Posted on 06/20/2006 3:12:51 AM PDT by RWR8189
Some years ago, I visited a cafe in an American border town, right across the river. Not a soul was conversing in English.
But this was no "They're all speaking Spanish" experience. The town was Madawaska, Maine. The river was the St. John, and the language was a kind of French.
Last year, I came across a parallel, southern version of border dining -- in Brownsville, Texas. Local friends took me to Betty's Tortas, where everyone was speaking Spanish. A student of Spanish, I tried to order, but the language of Cervantes got me nowhere at Betty's. The confused waiter turned to my Latina dining mate, who, in her rapid-fire border Spanish, told him what I wanted.
My reaction to places with U.S. post offices but little English spoken was: Big Deal. It always nice to find parts of America that don't seem like every other part. What makes our northern border different from our southern one, of course, is that millions of Canadians aren't coming into the United States for work. But that's an immigration issue -- which should be kept separate from language.
Believe me, this column does not advocate giving any language other than English an official status. English is our tongue and may she forever wave. Rather, this is a call to reconsider heated claims that Spanish is gaining on English as the language of the United States. That's not really happening. Madawaska and Brownsville are exceptions that prove the rule.
It makes little sense to look at border areas as a predictor of what will follow in Denver and Dallas. Families often spill over both sides. And if a border town is isolated from the big U.S. population centers, it can become a cultural cul-de-sac.
Elsewhere, however, English dominates. American-born Latinos, who now make up 60 percent of the country's Hispanic population, are rapidly moving away from Spanish. The two Spanish-language media giants, Univision and Telemundo, now worry that the immigrants' children seem to prefer "American Idol" to their offerings. Latina magazine, aimed at "today's Hispanic woman," is already mostly written in English.
The immigrants themselves are another matter. Immigrants have always clung to their native language. In the late 19th century, entire towns in the Great Plains spoke the German or Slavic tongues of their immigrant settlers. "Champagne music" man Lawrence Welk was born in German-speaking Strasburg, N.D., (in 1903) and didn't learn English until he was an adult.
I, too, bristle a bit when the recorded message at the bank starts off with "Press one for English." I don't mind if the bank offers a Spanish option, but it should make English the default language. J.C. Penney's bilingual policy is quite unnecessary. You don't need a sign above 10 racks of dresses that reads "Vestidos" -- or "Dresses," for that matter.
The recent Senate vote making English the "national language" is also mostly symbolic, especially since it exempts programs already offering services in other languages. The measure was added to the Senate's immigration bill -- and intended, perhaps, to distract the public from the bill's glaring inadequacies.
Does anyone doubt that English is our language? Perhaps the Senate should resolve that hamburgers are the national chopped-meat sandwich.
Speaking of food, I found it odd that the French toast at the Madawaska breakfast place was called Canadian toast. Proprietor "Big Daddy" Gervais said he didn't know how the name had come about.
Move a few more miles south of the Canadian border, and French toast is again French toast. And nearly all the people, including the ones with French last names, are speaking the language of Katie Couric.
English in the end is the conqueror, not the vanquished. Just ask the French minister of culture, who spends half his hours trying to stop his citizens from using English words. Americans have excellent reasons for wanting to control their borders, but fear of Spanish taking over should not be one of them.
However, the continued massive influx of Mexicans and other Latin Americans has created a certain critical mass that has caused the assimilation process to slow and reverse. With Spanish language media far more available and ubiquitous than was, say, the old Yiddish or Italian press and theater, governments willing to provide information in Spanish, in sharp contrast with the "English only" prevalent in government during the 1880-1920 immigration wave, and the creation of vast Hispanic barrios where one seldom sees a non-Hispanic and then only as a merchant or a government employee, Hispanics can live an entirely separate life detached from the mainstream U.S. culture. Their only effective connection with Americans is through the workplace, and with minimal English and/or Spanish speaking supervisors, they will be able to seek and keep employment. In time, the political figures in the Southwest will become Hispanic, and even the historically Irish dominated Catholic hierarchy will become more Latin. The days of governors named Schwarzenegger and Perry are numbered in the Southwestern U.S. So are the days of Catholic bishops named Mahoney or Grahmann.
As areas, even whole sections of states, become Hispanic dominated, non-Hispanics leave. During the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a net outflow of African Americans from New York due to the increased numbers of Hispanics in the blue collar and service jobs that blacks traditionally had held. There has been quiet, yet evident, "white flight" from increasingly Hispanic South Texas and Southwest Texas, as well as Southern California.
