Come Legally - Learn English

It's not about being anti-immigrant. I'm not. We're all mutts that either got chased out of somewhere else to come to America or we came for the freedom and opportunity. And it's not about not understanding that people in places like Mexico come here because they are dirt-poor or need work and it's available here. But immigration must happen at a pace that can be sustained - there has to be rules.

And for goodness sake, when you do come legally, learn English. I'm not saying this because I want to enforce some kind of American cultural hegemony on immigrants but because English is the language that we do business in here. It's the language we say the Pledge of Allegiance in. By all mean keep your native language if you want to. Express your cultural idioms. But, add them to the melting pot (or salad bowl if you like). Yes, if you are in places like California, you can get government forms in Spanish or find Spanish-speaking people at a car dealership. But, if you want to maximize your freedom and opportunity, then learn the language that is a basic common denominator.

Someone wrote me about another post I made on immigration saying the United States stole California from Mexico. I guess he meant that because the land was inhabited predominantly by Mexicans in the past and because of this accused injustice, Mexicans should be able to come here at whatever rate they please. Unfortunately, this kind of rhetoric solves nothing. The injustice, if that's what you want to call it, happened long ago between people of another time and has nothing directly to do with me or the guy who wrote me. We have an unacceptable status quo: massive unsustainable immigration (mainly from the South). Where do we go from here?