White's to become minorities in the U.S.

[firerat]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

a computer could store any form already translated once
for use throughout the usa at virtually no extra cost.
the local government personnel do not need to learn a bunch of languages,
just push a button for form 71b in whatever language needed.

Not a bad idea Hip.

[TVCasualty]

Originally Posted by Shroomette

Geesh Can't we all get along?

What fun would that be?

I do find it interesting that although many airports have signs in multiple languages, all the pilots communicate in english as it's the official language for international air traffic. That's a case where miscommunication or ambiguity in language can cause a disaster, so there's no messing around with accommodations of diversity.

One language being dominant over others in a given region (or the globe) is a function of power, and power is just the ability to make one's intent stick. So while western civilization, and specifically the US, is in a dominant global position, it will be making the rules. Since the power in the US resides with white males at the moment, english is the language you have to speak to play the game, just like latin in ancient Rome.

When the power center changes, so will the language we'll need to speak if we wish to play the game where it counts (at the top). The transition will happen naturally as majority/minority positions shift, though it'll piss a lot of people off in the process. Same as it ever was...

[Lazlo]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

a computer could store any form already translated once
for use throughout the usa at virtually no extra cost.
the local government personnel do not need to learn a bunch of languages,
just push a button for form 71b in whatever language needed.

That would cost billions of dollars. Then again, they already do cost us that much and growing, so why break the trend.

[Hippie3]

would not,
they're already wired-
just a matter of translating each form once then
any terminal in any SSA office in america could
print it.

[Irishlion]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

would not,
they're already wired-
just a matter of translating each form once then
any terminal in any SSA office in america could
print it.

I agree with hip on this one it wouldn't take alot of resources to set this up and would be probally one of them most beneifitial things our country could do. IMO would also show that the government actually gives a shit out something other than their own wallets. Doing something for its people again instead of for themselves.

[phraggle]

Originally Posted by firerat

Spanish Americans do have access to everything English speaking citizens do. It is there for everybody.

Everytime a new language is introduced into this country, should we have a seperate library for them as well? By your rationale, not doing so would be quite facist.

Its not there for you if its not in a language you speak. If there is a section of the population paying for the library, then there should be a proportionate section of the library resources dedicated to the language spoken by the people paying for it.

Forcing a language on people who are citizens of the country simply because of a nationalist identity and pride is fascist by definition.

SWIM lives in a city where there are 27 different languages spoken by parts of the population that are large enough to be listed in the census. The library has some books available in all the 27 languages as well as a few additional ones that were not in the census.

[Lazlo]

IMO would also show that the government actually gives a shit out something other than their own wallets

I think it's rather apparent at this particular moment that the government doesn't give a shit about America's wallet, being trillions of dollars in debt we are.

It kills me that we as American's spend years in school to learn English and can't graduate without doing so, but for some odd reason you guys feel that an immigrant should be able to waltz into America, take advantage of the resources we have and pressure us as citizens to learn their language, cater to them. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[i patch]

depends on where u live... if ur in in the southwest.. what do u expect country was founded by foreigners ... lookin for that american dream...
n believe me .. the builders of this country use cheap labor as well

[Doctor D]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

for some odd reason you guys feel that an immigrant should be able to waltz into America, take advantage of the resources we have and pressure us as citizens to learn their language, cater to them. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Once immigrants become citizens, they have full voting rights. They aren't second-class citizens just because they are recent immigrants. If citizens wish to retain their original language and there are enough of them to affect change, so be it. At least Spanish is easier to speak than Mandarin.

[shroom_seeker]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

for some odd reason you guys feel that an immigrant should be able to waltz into America, take advantage of the resources we have and pressure us as citizens to learn their language, cater to them.

sorta like the way we waltzed into this country, eh?

Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
and admit that the waters around you have grown
and accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
if your time to you is worth saving
Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

[MycoChondria]

Originally Posted by Doctor D

... At least Spanish is easier to speak than Mandarin.

Last night I dreamt that Mainland China threatened to cash-in their 500+ billion in US treasury notes and instead go with the Euro. That is of course unless we agree to adopt Mandarin as our official language. The way out dollar is crapping out this may happen one day.

That was some dream

[Lazlo]

No one's saying they're second class citizens. I'm saying that if you become a citizen of another nation, then you should damn well get on board and at the least learn the language good enough to be understood. Guess what, too late now. America has catered to immigrants far too long to turn back now. So what's next? Are you going to make a utility call and instead of there being 2 choices of language, there will be 4 or 5? You know how much corporate spending's are on a Spanish speaking customer service? Billions a year! And don't feed me this b.s. that just because they spend money on a service, they have the right to this service in their language. They have an obligation to learn the language of the country they decide to immigrate to and not to just kick back and be catered to. It's a thought process like this that is putting a severe strain on the U.S. financially. Billions here and billions there end up adding up, year after year, after year. One day it's going to be too much to overcome if something's not done about it in the near future. Watch and see! It doesn't take a super scientist or economist to see what's happening right before our eyes.

