English only in the workplace: mean-spirited and culturally ignorant!

[pink-o]

I just found the story about the Senate repigs acting just like you'd expect with their knee-jerk reactionary tactics and attempting to pass a bill that makes it a fireable offence to speak anything other than English at your workplace! WTF?? Are we that xenophobic of a society that we can't allow any other verbal expression? I spent a few years in Italy, and while I can struggle by in bad Italian, I'm far more articulate in my native language, and if I found an English speaker I was thrilled to rattle off without having to think about every word!

If these ignorant f**ks spent even a minute in another country, maybe they'd get it. But that would actually require using part of their brains that have atrophied with their meanness!

Link:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-english20nov20,0,1937383.story?coll=la-home-business

[Le Taz Hot]

1. Do you feel the same way about

Spanish only in the workplace? Not as in de jure but in de facto?

[Xipe Totec]

2. Where are you going with this question?

Spanish only in the workplace? Where?

[SharkSquid]

4. Ha, ever worked in the Gardening business?

I did in high school, I had no one to talk to, the boss was Mexican and most of my fellow employees were
Mexican and Honduran. I needed a translator that is for sure.

[Xipe Totec]

7. Sounds like at least 2 people spoke English

the translator and you.

So, technically, it was not a Spanish only work environment.

Plus, it sounds like they didn't hold it against you, that you only spoke English.

[SharkSquid]

12. I dont know how you gathered that

That was the reason that I left that job even though I probably needed it, they Definitely did not want me there because I was Anglo. And I didnt have a translator, a few of those guys could speak enough English to do the relatively simple tasks of gardening. I cant imagine what it would be like in a factory.

[Xipe Totec]

13. You said you worked there and needed a translator,

so I assumed:

a).- you worked there
b).- somebody translated for you.

My bad.

So I gather you're pissed because you felt discriminated based on your language? I would be pissed too. Nobody should be discriminated against based on language. I would guess that's the OP's point.

Or are you suggesting that some sort of retaliatory discrimination against Spanish speakers is ok because you experienced discrimination as a an English speaker; An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, tongue for a tongue?

[aquart]

26. Which is why it's okay to outsource our jobs to places no one speaks English.

Because language doesn't matter? Making sure everyone understands the instructions and can freely get help from one another DOES NOT MATTER? It's a formula for death.

Why bother teaching English at all? We all have mother tongues. Let's go with that.

Or maybe they never taught you that story of the Tower of Babel. Which made a great impression on me, however.

Every other immigrant group that has ever entered this country has managed to learn the language. My grandmother's stories about her English tutor were quite colorful.

Now this crap going thru Congress will not pass because it's unenforceable in the sweatshops. But multilingual offices? Factories where the safety rules are posted in five different languages written by half-ept translators? That's an invitation to innocent incompetence and endless danger.

So take your political correctness and shove it.

[pink-o]

30. Oh, please! No one is saying there shouldn't be a working knowledge of English

when safety is a factor! The bill just smacks of discrimination because it says English only must be SPOKEN.

Most immigrants here aren't like ignorant Americans would be in other countries, expecting us to cater to their native tongue. I work for the airlines and we have a myriad of languages between my co-workers and me: Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, and probably some more I've forgotten. Funny: all of us who're bi-or multi-lingual understand English just fine.

But why should someone be forced to speak it...??

[Xipe Totec]

32. So the fact that I can speak English AND Spanish AND Russian

is a mortal threat to you?

:eyes:

PS: Chinga la que ya sabes.

[pink-o]

35. Yeah, that's the inference I got as well...

I started this thread and peripherally wondered how many DU'ers with latent Tancredo and Dobbs DNA would show up to post. Whatever, people are entitled to their beliefs, but I just don't understand the insecurity that would cause someone to freak out over a different form of verbal expression.

It's not a matter of political correctness--it's a matter of respect and interest in someone outside of your own narrow confines. Personally, I have never been diminished by someone who speaks differently than I do. Even if we don't understand a word the other is saying, we still find a way to communicate.

Regardless, I don't want any government body telling me what language I can and can't speak in my workplace!

[Xipe Totec]

62. You might enjoy this post from my journal:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1135453

Unfortunately, it is archived now so you won't be able to post a reply.

:hi:

[EFerrari]

38. You've just described every worksite I've ever worked

including UC Berkeley.