There is a numerical limit to the number of immigrants that can and will leave Latin America. However, immigration must be brought under control so we Americans do not find out where that numerical limit is. Additionally, without such controls, the Hispanic culture will become a parallel one to traditional American culture, and a dominant culture from Dallas and Houston to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. With controls, the assimilation process can restart. Although many condemn the 1920 immigration controls as racist, since it favored northern and western European nations, the 45 year "dry spell" of immigration caused by these controls greatly facilitated the Americanization of the millions of Eastern Europeans, Jews, and Italians who had immigrated over the prior four decades, as these ethnic communities no longer had reinforcements who reconnected them with the "old country". What worked then can work now.
Ah, Froma, try visiting a GATEWAY COMMUNITY and stop thinking this is isolated to borders.
bttt
bttt
I'm in New Jersey. SamtheMan is obviously not speaking from experiences outside his own town.
Impact from illegal alien labor:
- Costing health care, retirement funding, education and law enforcement, accruing at $30 billion per year.
- USA is foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.
- Census Bureau estimates that 8.7 million people are illegally residing in the USA
- Urban Institute estimates a total of 9.3 million are illegally residing in the USA
- Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates a total of 9.2 million are illegally residing in the USA
- The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) stated that the Bureau of Labor could have missed as many as 10% of illegal aliens, since illegal aliens avoid census questionnaires. The CIS suggests the total illegal population is at 10 million or higher (March 2004).
- Employers have incentive to hire undocumented workers off the books.
- Overseas labor markets have forced US employers to find innovative ways to capitalize on sources of cheaper labor to stay competitive.
- Employers place pressure on the government to ignore the flood of cheap labor.
- Services, ie but not limited to: public school enrollment, language proficiency programs, and building permits, that cater to illegal aliens have increased in areas that are considered gateways for immigration.
- The top nine states that account for 50% of illegal aliens are: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
- Sole authority to govern immigration flow is placed on the federal government.
- Responsibility for providing support to legal and illegal immigrants rests with the state and local governments.
- Immigrants send home on average $1,400 to $1,500 per year through money transfers (also called Remittances).
- As per the World Bank in 2002, people sent $133 billion worldwide. Developing countries accounted for $88 billion of that.
- Remittances from the United States to Mexico have tripled to $13 billion between 1995 and 2003.
- As per the Pew Hispanic Center, 39% of surveyed Latino immigrants listed themselves as having legal status to opening bank accounts. This enables cash transfers through private money centers such as Western Union and Money Gram.
- HOWEVER, banks including Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo Bank began accepting matriculas, which are photographed identity cards for Mexicans living in the US.
- Matriculas are obtainable by any legal or illegal Mexican. Matriculas are widely obtainable through Mexican consulates across the USA.
- To date, around 2.5 million matriculas have been issued, and the number is growing.
- In major illegal alien gateway cities, the influx of immigrants has led to a housing boom unexplained by official population growth.
- In New Jersey, the three gateway towns are New Brunswick, Elizabeth, and Newark.
- Housing permits in these three towns shot up over six-fold, while the rest of the three counties only saw a three-fold increase.
- 80% of these permits were designated for multiple tenent dwellings.
- Official statistics state that illegal aliens in New Jersey have jumped 110% – an estimate that is inconsistent with the housing statistics. Local realtors' stats for multiple tenent housing and school enrollments suggest the number is higher.
- The major illegal alien gateway cities have experienced school enrollments much higher than projections.
- The decrease in the number of births in the past decade had led education administrators to expect decreasing school enrollments as a post echo boom trend.
- A higher immigration rate, however, has offset the impact of declining births.
- Enrollment stats for major illegal alien gateway city school districts that included: Queens, New York; Elizabeth, Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Wake County in North Carolina revealed explosive growth in immigrant students, far beyond numbers consistent with *legal* migration limits.
- NYC public school system is the largest in the nation, enrollment of 1.1 million students.
- Immigrant student enrollment for 1998-2001 was 103,000, with Queens accounting for the largest share, 37,000.
- Between 1990 and 2001, more than half of New York City’s school districts increased their enrollments 10% or more, driven by a high number of immigrant students.
- New York City Public Schools, 1999 to 2001: 102,867 immigrant students: Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Ecuador, Colombia and Haiti.
Yes, the author seems totally ignorant of reality and writes a vapid article of no significance.
I agree fully that immigration must be brought under control. How is all of this that you describe affecting the switching of language from Spanish to English?