[suckerfree]

Originally Posted by Hippie3 View Post
a computer could store any form already translated once
for use throughout the usa at virtually no extra cost.
the local government personnel do not need to learn a bunch of languages,
just push a button for form 71b in whatever language needed.

hmm, sounds like a business idea.
a business could do all that then sell the software everywhere...

[i patch]

if it wasnt profitable they wouldnt do it

[hyphaenation]

Native north American way of dealing with immigrants ...

[i patch]

cater... i doubtfully doubt they r being catered to.. imagine u go to nother country... personal experience has no count here

[phraggle]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

It kills me that we as American's spend years in school to learn English and can't graduate without doing so, but for some odd reason you guys feel that an immigrant should be able to waltz into America, take advantage of the resources we have and pressure us as citizens to learn their language, cater to them. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

No one just 'waltzes into America'. Both legal and illegal paths are difficult and time consuming so get that poorly conceived notion out of your head.

Also, no one is pressuring citizens to learn a different language other than the people who think that all Americans should speak English. The non-English speaking Americans want the resources, that they help pay for, to be available in a form that they can actually use. This is a reasonable request.

What makes absolutely no sense is when people say that it is too much trouble to learn another language and in the same breath insist that people with less resources than themselves learn their language. It makes even less sense when the people saying this belong to a society that was based off the assimilation, subjugation and extermination of other societies and is now a colonial power that uses military might to make foreign cultures more accepting and subservient to their own.

[phraggle]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

You know how much corporate spending's are on a Spanish speaking customer service? Billions a year!

Do you know how much non-English speaking Americans spend on the corporations? Billions a year!

Originally Posted by Lazlo

And don't feed me this b.s. that just because they spend money on a service, they have the right to this service in their language. They have an obligation to learn the language of the country they decide to immigrate to and not to just kick back and be catered to.

If you are so unreasonable as to say that people do not have a right to access a service which they pay for, then you aren't really worth debating with.

Originally Posted by Lazlo

It doesn't take a super scientist or economist to see what's happening right before our eyes.

Well maybe you need a historian to explain that the American economy as we know it would not exist without cheap labor provided by non-English speaking Americans. From the Native Americans who showed the European colonizers how to survive, to the African slaves who made the country an economic power, to the Asian immigrants who built a large part of the countries infrastructure, to the Latino immigrants who provide the majority of the cheap labor which puts food on your plate and a roof over your head; the American economy owes much more to the non-English speaking residents than it can ever afford to pay.

[SantiagoDomingo]

I was under the impression that becoming a legal citizen in America, as an immigrant, meant you had to be able to read and understand the constitution and provide a basic understanding of the English language. Am I wrong? Is that not part of the naturalization process?

Also, English is one of the hardest languages to learn . . . maybe we should have come up with something less complicated.

[Lazlo]

Do you know how much non-English speaking Americans spend on the corporations? Billions a year!

Basic business sense tells you that if an entity makes X amount of dollars serving non-english speaking people, but yet has to invest some of those profits, providing a customer service to cater to their lack of speaking english, the profit margin isn't quite the same is it?

I was under the impression that becoming a legal citizen in America, as an immigrant, meant you had to be able to read and understand the constitution and provide a basic understanding of the English language. Am I wrong? Is that not part of the naturalization process?

Right.

[TVCasualty]

Ultimately, I think this whole issue boils down to something fairly straightforward. It's been a repeating pattern of Western society since ancient Rome. If I'm living here on my street in a decent house that's got all the modern conveniences, is well-kept, and myself and the other people living in it are fed and clothed and have a little space of our own, then I might be more than a little concerned when I see my neighbors beating their kids, letting the yard get trashed, and filling their house with tenants way beyond its capacity.

When the overflowing tenants from next door realize my house is less crowded, the yard is in pretty good shape, and we don't get beat-up by dad as often, they're going to start hanging out here. Who wouldn't? If left to continue indefinitely, this kind of trend appears to lead to a growing pile of trouble over there that eventually falls over and crushes my house too, no matter how much care and maintenance I invest in keeping it nice.

On the other hand if I build a big fence to keep my neighbors in their own yard, I'll be constantly watching for fence-jumpers and tunnel-diggers right up until the moment my yard is demolished (fence and all) by the giant mess next door, so isolation clearly doesn't work either. And that's not to mention the fact that all those people living in those lousy conditions right next door are just that: People. Like me.

The insoluble nature of this conflict appears to stem from the fact that one's quality of life is largely predetermined by which side of the fence we happen to be born on (and there are fences within each yard, too; Mexico has some really sweet spots but few Mexicans have acce$$ to them). We spend a lot of time and money keeping our house and yard nice, but we often forget that we'd be spending much, much more time and money maintaining it if not for the people willing to do the dirty work for so little income (cleaning up our yard or working in sweatshops in their own yard), and what motivates people to accept lower wages here is arriving from somewhere much worse off.

So it's all connected; our cheap'n'easy lifestyle demands an excess of low-cost labor to maintain, and we certainly want to maintain the life we have. At the same time, those who aren't living such a nice life would really like to try it sometime, and are willing to do what they have to do to get a taste. But our lifestyle cannot be all-inclusive, otherwise it changes at a fundamental level into a different lifestyle; that is, nobody lives cheap'n'easy anymore if all labor is appropriately compensated (I mean "appropriately" from a dignified human perspective, not an economic one).

