Tell me your thoughts:
Should learning English be a pre-requisite to U.S. citizenship?
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April 16th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
The real question is should admission to the US be based on one’s opportunities. Some people seem to forget that we have been having an immigration debate for over a hundred years. When they finally put a quota on admission, back in the early 1900s some people wanted to restrict those who could emigrate based on whether they could pay a literacy test or written english test but people like Woodrow Wilson resisted these attempts on the basis that those were metrics of the opportunities that the emigrant had been given not a functional of his capacity and we would be filter some very powerful citizens. The last time I checked no one was here before Columbus except the Indians so maybe we should think about this one a little harder.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a woman from Cuba. She worked in a distribution warehouse for a retail store, making a little above minimum wage, but she could not say enough about how good life was here in the United States. As I got to know her, I found out that she had worked as an accountant in Cuba and was well-educated by their standards. She told me about her plans to improve her English and learn how to type so that she could get a better job here. Maybe it was a result of her level of education, or maybe she was just one of the lucky ones who implicitly got it, but she understood that as good as life here was, it could be better if she knew English.
I think that we are handicapping immigrants if we do not provide them with the opportunity to learn English. That is to say, immigrants should be required to learn English at some point in their first years here in the U. S. For their good and ours, immigrants need to be able to communicate in English effectively. We should let immigrants keep their culture; we should let immigrants enjoy their tight-knit communities; but we should not let immigrants blindly avoid participating in U. S. society.
April 17th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
In my opinion - immigrants should not need to be fluent in English to come to the U.S. but should be fluent when applying for citizenship.
Now, when I say fluent I don’t mean a full-fledged English speaking citizen but at least enough to communicate and participate in society. There are too many immigrants of different nationalities to provide language translation services for every language.
It is possible for a new immigrant (not all) to pick up the language. My fiancée came here years ago not knowing any English and he is fluent now without lessons or classes. What he told me was he WANTED to learn the language which a lot of immigrants can’t be bothered to accomplish.
April 18th, 2006 at 12:56 am
From America’s perspective: Think of the cost burden multi-lingualism adds to the economy. The interpretors, double-printing documents, the mis-communication costs. It’s a huge cost, and it’s not just two languages. We cater to Spanish speakers, eventually we’ll need to cater to Chinese, French, German, Russian, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, you get the idea… (wikipedia.org) There’s no sense in it, and I don’t think the government has the responsibility or can be expected to fill the need. I’m all for private organizations setting up translation business for those that need it, but the government cannot be expected to provide it.
From the immigrant’s perspective: I cannot see it as anything but a disadvantage for immigrants to not learn English. I’ve helped customers at a bank that can’t speak enough English to ask to have their check cashed. They can’t articulate enough to take care of their finances - a vitally important part of life. How do they get a driver’s license? buy a car? pay their taxes? start a business? They can’t possibly take full advantage of all the opportunities America provides them without an understanding of the common language.
Granted, English is probably one of the most difficult languages to learn, considering all of the exceptions to rules, and slang. But people across the world are probably more exposed to English, and have more available resources for learning English than any other language on Earth. I can’t imagine any, except for a very few, who do not have the capability, if they have any will whatsoever, to learn at least enough English to ‘get by’. Of course it may be difficult, and take effort, but it takes effort for all of us to succeed. It takes effort to save the money, apply for the papers, find a job, make the arrangements to get here; why not include that as a requirement of US citizenship so that all of us (the nation and the immigrants) can enjoy the benefits of an efficient unilingual society.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
As much as we support diversity in the US, there is no basis for saying that learning English is not essential. To not make learning the English language a prerequisite to US citizenship would not only deprive those seeking citizenship of possible future opportunities, it deflates the value of citizenship as a benchmark. Suppose there were no valuable prerequisites behind gaining citizenship. Such a condition would create benefit without opportunity–privilleges of the nation without skills to see them fully realized.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Amen.
April 28th, 2006 at 7:45 pm