And, the prevalence of Spanish in American society is not, as you imply, because Latinos will not learn English. Do you remember proud2Blib's thread that showed there were vastly many more people waiting to learn English than there were ESL classes? The prevalence of Spanish here is about other factors, such as the fact that Spanish was spoken here before English, and the family and community ethic in Latino cultures. Spanish isn't going away.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

47. Ooo, yes, the Old Testament.

There's a font of wisdom.

:eyes:

[Le Taz Hot]

5. My original question still stands.

n/t

[Xipe Totec]

8. How Impressive n/t

[pink-o]

6. no job in the US

would require you to speak Spanish only! Some ask for biligual employees, which if this attitude continues will be harder and harder to find!

The point I'm making is that no govt body should EVER dictate how we are allowed to express ourselves! This country was built on immigrants and English as a language is a total mish-mash of immigrant influences. These idiot yahoos are so uneducated and probably don't even speak English as well as some immigrants anyway! But as usual, the irony is lost on them.

[EFerrari]

10. I hope they do discourage people from learning the dreaded Spanish

language. I can go back to translating and raise my rates.

lol

[Xipe Totec]

14. I love this cartoon:

[EFerrari]

15. LOL!

That's great. :hi:

[Solly Mack]

17. LMAO! Love it!!!!

[TahitiNut]

36. It's a topic that attracts 90% mischaracterizations in virtually any 'discussion.'

It's appalling to me that folks on almost all sides of this discussion steadfastly engage in mischaracterizations and disinformation.

Fact: Employers are fully able and entitled (protected by LAW) to demand Spanish (or any other language) fluency as a job requirement for employment (within the U.S.). (Interestingly, such a requirement can be arbitrary and not tied to any business rationale.)

Fact: Employers are prohibited (for 30 years, now) from firing an employee for FAILING (either by inferred refusal or inability) to speak English on the job. (Interestingly again, such a prohibition is arbitrary in its enforcement and not dependent on any business rationale.)


It is VERY common to have work crews in construction (including home repair, remodeling, and maintenance) and landscaping/gardening and other service trades where the employees share a common language (other than English). Due to Fact #2 above, they cannot be fired for failing to speak English.

Insane? Yup.

Just in the last couple of years, I had a roofing crew replacing the roof due to an insurance-covered mishap where all the workers spoke Polish and only one spoke very limited English. I've frequently had landscape maintenance crews (lawn-mowing, clean-up, etc.) sent by one or another small business local company I've "hired" where none of the people spoke English well, and only one very haltingly.

Sadly, the two languages I've studied are German and French. Nobody ever warned me in school that people sent to work on my home wouldn't speak English - Spanish and Polish (despite that being my former stepfather's native language) weren't the ones I'd learned to speak, even haltingly.

I have to wonder why it's "illegal" for employers to require English language fluency and require the use of English (NOT "only") as a condition for employment. Further, I have to wonder why a worker/citizen would be effectively barred from employment from a job for not speaking Polish or Spanish ... where the "requirement" was due to the refusal or inability of prospective co-workers to speak English.

It seems "the law is an ass" in this case ... as are many of the folks both proposing and opposing a wide variety of abominations of a proposed law. I don't believe it's either reasonable to prohibit the use of any foreign language or to (effectively) prohibit the (non-exclusive) use of English. Neither seem reasonable to me.

[EFerrari]

37. Let's be real. Business practice differs from the law.

Employers can require a whole host of things that aren't legal and they do every day. They just have to be smart enough not to do it outright.

[TahitiNut]

41. Yes ... and there are some INTENDED elements of the law that enable law-breaking.

As we've apparently agreed, the "immigration" laws themselves have been gamed and contorted in ways that disserve actual IMMIGRATION and enable trafficking in human labor. As a whistle-blower, I KNOW very well the impediments in our "legal system" (which includes corrupt judges) that places enormous hurdles (and "gotchas") in the path of ANY employee that attempts to gain redress for wrongful termination and workplace harassment, particularly when that employee exposes blatant wrong-doing.

The whole underlying reality that necessitates REGULATION of business, including product quality/liability, pollution, employment, reporting, bribery, and other wrongful business practices ... is the FACT that organizations motivated almost solely to gain a profit WILL NOT BEHAVE RIGHTFULLY without such regulation. It's naive in the extreme to assume that there's ANY demographic of "businessperson" that's immune from such wrongful behavior.

[EFerrari]

44. I couldn't agree more. When I was translating Workers' Comp cases,

the routine was to force the filing worker to take painful tests, literally tests that felt like torture, in hopes they would just give up. After a while I spent half my time comforting these people while their employers' insurance companies tried to break them. It was horrendous. Dealing with those souls is why I went back to school and did English. It was just too painful to deal with them every damn day and be so helpless to do anything.