If you consider the urban areas where most of the immigrants in the 1840-1920, especially the non-Germanic immigrants, settled, they were patchworks of neighborhoods of differing ethnicities. A common joke in many cities was that a bridge over a creek or rail yard was the largest in the world because it connected Israel with Ireland (or whatever combination existed). The political world was often controlled by Irish Catholics for whom Gaelic was a distant memory and the business community was largely run by Protestants of British colonial ancestry. When a (say) second or third generation Lithuanian American wanted to leave the steel mills or coal mines, he had to learn English and acculturate as thoroughly as any WASP or Irish American.
The 45 year hiatus on immigration from 1920 to 1965 accelerated Americanization. When new arrivals ceased coming from Hungary, for example, there was a lessened connection to old country ways. First generation arrivals became older and passed away. Upward mobility and intermarriage eventually turned ethnic differences from vital matters into quaint cultural artifacts. A present day joke in places like Chicago is that St. Patrick's Day affords people whose forbears came from all over Central Europe an opportunity to become drunk and foolish.
This pattern of Americanization is what Hispanics should experience. Until about 20 years ago, they were on the same path as the Norwegians, Basques, Portuguese, and many other groups had taken. With massive Hispanic immigration, combined with more Spanish language friendly governments and even private sector employers, the need to learn English and assimilate declines. Furthermore, as whole swaths of the United States become Hispanic, it will be possible for upwardly mobile Hispanics to remain largely Spanish speaking even as they become doctors, lawyers, and business owners. If politicians named Gomez, Barrera, and Jiminez replace ones named Perry, Hutchison, and Cornyn, Spanish will become the language of state and local governments, and the Federal government in the Southwest. Consider what happened in Quebec in the mid-1900s. As French Canadians increasingly outnumbered their British descended neighbors, the Quebec provincial government effectively eliminated English from government and outlawed its use in most of the private sector.
In the end, it is a matter of numbers. If immigration from Latin America is ended or at least reduced to a trickle, there is a chance that assimilation will once again work. If not, we will see the nation split by language and culture.
tell this BS to the employees of Telemundo and Univision.
They promote the fact english is a dying language.
They promote that english is IRRELEVANT in the USA.
I think we have a tale fo two spanishes.
One a gutter form the other a proper form taught in schools.
And like those of us who appreciate well-spoken English, even though the speaker is not from Maine, the natives of all Spanish-speaking countries, by and large, understand good Spanish.
I drop into the local schools to substitute for Spanish teachers and I assure you that many pubric scrool sSpanish teachers would die of thirst before they could get a glass of water in a Spanish speaking country. Unfortunately, ditto their students.
Dang, that is a list worth copying.
ping
If anything, proper Spanish is dying in the U.S.. I'm not fluent, but I find that I, an Anglo, sometimes have a better command of Spanish grammar, spelling and where accents belong than many native speakers of Spanish.
Latino kids in the US grow up hearing Spanish, but never learn proper grammar, spelling, etc. There are few institutions that teach or use proper Spanish in the U.S.. A professor from the Dominican Republic told me that most Spanish spoken in the US is simply atrocious, and very, very dumbed-down.
You know what I really can't stand? Spanish hip hop/urban music. It's the worst.
ping
People in Mexico City think that people from the hills of Mexico speak "hillbilly Spanish". I learned from speakers from the hills of Zacatecas, Michoacan, Durango, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, etc.
It's comparable to the attitude of Londoners to Bostonians who in turn look down on New Yorkers, who in turn look down on New Joisey, who in turn look down on Kentucky.
I recently attended presentations of IT gurus from England and Australia. They do talk funny. And in meetings with Indian immigrants whose first language is English, I tell them "email me".
The attitude of the Spaniards to their fellow Spanish speakers in Latin America is analogous to that of the British to Americans. I may not be a fan of unrestricted immigration from Latin America, but as an American, I sympathize with the Latin Americans on this one. The Spaniards, like the British, have not really reconciled their loss of their old colonies.
"Spanish teachers would die of thirst before they could get a glass of water "
Yes, in my daughters' suburban HS, the English teachers were affirmative action Hispanic immigrants who could not speak English well. And their Spanish teachers could not speak Spanish. They knew what a TACO was, but not what a TORTA was.
But both of those teachers were better than the social studies teacher who thought the constitution was just a museum piece that had no relevance outside the museum.
Maybe not. But the Spaniards have been buying up everything in sight in LA, Utilities, Companies, Insurance, Banks, Railroads when they can get them, etc.etc.
They may be left wing loony socialists at home, but the Spaniards are ferocious capitalists abroad!
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