The conflict is insoluble because there are only two solutions, neither one ideal: The global playing field is leveled for all so people don't starve or die of preventable diseases like cholera or rifle shots over there while we sip Pina Coladas on the beach over here, but that means we'd all be equally mediocre and living a proportionally uninspired life (seems to me anyway). Or, we have a world with wide, pyramid-shaped disparities of wealth that allow those cocktail hours on the beach for some but deny them to most, and we can see the attendant travesties and atrocities that accompany maintenance of such a status quo in the news every day. The view we have tends to be related to whether we're sipping cocktails while watching the sunset or washing the cocktail glasses while watching a brick wall (the middle class appears to be a historical anomaly in the process of being corrected/eliminated).

These metaphors and illustrations are flawed and inadequate, but they're the best I got this early in the morning. I guess my view is that the conflict has no solution amenable to everyone; I'll keep stepping on your toes right up until you manage to step on mine.

[phraggle]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

Basic business sense tells you that if an entity makes X amount of dollars serving non-english speaking people, but yet has to invest some of those profits, providing a customer service to cater to their lack of speaking english, the profit margin isn't quite the same is it?

Basic business sense tells you that providing no service to your customers (English speaking or otherwise) means that you will soon have no customers and thus no profit which is far worse than a small profit.

[phraggle]

Originally Posted by TVCasualty

The global playing field is leveled for all so people don't starve or die of preventable diseases like cholera or rifle shots over there while we sip Pina Coladas on the beach over here, but that means we'd all be equally mediocre and living a proportionally uninspired life (seems to me anyway).

I don't think that an economically equal world would necessarily create a mediocre, uninspired world. People could still strive to attain their desires, but the desires would not be of a material nature. You can still strive for things like love, skill, knowledge, understanding and mass effect. The rewards for these things would no longer be material (which would remove some conflict in interests which currently hamper societal progess, IMHO) but could be instead based on prestige and ideally personal satisfaction.

[Hippie3]

no one before was ever required to learn english to immigrate here,
those irish, italian, etc. immigrants choose freely,
no law compelled them.

[Lazlo]

Originally Posted by phraggle

Basic business sense tells you that providing no service to your customers (English speaking or otherwise) means that you will soon have no customers and thus no profit which is far worse than a small profit.

So I suppose they'll live in the dark, no water, no phones, no insurance, no banking, exc.? Ehhhh, no.

[TVCasualty]

Originally Posted by phraggle

I don't think that an economically equal world would necessarily create a mediocre, uninspired world. People could still strive to attain their desires, but the desires would not be of a material nature. You can still strive for things like love, skill, knowledge, understanding and mass effect. The rewards for these things would no longer be material (which would remove some conflict in interests which currently hamper societal progess, IMHO) but could be instead based on prestige and ideally personal satisfaction.

Shifting utility and personal satisfaction yardsticks to immaterial things instead of money/economic power just shifts all the attendant social dynamics to those immaterial subjects. That is, it'd just become a prestige pyramid instead of a money pyramid. Some hunger and some competitiveness keeps us healthy and strong and evolving and in competition, someone has to lose. Without competition, we stagnate. Even striving for consciousness is born of coming from a less-conscious starting point, a desire to grow and be more than we are currently (to rise above the mundane), and that's all well and good until some other group gets tired of it and just takes all your shit. Ask the Tibetans about that. It's back to square one for them, since apparently they overlooked something crucial as their awareness evolved otherwise they'd still have their own country.

[lysergic]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

My family is learning Spanish, you want to know why?

Everyone in your family is a librarian that has been forced to learn it?

Let me help you out: "Library" in Spanish is biblioteca.

Originally Posted by Lazlo

for some odd reason you guys feel that an immigrant should be able to waltz into America, take advantage of the resources we have and pressure us as citizens to learn their language, cater to them.

So which Native American tribe does your family hail from?
What happens once the immigrants become citizens?



If we are ever going to progress as a society, we need to rid ourselves of these bullshit nationalistic ideals.

[Hippie3]

economics is similar to thermodynamics
in that it's the difference in heat/wealth distribution
that drives movement.
a uniform distribution has no flow,
so nothing moves, no work gets done.
but once the distribution gets 'lumpy'
things begin to happen,
in the early universe the 'lumps' led to
the formation of galaxies, stars, planets, etc.
in human terms the 'lumps' created
cities and nations, banks and corporations.
much like the stars give energy and sustain life
so too organizations with large concentrations of wealth
build factories, hospitals, ranches and farms
that drive the economy.
for the universe
in the end thermodynamics will mean
a cold dead frozen dark universe,
and i would argue that similar fate
would befall mankind if we ever achieved
'equality' of wealth.

[phraggle]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

So I suppose they'll live in the dark, no water, no phones, no insurance, no banking, exc.? Ehhhh, no.

No. They switch to the distributor that offers them service, which there will inevitably be because someone with some business sense will see a completely untapped market and plug into it.

[Lazlo]

Untapped! A bit late for that.