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Tghis phenomenon is rather new to the technology since the advent of televison but accelerated in the lst twenty years when the FCC allowed for the broadcast of television channels that broadcast strictly in a foreign language. In particular if you are hispanic you can get all your news and culture from telemundo or another spanish network.

One of the first things arabs and chinese do when they come here is cable television so they can watch their own tv channels. I have enetered a number of arab shops here in brooklyn and there on the tv screen is a channel strictly in that foreign language. These people need not be exposed to american programing or views or language.

The result is that these people set up an environment that is separate and apart from the rest of us. They are not being assimilated and when they venture outside of those confines they are merely "visitng" the rest of us. Modern technology has been a boon, but at the same time it has played a major part in facilitating the separatness of people who come from cultures that are raduically different from us. If they are not exposed to our language, our programs, our movies and our culture in general they will never become "americans". This same phenomenon is true in Europe.

My solution would be to mandate that all transmition of television and radio channels whether it be by air or by cable must be in English.

Unless we integrate these people into our culture and way of life we will find one day that they will demand their own country within our borders.

The immigrants that preceeded us did not have such luxuries. They were forced into english in order to survive. They had no hungarian or italian tv. No bi-lingual education. they eventually became "americans".

They were also European, though, the dominant racial and cultural stock. People are clanish, and I don't think that many (perhaps a majority?) of Latin Americans or Asians will ever assimilate. It's the raw, unadulterated truth, especially given PC group politics, foreign pandering, and resistance to be an American.

You make some interesting points, and it sounds good in theory, but I'm not sure that it would be doable in practice. It seems it would be kinda like trying to put toothpaste back in a tube. But what we CAN do is stop printing every piece of paperwork and documentation in multiple languages, forget the ridiculous notion of printing ballots in multiple langauges, and stop providing interpreters for every situation. Before an immigrant (legal immigrant) can become naturalized, he MUST be functionally proficient in English and non-Englich speakers should NOT be allowed to vote, the reasoning being, that if they are required to be a citizen to vote and are required to speak the language to be a citizen then it follows logically that if they can't speak the language then they can be assumed to be non-citizens. Foreign language storefronts could be regulated as well.

I guess my point is that while many immigrants arrive in this country unable to speak the language, there is help available to them if they choose to avail themselves of it. If everything is done for them then what is their motivation? And what is likely to be their level of gratitude to a country that demands nothing of them?