I often hear this remark from native-born Americans and other english speakers of all races. They get angry when they have a misunderstanding with people who don’t speak English well enough to be clearly understood or even if they overhear a conversation out in public carried on in a language other than English.
It’s easy to simply say that someone should learn English without having to think about how exactly to accomplish that. People fail to realize that education (in this case, learning English), even self-education, is not only an investment of one’s time, but of one’s money as well. Most immigrants, especially the undocumented kind, work long hours for very little pay, leaving them with neither the time or the money to learn English.
We native-born speakers are at a distinctive advantage over immigrants because we all learned English in elementary school, with an education provided free by the government.
When I think of all the money the government wastes accomodating people who don’t speak English that could instead be spent to teach those same people English, it makes me crazy.
The government could provide tuition vouchers to immigrants willing to learn English at an ESL school. The incentive to attend these classes, besides the free English lessons, would be that the government would no longer offer documents and forms in languages other than English. Even if it costs a lot to teach an immigrant English, it is cheaper in the long run to pay for a year or so of education than to have to accomodate a non-English speaking person for the rest of their life, or at least for the duration of their stay in the United States.
The current system fails not only because it involves coddling a large group of people for a long time, but that there will always be people who will be left out. When local boards of elections are legally obligated to provide materials and assistance in other languages, it is usually provided in the two or three most widely spoke languages. In New York City, those languages are Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) and Korean. But what about those registered voters who only speak Russian? Or Italian? Or Arabic? Or French? Obviously, the idea of accomodating every single language on the planet is absolutely ridiculous, so someone is always going to be left out.
Obligating everyone in America to learn English is the only fair way to ensure that everyone understands all and any communication between themselves and the government that represents them. To me, the idea of providing free English lessons to immigrants is the truest form of accomodation.
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