I may never make $60 p/hr again. But, there is a point where you feel complicit simply because you know how the system is being gamed.

[TahitiNut]

53. We're pretty much on the same page again - even though it's easy to not think so in reactive mode.

While I understand AND SHARE in the knee-jerk ("liberal") attitude that "Bubba" deserves little pity for confronting unfairness in hiring/employment in a "white male" society, the fact remains that corporatist profiteers EXPLOIT all sides of the discriminatory divide. That they've been able, particularly in the last 25 years, to 'game' the laws (by BUYING the law-makers and judges) to embed their power to exploit and pervert our social and economic systems seems inarguable to me. That some don't see it seems inexplicable to me.

One of the oldest perversions in "qualifying" people for benefits to which they're rightfully entitled is the creation of a "Forms Hell" as a barricade to admission. It's abominable. I've actually confronted one recently myself ... compounded by the out-sourcing of the application/facilitation process itself! It's truly insane. Without health insurance or the ability to pay for the 30 hours of hospital care I got due to my two TIAs, the hospital referred my situation to their out-sourced "advocate" ... whose job is to identify my qualifications for whatever federal or state programs that're available. So, what do they do? They send ME the forms and tell me to fill them out ... INCLUDING some blank forms that grant them powers an rights to access certain (but unspecified in the blanks) PRIVATE information on me AND to act as an "authorized agent" for me in some (unspecified in the blanks) ways. When I reasonably and calmly state my misgivings regarding signing blank forms, I'm THREATENED that I'd be refused their assistance in gaining such benefits - the VERY BUREAUCRACY that establishes the business niche in which they peddle their "services"!! The abject insanity of it just astounds me.

[EFerrari]

55. Mofos! Have you found someone to navigate this with you?

It's so like this crazy system we live in. We should just all just change our name to Yossarian.

:grr:

[Xipe Totec]

63. TahitiNut, I know you're on the right side of the issue

and I know how easy it is to misinterpret a position against unfair competition with a position for a "Whites Only" labor pool.

Rest assured, I have never seen you in that light.

I think you may find that this video echoes many some of the points you make, and concerns you express:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=64051&mesg_id=64051

[Danger Mouse]

3. That simply would not be possible in my workplace.

We have a native spanish speaker on staff who helps us with families that are not so good with the English. What, would she have to be fired for doing her job?

[Kajsa]

20. Exactly!

Every bilingual TA in our ESL programs would be fired.

Oh yes, add the translators that assist at the parent-teacher conferences.

This is beyond ignorant, it's insane!

[Marrah_G]

23. you are misreading the article

It does not make other languages illegal, no one would "have to be fired". What it says is that employers COULD fire employees for speaking other languages if english only is something the the employer requires. No where does it say employers would have to fire anyone.

[Kajsa]

24. You're right.

Thanks for pointing that out.

;-)

[Marrah_G]

22. It doesn't say " you have to speak english"

What it says is that an employer can fire someone if they require english in the workplace and the employee does not comply. It does not mean it would be illegal to speak spanish or any other language.

[Danger Mouse]

27. Ah, I see. I'm not quite sure what the point of that would be...

but I guess it makes sense.

[Toots]

9. Even these people don't speak English only

There are so many words that have been adapted into the English language or at least the American version of it such as kindergarten for instance. Are all of those words to now be verbotton?

[TlalocW]

19. For the language purists out there

I always tell a stupid story that goes something like, "I was sitting on my patio of my house near the canyon eating chocolate and working on fixing my lariat when a coyote ran by. I shot it just as the sheriff, wearing a 10 gallon hat, pulled up. He put me in the hoosegow for 10 days, buckeroo."

Eight of the words - patio, canyon, chocolate, lariat, coyote, gallon (corruption of galon), hoosegow, buckeroo - come from the Spanish language. I use it as an example that a language is never static but always influenced by other languages. And in Spanish, it's not unheard of to hear people say, "hasta la bye-bye," sandwich, or truck.

TlalocW

[Igel]

33. Yes, ale ovo pura misses the punto, to se mi zda.

It's pura possible da govori and code-switch, amma jestlize il y a a lack of sovpadenie in what people da cekaju, dalece ne dojedes.

