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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] One glaring example, IMO, is that there is no expectation that immigrants who come here learn English.  While English is not the “official” language of our country, I don’t think anyone can claim that it isn’t the primary language, and that if you want to get ahead in business or as a resident of our country, you need to learn English. 
For our country to bend over backwards to translate material into 10 or more languages is really ridiculous.  It comes at great expense for businesses, school systems, and our government.  [/quote]

Agreed but the market takes care of that. People get hung up on trees and ignore the forest. There is no data to conclude that children of immigrants do not know English. Can you post any link to your comment about school materials being translated into 10 OR MORE languages? It does make sense to translate immigration related materials to be translated into 10 or More languages to cater to NEW immigrants who may not know English. [/quote]

Completely agree with this.  I don't know of any immigrant enclave (even in California where there are huge communities of immigrants to the point where you probably could live your entire life mostly surrounded by people who look just like you) where the children of immigrants (both documented and undocumented) don't learn English.  It just doesn't happen.  It's true that at a local level schools may decide to have bilingual education programs to help those children start on equal footing, but I know plenty of white Americans who choose to put their kids in those programs as well to provide a better opportunity for learning a second language.  I used to work with a colleague from California who went through a program like that, and it was an incredible help to have someone fluent in Spanish when we ended up doing a lot of work in S. America.

The primary objections I've heard are people bristling that they might have to push 1 for English and 2 for Spanish on a customer service line.  It's funny, because to me the far more infuriating thing about customer service lines are the robot operators that try to interpret you voice and direct you...almost always incorrectly ;)[/quote]

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