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What’s wrong with this picture?

Posted 17 May 2005 in illegal immigration

mexicobillboard

I was rather taken aback yesterday on my commute home. I drove past a billboard for SBC/Yahoo DSL which was completely in Vietnamese. Talk about doing a double-take. Vietnamese, as written in English characters, has lots of unusual punctuation marks, so it really jumps out as unsual.

I was curious so I did a search to see if it was, in fact, Vietnamese. And in doing so I came upon the billboard you see at the head of this article.

It kinda ticked me off, and here’s why.

First off, there’s the whole issue of bad taste in saying that L.A. is once again a part of Mexico. That’s just plain wrong, and it actually caused a bit of panic among migrants.

The thing that really ticked me off, though, was that the piece of mass communication was written in a foreign language.

When folks come here to live, we as a nation don’t do them any favors by encouraging them to NOT learn English. Whether it’s advertising to them in their own language or allowing them to take a driver’s license exam in their own language (how can they possibly be legal drivers if they can’t read English?), we perpetuate the mentality that says there’s no need to fit in. No need to become American. It’s much easier to be a hyphen-American. You just live in your community and we’ll live in ours. You aren’t really Americans. You’re (insert nationality of origin here)-American.

That sucks.

If I were to move to Japan, let’s say, I certainly wouldn’t expect to have the entire country do all their road signs in English. I’d expect that if I were gonna live there, I’d need to learn to read and write Japanese. At least on a basic level. Right? Even visiting as a tourist, I’d want to at least be able to carry on basic conversations in English.

But here in America, we seem to bend over to accomodate non-Americans. Particularly Spanish-speaking Americans. Here in Texas, it’s the norm.

Why?

Why fragment society into “us vs. them”? Why encourage things which only keep people farther apart? And why put the onus on Americans to learn a foreign language rather than urge those coming here to learn to speak English? Sure, if you wanna learn Spanish so you can more easily talk to those who speak Spanish, go right ahead. That’s cool. But don’t tell American citizens that they HAVE to learn a foreign language.

For example, just last week, I was astonished to hear a story about a local school principal who was told he must take Spanish so that he can converse with Spanish-speaking students and their families. On the news, they even interviewed a kid who said “yeah, I think it’s a good idea, cause most of us speak only Spanish.”

Read that back. They speak ONLY Spanish.

How about LET’S TEACH STUDENTS TO SPEAK ENGLISH WHEN THEY ARE ATTENDING OUR SCHOOLS! What’s this shit with expecting, even demanding, that a principal must learn another language to make things easier on immigrant families?! If kids in our schools can’t speak English, that should be their first set of classes right there. Then when they’re fluent enough, they can be integrated with everyone else in regular classes.

I have no beef with legal immigrants. My great-grandparents came here from Italy. But, obviously, I don’t run around speaking only Italian. Those who come here legally and go through the steps to become United States Citizens are more than welcome. But if you’re gonna come here, then do it all the way. Become a U.S. Citizen and know how to speak the language!! That should be requirement #1 before citizenship is granted.

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

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