I mean, it's possible, as I just did, to mix a bit of Hindi and Serbian, Spanish and Arabic and French and Russian and Bulgarian and Czech. Others could produce a mix of various kinds of Chinese and German and Zulu. In no case should it make for any problem among those that aren't language purists--after all, I'm sure you got what I said.

Language is a shared code; I don't see any evidence for going so far as to say it's obligatory a shared "way of seeing the world". You can use a given code because you lack another, or code-switch because you lack mastery over one of the codes. Both are distinct from borrowing. But you can also code shift to show solidarity--with the flip of solidarity being excluding outsiders.

And, yes, I've seen Spanish used for that purpose. Laughing at the boss--made more piquant by doing it to her face--or at the customers. Usually workers drop into their native language for innocuous purposes, but there's always that suspicion, zasrannej vole, that some word or another isn't exactly friendly, right?

[pink-o]

40. But if you use your native language to deride the boss or someone else on your job

...you better be careful! I've seen people get majorly busted because they assume the lillywhite American or whomever they're insulting doesn't understand them--and that person will answer them back in their own language!!! It's perfect instant Karma. I've done it with many Spanish speakers, and they're just stunned and embarrassed--they never would have guessed I understood them.

[Xipe Totec]

64. La troca = the truck

el cloch = the clutch

parquimetro = the parking meter

la migra = The Immigration and Naturalization Service.

All English words adopted by Spanish speakers in the South West.

Neither English, nor Spanish are God given languages created perfect by the One True God.

They are means of communication accepted by large groups of humans, in an effort to communicate with each other.

Nothing more, nothing less.

They are arbitrary, flawed, and voluble.

[porphyrian]

11. They don't want people talking about them in a language they don't understand.

We must all sink to the level of their ignorance for their protection.

[pink-o]

16. That's definitely part of the motivation

The more insidious reason is the same one that the American power base has used on its populous for decades now: keep the folks ignorant, uneducated, and full of jingoism and propaganda. Much easier to control us that way! God forbid we actually LEARN about others, how life is everywhere else around the world and that ***gasp!*** "those people" are just like us!!! Then we might question the great and powerful USA and understand the level of corruption our power base is practicing.

Oh, and BTW, Spanish isn't the only second language spoken in the US. I live just inside of Daly City, which has the largest Philippino population outside of Manilla. They are all fluent in English, but as I said earlier, can express themselves more easily in Tagalog. We also have a large Indian community--also very well educated and fluent in English. Should we tell them they can't speak to each other in Hindi when they work?

I'm afraid I just don't get it. Why would I, a white, Jewish American woman, be threatened by someone else's language??? Maybe I should listen and learn. I find that people are always willing to give me language lessons when I ask them.

[EFerrari]

18. These are the same kind of power mongers who persecuted people

for possessing a bible in the vernacular.

There is another reason just now, too. The Republicans are desperate for a sop to toss at their nativist base ahead of the election.

[porphyrian]

25. I lived in Chicago, so I know about how many languages are spoken around the country.

Maybe we should rebel by learning and speaking non-English languages as much as possible.

[mmonk]

21. The answer to your question is yes.

With the proper whipping up of fear and cultural differences, this country is more than adequately xenophobic. Many people of Latin American dissent will be used as the "people on the margins" the sleepy majority won't care about as they disappear into the corporate prisons being built.

[Indy Lurker]

28. Many states are right to work

In Illinois for example, you can be fire for anything (or nothing), with only a few exceptions.

This would include speaking non-engilsh, or being a green-bay packers fan.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

29. Actually, what you are referring to is "at-will" employment

Right to Work pertains to unions. It's a common error because Right to Work and at-will usually co-exist like peas in a pod in anti-labor states.

[Indy Lurker]

31. oops, my bad

you are exactly correct.

btw Illinois is NOT a right to work state.

[LanternWaste]

34. Sounds like it would be even less productive than otherwise...

English-Only Workplace-- I'd be prevented from saying "San Antonio", "Waukesha, Wisconsin", Baton Rouge" or even "Texas". Sounds like it would be even less productive than otherwise.

Xenophobia-- language style!

[TCJ70]

39. Unless speaking Spanish/French/ German/Swahili/whatever...

...is required for a job (such as a social worker or someone who regularly works with non-english speakers), I see no problem with requiring employees to use English in other circumstances. There could be various reasons for this such as sexual harassment going unnoticed by employers because they don't speak the language or other illegal activities going on without employers knowledge (which they would probably be held responsible for depending on the activity).

