The ability to read, write and speak ordinary English is a requirement of becoming a naturalized citizen in the United States.
So, it’s safe to assume that adults working legally in the United States know English. If you’re an adult and you do not speak English, there’s a good chance that you are here illegally.
As a legal, English speaking citizen of the United States, I expect to be able to do business with people who also speak English. Even though my Spanish is pretty decent, I shouldn’t have to use it to place an order at McDonald’s or when asking for a receipt at the Salvation Army.
But that’s exactly what Ms. Pelosi is proposing:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.
The McDonald’s near my office often has a person working the register whose English is limited to “Big Mac, large fries, and a coke”. Try specializing your order or asking what kind of salad dressings they have for their salads? You’re out of luck.
And why is Ms. Pelosi forcing threatening to kill this amendment (which was passed with very strong support)? Because the Democratic Hispanic Caucus has threatened to block another bill that’s important to Ms. Pelosi.
Sorry, Ms. Pelosi — but every single person working in the United States needs to be able to communicate in our country’s language — English. And employers should be able to insist and expect their employees to be able to communicate in English.
As Rob at Say Anything writes:
…having an employee who can’t speak English isn’t going to be much of an asset to an employer who needs that employee to be able to communicate with customers and other employees.
But if the Democrats and the EEOC gets their way, employers won’t be able to fire (or even refuse to hire) people who can’t speak English even if speaking English is a necessary part of the job.
Democrats — pandering to illegal (but potential) voters like no other!
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Well, I have to agree that I think this lack of focus on making sure that people speak English in their jobs is enforced is ridiculous, and I’m a Democrat.
My ethnic background includes being half Mexican and I just don’t get it. I don’t speak Spanish and I don’t want to speak Spanish when I expect that I should be able to speak English. McDonald’s is the worst.
Argh… I agree with you folks on this. I must be going over to the Dark Side.
seconded
Do you know who should be blamed for this mess. You might think I’m crazy but I do recall that since big business went after the ethnic markets and started gearing their marketing push in those languages of the immigrants and whatnot coming over, that is what screwed things up (or at least started the snowball effect).
When big business noted that yet even more money could be made by gearing their campaigns to a greater degree in foreign languages, here in the US, I truly feel that this started a slow rot in the desire for people from other countries to learn the English language. Why would you have to when everything was being geared towards them anyway.
I recall the challenges my great grandparents went through when they came from Lithuania and Mexico…and how both sides urged their kids to learn English in order to understand and function in this country. Not anymore.
Sure, some people may say that Globalization was going to have an inevitable impact on these things. No doubt. But the framework for all of this going to such a ludacris degree was unfortunately facilitated by big business and their greed.
I heard this came to a head because the EEOC is suing the Salvation Army over firing two employees who had not learned English after being given a year to do it. I’m going to track down more info on this but it looks as though our own Bush government is once again working against us. To say I am pissed is an understatement.
We are dealing with a two pronged problem: A) this whole illegal immigration thing is good for big business profits, lowering wages, and cheap labor. It’s horrific that fellow Americans would whore themselves and our country out to save money and increase profit margins. This Shows us all that money is worshiped above all else. B) Political correctness, in it’s most liberal form, has dumbed us down and so beat into our heads that we must worship diversity, value all cultures as equals, downplay anything American or euro-centric, and stifled anyone from saying anything the pc crowd deems mean or not diverse enough, that we are paralyzed to take any action or even speak out without fear of being sued or called a hater.
Now take all this and shake well with an eternally left wing media which includes most newspapers, network TV and news……and we have a GIANT mess on our hands if you are of the conservative viewpoint. This non enforcement of English only, our leaders doing nothing about the borders, and the tidal wave of illegal’s… ALL stem from the 2 above points.
In days of old (20 years ago) before the disease of political correctness had it’s grip on society, we would have had the backbone to fight this or support leaders and businesses that did the right thing and fought this insanity. But we all are now so busy working, beat down, and made to feel guilty if we disagree with this sick PC agenda that most of us just freeze and do nothing….really what can we do? We can get mad, write on blogs, send emails, blah blah. But really until we get a leader who has the nads to stand up against this wall of left wing noise we won’t get much traction.
I think most Americans feel the way I do, but we have no leader to unite us or even represents us. Check out the website Goooh.com, some guy has an interesting idea on how to kick out all the empty suit-relics in power and replacing them with us, everyday people..Brilliant idea, but of course will enough people actually care enough to look into this? Will we ever get the major parties and their candidates listen to us??? ….Crazy world we live in.
I am only 40 but even in my lifetime I have seen things completely turned 180. I fear to see what another 40 years of this kind of left wing PC thinking will do to this great country. The time for change is now or never IMHO.
Is there any evidence that immigrants are learning English at a slower rate than they did in 1920?
From here it looks like the same Chicken Little act that nativists cried about when Irish, Chinese, and Italians came to this country in the 19th and 20th centuries.