Anti-immigrant sentiment

[krasnoludek]

My mom just forwarded an editorial which has been circulating the net and touted as appearing "in a Tampa newspaper." Apparently it did actually appear in a Georgia newspaper as one of the comments in the link above testifies, so it was a legitimately published editorial (and may have been reprinted in a Tampa newspaper). Anyway, I got infuriated

Comments

[lingboy]

What irritates me most is how the editorial talks about "learning the language." This is really just hidden racism; immigrants learn English twice as fast nowadays as they did 50 years ago. Within 5 years 97% of all immigrants claim to English very well (Tse, 2001). People think that just because someone is speaking Spanish or Arabic or Mandarin that they don't also know English. That's not true though.

[krasnoludek]

Yeah, that's totally true. And if you have a thick accent, half the time people think you're stupid and don't know the language. The ironic thing is that half the time, the person with the accent might be a top notch computer programmer or something with an extensive educational background. And no matter what the person's occupation, they all had to learn far more about the US government to become citizens than the average ignorant American knows.

[rdore]

"In God We Trust" wasn't a national motto until 1956. The real national motto is "E pluribus unum", which dates back to the actual founding of this country. And explicitly supports your argument.

[krasnoludek]

I knew that the "under God" phrase was added to the Pledge of Allegiane in the 60's, but I didn't know how far back the "In God We Trust" phrase appeared on coinage. Thanks for the clarification!

[easwaran]

AMEN brother!

[easwaran]

The thing that bothers me most is the talk of "the politically correct" people trying to ruin all this. They don't reference even one example of the sort of thing they're complaining about, and just imply that it happens all the time.

And these days, political correctness means yelling "MERRY CHRISTMAS" at passing strangers, and disliking Muslims, and telling women that they don't need to have a job outside the home.