I work in a place where people come in who don't speak English for assistance. I don't know the specifics of this law, but I doubt it applies in circumstances where a customer/client doesn't speak English.

[TahitiNut]

42. What if the job "requirement" is that the current employees PREFER a language other than English ...

... and refuse to fully accommodate a prospective English-speaking co-worker that doesn't speak THEIR preferred (or sole) language??

[TCJ70]

43. Then I guess the new employee should...

...find a new place to work since they probably won't be comfortable there anyway.

[TahitiNut]

48. So, that means that American workers are refused jobs where they're qualified?

If we use the term "qualified" to mean that all the skills and abilities NECESSITATED by the work itself, including interacting with the customers (if any) ... and the only "requirement" is the preference of the current employees to speak a language other than English ... then it's OK to bar a worker from employment?

What if it's the preference of the current employees to work ONLY with males? (Perhaps they're Arab immigrants?) Should females be barred from such employment because the current employees don't want to work with females?? (If you think this is non-existent, think again.)

How many preferences of the current employees should be "respected" in hiring?? Religion? (I've seen religious discrimination in secular contexts many times - a few times with Mormon employers.) Sexual orientation? I've actually been hired as a manager with the (unstated beforehand) expectation that I'd terminate a lesbian ... a woman who, in EVERY OTHER WAY, exceeded expectations in job performance! But some "couldn't get along with her" ... so they wanted her fired. Is that OK??

Again ... wrongful discrimination goes ALL WAYS and NO demographic is immune.

[TCJ70]

52. Maybe I'm not understanding your point of view...

...in fact, I'm sure of it. I don't see anything wrong with requiring employees to speak English for business purposes. In that event, it's not just a preference, it's a job requirement.

I guess I don't look at this as a way to exclude people from jobs, but as a way to ensure workplace safety for employees and employers.

[TCJ70]

46. I should add...

...that I really don't see a reason why an employer in this country would ask anyone to use a language other than English for job duties that it isn't required for (such as non-english speaking customers/clients).

Regardless of what the native language of the employees is, English is the generally agreed upon language in this country at the moment. I went to an interview where the person conducting the interview was from Brazil, should I have learned Portugese before going so I could communicate with that person in a language that they probably would have been more comfortable with?

[Fuzz]

45. I had two people under me at one point who would speak Spanish to each

other while each of them were taking care of customers. This is going back 20 years ago.

I asked them not to do that, as I asked others not to carry on personal conversations with each other while they were taking care of customers as well, but if you did need to speak with each other to ask for assistance or whatever, please do it in English. When there wasn't a customer there, I didn't care.

Reason being that the customer could be made to feel as if they were talking about them and I just found it rude to carry on a personal conversation when your attention should be on the customer.

I still feel that way.

I've had customers speak about me in languages I understand while I was taking care of them and shocked the hell out of them by letting them know I understood everything they said at the end of our business too. :D

[Oeditpus Rex]

49. Second-hand Esperanto KILLS!!!

:scared:

[madinmaryland]

50. Only if there is a matter of safety involved.

i.e. if someone shouts a warning, but you don't understand it, then there is a real problem (like you could be dead). In those cases, there should be a uniform language.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. Have you ever lived in a non-English-speaking country?

My Japanese is pretty darned good, but when I get together with someone else from the English-speaking world, we speak English, unless there's a Japanese person present who doesn't speak English.

Why? Are we disrespecting Japan? Are we trying to exclude Japanese people? Are we saying nasty things that we don't want Japanese people to understand? Are we ignorant monolingual English speakers who refuse to speak Japanese?

None of the above. It's just easier to speak your native language.

The court cases that occurred in the past were about employers who objected to immigrant workers speaking their native language in informal communication with one another, even on breaks.

When I was in graduate school, I knew some second-generation Ukrainian-Americans who would switch back and forth between English and Ukrainian when talking with one another. It happens almost unconsciously if you have two people who both proficient in the same two languages. You should hear some of the conversations at Japanese-English translators' conferences.

Discussions in this thread are infected with American foreign language phobia. Here are the legal principles involved:

1. Employers may require a foreign language as a condition of employment. A social service agency that serves a lot of immigrants, for example, can legitimately list knowledge of the language of one of those immigrant groups as a condition of employment. It can require employees to study a foreign language, just as it can require them to learn a new computer program.

2. There's a difference between requiring employees to speak the same language when it's important for everyone to understand. If there's something that all employees need to know, it should be in English. However, when two employees are talking together informally, especially on breaks, who cares what language they speak? Guess what, paranoid monolingual Americans: 99 times out of 100, they're NOT talking about you.

