If you are here illegally, you need to try and become legal through the system and not by just demanding it like petulant children. However, the system itself is unfair, mired in paperwork and deliberately complicated. When parents are unable to come with their children who are getting serious medical care, something is very wrong with the immigration system. Make the process to become an American citizen fair and common-sense. Stop with the silly, pointless “language laws”. As long as you are able to function in our society, you should be able to speak any language you want. Sing the National Anthem in pig latin for all I care. All human beings deserve a living wage but executives are not going to give any on their millionaire lifestyles and nobody wants to pay for their “stuff” what it would cost to pay everyone a fair wage. Treat everyone with the courtesy and respect that you expect to be given. Any good Southerner knows that you say “Sir” and “Ma’m” to others, regardless of what their job is or what they look like.
I agree that immigration laws could probably be streamlined – what laws couldn’t? – but I’m not familiar enough with the why’s and wherefore’s of each individual step to say definitively which steps are necessary and which aren’t. And I suspect neither are most people. That’s what our lawmakers are supposed to do.
But I take issue with the “pointless language laws”. I have no problem whatsoever requiring English to be spoken as a primary language, and it should be required for all official interaction. Want a drivers license? A passport? Need to go to court to pay a jaywalking fine? Subscribe to a paper? Get cable? Buy a ticket to a movie? Pick up your dry cleaning? All those places shouldn’t have to provide for every possible language to do business. Logically they’ve had to provide for not only Spanish and Chinese but French, Japanese, German, Russian, Vietnamese, Italian, Korean, etc etc etc.
And while I may have translated the French National Anthem into English in High school to understand what it mean, if I went to live in France I would never, ever think of singing it in anything but French – nor would I expect anyone to allow me to. I would consider it highly disrespectful of my host country.
I said “function” in the world. If you want to pay a translator to go everywhere you go, go for it. But then, I’ve always felt that since people who are big D Deaf do not consider themselves disabled, they should pay for their own interpreters. I don’t think singing the anthem in Spanish is offensive. I’m impressed by anyone who can sing it at all. Again, ASL is considered its’ own language with unique syntax. Will the language laws write that in as an exception?
Thoughts of an Average Woman pointed out that “in 1919, the U.S. Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish-language version of “The Star Spangled Banner.”” As Barry points out, that is for education purposes not for singing in the ballpark.
If I decided today, that I wanted to move to Budpest and become a Hungarian citizen, I know I could communicate and eventually would learn Magyar; however, I don’t think it would be fair to require me to have to acquire fluency in a language for me to become a contributing citizen of that society. I also would not expect them to go around creating English signs and recordings in two languages simply to accommodate me. I would be making a choice to live in a society with a language I didn’t know and I’d have to overcome the obsticles that _I_ created for myself.