of one such job, they *used* to, however when housing and other prices go up and the wages do not (thanks in part to the 30 per apartment practice mentioned above) the same barely above minimum wage pay is suddenly much less desireable. In my particular case, the name was sold to the Chinese as I gather, because now when I go home, the old factories are closed, and when I see something I wonder if I may have made and look for the factory stamp somewhere-it typically now says, "made in China". I don't believe it is typically manufacturing/factory jobs going to illegals, rather these are being "outsourced" because some company or other felt minimum wage was too much to pay or some group of stockholders felt they could make a faster buck by selling off the name and letting the Chinese do the stuff with slave labor. Equally wrong. I also think in some cases unionized labor has gone a bit too far and corporations faced with paying exorbitant wages demanded by unions (or we'll walk out!) have gone with more competitive workers overseas. This is unfortunate, as in the long run, the union officials still make their money, but the employees they were supposed to protect and represent, lose. After all, businesses DO have to turn a profit. There has to be some middle ground and both sides of this have taken things to extremes.

Originally Posted by ScottS

Construction, by definition, needs to be local. Agriculture, service, and some other labor would probably be the main impacts. Crops need to be picked, hotel rooms need to be cleaned, and paying a living wage for such jobs would do away with the argument that citizens don't want them. It removes any incentive to hire illegals into them, especially if penalties for violations were quite high. We would need to be a bit more protectionist on Agriculture. Obviously, some things would get more expensive-- nothing is free.

One would think construction would have to be local, but unfortunately it seldom is. There is much use of illegal alien workers in the construction industry, and some of them even have secret "camps" set up on company property (which, when found, create much disturbance with pro and anti-illegal alien groups). Even decades ago, there was a certain construction contract to be awarded in the town my Grandmother lived in. Many people were quite excited about this as there were quite a few carpenters, bricklayers, laborers etc. happy at the prospect of work. The company that won the contract, then, to everyone's dismay, brought in illegal immigrants to do the job under the table and did not hire a single local resident. While I disagree with people sneaking across our border and so on, in this case I place the blame squarely on the employer. These actions are illegal, however they seldom get prosecuted or even challenged, because the politicians and officials fear being called "racist" for enforcing the law, even though it had nothing to do with race and everything to do with an employer exploiting people. Agriculture in some states is the main industry in that state. Allowing this to be done primarily by illegal alien workers is essentially saying it is ok to put that state's citizens out of work.
I'm rambling, and this time for the sake of rambling. I actually agree with you. Forcing a living/fair wage for everything would filter out a lot of the profiteering done by many employers. There would be less support for "illegal immigrants who just want to work" and instead more support for REAL immigrants who actually have something decent to look forward to and a REAL paycheck, not a few dirty bills pushed into his hand by the modern day slavemaster who claims only to be helping those people do things Americans won't do.
Really bugs me. I used to live in San Diego, and I heard a woman on the radio complaining that her construction company only hired illegals because she couldn't find an American willing to do the work. She also claimed to pay 20 or 30 per hour. In reality it turns out she never listed the job, because as soon as this happened a score of people called wanting this job.
We aren't anymore afraid of work than people in any other country, (well, can't speak for Hollywood types and some politicians) we just need a fair shot at doing it. Immigrants-new Americans-should be just like the rest of us. If they want to speak some other language at home, that's fine. Learn the language of the rest of us, also, and welcome to the experience of being an American.

John P.

Originally Posted by JohnP

One would think construction would have to be local, but unfortunately it seldom is.

I meant physically local. You don't generally mail order a three story building. You can bring in outside workers, or illegals, but you can't farm the job out to some Indian call center, or to a sweat shop in the Philippines.

I would never force anyone to learn a language or punish them if they failed. I think you start getting in to very dangerous territory when you start controlling language. Forced cultural assimilation is never too pretty when you read about it in the history books.

What I'd do is give people every opportunity to learn. Most will, or at least their kids will. They'll need the language to survive. If they can survive without it, why worry. But forcing people isn't wise politically. People don't like to be told what to do. Reward them instead if they become functional in the language.

I moved to Quebec when I was 19. Couldn't speak two sentences of French. I hate the little things the province does to force me to learn French. If I've learned it (I have to a functional degree), it's because I was inticed by the culture, friendly neighbours, pretty girls. It definitely was not the office de la langue francaise that made me semi-bilingual, though.

It's hard to tell just looking at the thread, but it SEEMs maybe a lot of the Americans here agree with the quote that started the thread, which makes sense. The U.S. wants to be a 'melting pot'. Other countries choose the 'mosaic'. "Becoming American" is a sub-plot of the American dream.

I would tentatively suggest that the U.S. may be better served by spending energy on teaching its current citizens a second language. There's a lot of evidence that being bilingual is good for the brain and the heart (to put it a little poetically). Speaking more objectively, bilingual students generally score higher on IQ tests than unilingual students and demonstrate greater 'tolerance' (a unfortunate but common term) or open-mindedness. As it turns out I think there are more and more bilingual Americans, which is wonderful.

Originally Posted by Swink

What I'd do is give people every opportunity to learn. Most will, or at least their kids will. They'll need the language to survive. If they can't survive without it, why worry.

The people have every opportunity to learn, and most learn just enough to survive and no more. They can survive without knowing much though because they have their own network of like-cultured and like-tongued friends, family, and coworkers.

If the current laws that are already in place were actually enforced, legal immigrants would have to start working with other English speakers (because the illegal immigrants would be gone) and then they would have to learn more English just to get by, as you say.

The goal is to enforce the law and Oklahoma passed a law last year designed to give law enforcement more tools to work with in order to enforce the law. Even though immigration law itself did not change at all, many illegal immigrants have moved and are still moving (many moved even before the law went into effect.) Shady businesses whined and complained but now some of them have had to start hiring legal workers and/or pack up and move out. In Oklahoma, it is starting to pay for immigrants to be legal. I don't know if that's how it is elsewhere (I suspect not) but I'm glad some legislators around here are actually directing policy and passing laws according to the will of the voters

VIVA LA REVOLUCION !

Originally Posted by JMS

VIVA LA REVOLUCION !

Mark.... if you're going to participate in this thread speak English puleeze !

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Mark.... if you're going to participate in this thread speak English puleeze !

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