[kwassa]

56. I've experienced the same thing ..... several times.

The first, and most unusual, was standing in a bank line in Los Angeles where a teller and a customer that knew each other were chattering away in a mixture of Japanese and Spanish. I was right behind them, and when I was served the teller looked up at me, saw my startled reaction to the conversation, and said "You had to grow up in our neighborhood here". Ethnic neighborhoods in LA.

The second was in Lafayette, Louisiana, where the locals would use a mixture of English and French in the same sentence as they talked with each other. Cajun country.

and my local beer-and-wine store is family-owned Lebanese immigrants, where the family employees all talk back forth in a seamless mixture of Arabic and English.

[EFerrari]

57. In the neighborhood across Golden Gate Park from me

there are many Russian language and Mandarin speakers. One day I went to a BofA there, and all around me were two languages I didn't understand. I'm pretty sure nobody was talking about me. lol

But, it was interesting because the bank hired tellers that reflected the immigration history of that neighborhood and I could hear it. :)

[KitSileya]

54. Smacks of discrimination to me.

Now, if they'd legislated that employees needed to understand enough English to understand safety measures, that's another thing. I worked as a cleaning lady at a hospital when I was in college, and there it was imperative that even those who cleaned, which was a job that only demanded on-the-job training, knew enough Norwegian (this was in Norway) to read job instructions and could understand spoken Norwegian. It was a popular job for people from other countries, because often they didn't have the education necessary for more skilled jobs. If they worked with someone from their own country, of course they spoke their native tongue to each other, but no one got a job without understanding Norwegian.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

58. THis question was adjudicated several years ago.

I believe it got all the way to the Supremes.
Employees were forbidden from speaking Spanish on the job and they sued the employer. The ruling was that they were allowed to speak Spanish at work among themselves and it was discriminatory to require them to speak English all the time.

This is settled case law, but that doesn't mean these precedent-ignorant Repukes won't try to legislate what's already gone through the courts.

[EFerrari]

59. What these facists are trying to do is control what you do with your mouth

just as horses are controlled with a bit.

[yardwork]

60. Speaking Spanish while sorting clothes - that's a national security threat!

forcryingoutloud

The EEOC has come under assault from lawmakers such as Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) after the agency filed suit earlier this year against a Salvation Army thrift store in Massachusetts that had fired two employees for speaking Spanish while sorting clothes.

[EFerrari]

66. How pathetic is that?

Spanish is by treaty co-equal with English in all the territories we got in the Mexican-American War. Of course, that treaty is only good as the paper it was written on. MA isn't one of those but most of the West is.

[Xipe Totec]

67. Pensylvania was a German colony

New York was Dutch.

If the founders had insisted on English as the official language, there would be no United States.

[nealmhughes]

61. Hoy día estamos al borde de un ataque de nervios re: los hispanohablantes en los EE-UU.

Es una división artificiosa que se presenta para sustituir a los problemas que nos importan en la actualidad.

Oops! I wrote that in Castillian!

For non-hispanohablantes, "These days we are on the verge of a nervious breakdown regarding Spanish speakers in the USA. This is an artificial division that is made in order to substitute for the real problems affecting us today."

[hunter]

65. Things to remember: Don't eat lead paint. Travel.

Otherwise you might sound stupid.

I live in a place where English and Spanish are the most common languages, and conversations will often shift between one language or the other, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. People who are bilingual find work more easily than people who are not.

In my family I'm the only language cripple who isn't at least functional in Spanish. My wife and kids speak Spanish well enough, though the language we use at home is English. My kids' friends tend to be bilingual. My wife's dad is entirely bilingual, and has taught English to Spanish speakers, and Spanish to English speakers.

The second or third generation speaks English, that's the way it's always been.

This bill is clearly anti-immigrant, something designed to stir up the political base of xenophobic bigots. In some jobs speaking English is required as a matter of safety, but for general work place friendly conversation it doesn't matter what language people are using, whatever works.

This is the kind of law that would be ignored by most employers, especially in communities like mine, and be used as a tool for discrimination in communities that are still trapped in some 1950's middle American nightmare.

The number of Americans whose jobs would actually be protected by such legislation is probably much smaller than the number of people whose rights would be violated.

[RB TexLa]

68. Sorry, I'm a free human being and will speak any language I wish, any where I wish, and any time I

wish.