An honest question, because I am not deeply familiar with the naturalization process, but:

(a) How in the world do immigrants become citizens (and thus voters) without knowing how to speak, read & write basic English? They must have changed the citizenship tests a lot in the last couple of decades I suppose?

(b) If we are dealing not with immigrants, but with second generation folks from largely Spanish-speaking households, how is it that they grow to adulthood in the U.S. without knowing how to speak, read & write basic English? I guess the answer would not reflect well on our system of public education, but that is no surprise.

I have no objection to making government documents available in multiple languages, and I don't want to exclude any American citizen or legal resident from understanding and participating fully in our democracy, but I do think that a common language is one key to national unity.

So, I guess I'd say that everyone in the US who is or wants to be an "American" "should" work to learn English. In their copious spare time. I'd reccommend those Berlitz language CDS -- they can all listen in their cars.

S_A_M

why
 

Like I said, we need to have trials to root out who's truly innocent.

What would your solution be?

The Pew Hispanic research center says that by the third generation, Spanish is forgotten all together. I went to school and promptly lost my Spanish, which was my first language. How many immigrant kids do you know who speak their parents' native tongue as well as they do English? This a made up problem, and the knee-jerk solution is to threaten something like the VRA which has real value.

OK, but the state law appears to require bilingual for spanish only. Does it also have for Vietnamese, etc.?

As far as I can tell, no.

Ah.

Frankly, if it hasn't been abundently clear yet, I think this whole thing is a made-up problem. We don't write our laws in other languages, we conduct most of our business in English, and for the most part English is the language of record. That doesn't need to be made official.

Our immigration system is one of the best in the world. The people who come here want to work hard and stay here, and they do a damned good job of assimilating within a generation. And yet, we're looking at putting together a guest worker program based off the European model not even a year after the riots in France that demonstrate beautifully how disasterous those programs are.

Want to encourage assimilation? Don't threaten to send people who establish roots here away once they've exhausted their usefulness.

There is a large segment of the voting population that feels more comfortable in another language than English, and I think that making English the "official" language for voting purposes threatens their right to participate fully in democracy. And I think that the democracy is much more important than the language it is conducted in.

My .02
 

I am all in favor of bilingual households and holding on to one's culture and heritage of origin, including the language of your ancestors. I live in an area where there are many Spanish, Polish, Arabic, and numerous Asian and Eastern European language speakers, many of whom speak only their native tongue in the home.

Our school district has a good-sized at-risk education program, complete with a number of schools particularly for at-risk students. The program isn't for crack babies or kids who were born with fetal alcohol syndrome. It doesn't have a lot of gang members. Illietracy in general isn't a problem. The at-risk population is almost exclusively made up of kids who hit first grade, or enter the system at whatever grade, with little or no grasp of the English language.

When culture begins to threaten your childrens' ability to grow up and achieve in school, it's time to think about speaking more English.

My .02
 

I do think that having ballot measures etc. presented in languages other than English is a good idea, in terms of representative democracy. I think Spanky or club or whoever presented it as a "stop signs won't ahve to be in 12 languages, like they are now" issue, and RT is presenting it as "it will mean that people will be asked to vote on things that they can't understand" and I think you aren't allowed to bring someone with you into the voting booth to translate or whatever, so I can see where it's a different issue w/r/t voting.

why
 

Wow. This is a tough question that's never been asked before. Let me see...

I think if I were creating a system to deal with this situation I'd institute a system that required an initial, fairly quick hearing in which a representative of the executive branch (lets call him a prosecutor, just to coin a phrase) would be required to present a minimal level of proof to a decision maker (who I'll call a "judge") who would decide whether the evidence presented met a minimum threshold. If not, the person would be freed. If so, the prisoner would be given time to mount a defense while the prosecutor gathered a more complete set of evidence. The prisoner would be appointed a representative familiar with the workings of this system (called, maybe, "defense counsel"). The prisoner, or at least the defense counsel, would be able to review the evidence that was to be presented against him later. Finally, not too long after the initial hearing (say, less than 18 months if we're being ambitious), the prosecutor would present his evidence during a formal process we'll call a "trial" to either the "judge" or perhaps a small group of citizens assembled to decide the issue (we'll call that a "jury" - don't ask me where I come up with these names - they just come to me). If there is a fairly large degree of certainty about the person's guilt, he is incarcerated for a period of time proportionate to the severity of his crimes. If there isn't sufficent evidence to be relatively sure (perhaps "beyond a reasonable doubt"), the person is freed.

Of course, I'm sure a system like that would be too unwieldy to apply to hundreds of prisoners. My god, can you imagine?

why
 

but the ones killing themselves- don't you think it's more likely they're the guilty ones? like if we just let them all kill themselves for awhile then pretty soon it'll be like the IRA- Weed says they don't do harm anymore- we'd be clean like that.

why
 

No. They are the more depressed ones. In fact, they almost might be less likely to be guilty -- people who are fanatically dedicated to their cause want to live on to advance it through misinformation or whatever, but the guy who is imprisoned because he has the wrong name or picked up some guy in his taxi a couple times, and has been sitting there for years and years with no contact with family, no trial, no prospect of things getting better . . . he's the one who just wants it to end.

My .02
 

I agree with you and RT on the ballot question. I was making a more general observation.

My .02
 

Pffft.

why
 

Um.....no.

Would be more likely to kill yourself if you were being held by imperialist devils for an act you proudly committed to strike a blow for your true god or if you were being held for something that not only you didn't do, but also don't know what it's supoosed to be?

Besides, the IRA hunger strikers... I don't think I'd be calling that clean.