RE: Back To The Point: Foxx Panders

It's good to be able to depend on a target-rich environment from Strother.

By definition - like it or not, Steve — assimilation is happening. It's a process.

So what is that? If one naked assertion doesn't work, try it again?

I can show you large demographic segments of the population where Mexican immigrants are collected together in which American culture and language is completely absent. You won't even have to leave Winston-Salem, Strother, you just have to climb down off that ivory tower. That's not assimilation, that's occupation. You might as well say the Marines are being assimilated into Iraqi society.

Sounds like your company is part of the problem. Businesses like yours are encouraging non-English speaking residents to take their sweet time in learning to speak the language of the American majority.

That's pretty typical Strother. Did you stop to consider that the telecomm industry is regulated second only to the power generation industry? Did you stop to consider that we have to provide these services because your precious government mandates it? You know, the same bureaucracy you liberals love so much that mandates thirty handicapped parking spaces in front of every convenience store and ingredient labels on canned milk.

But I guess it's okay to profit from them, though?

What does profit have to do with assimilation, Strother? Did you ever play that game, one of these things is not like the other, in grade school?

That's a real problem here - no one really wants illegal immigrants or the differences between 'them and us' to go away — our businesses are making too much money from them!

I knew it! It's all capitalism's fault. Those rotten capitalists and their evil profits, they are ruining America. But wait, I'm confused, Strother. How can it be that 80% of the population wants the border controlled and 60% of us favor mass deportations and 70% of us favor more stringent requirements for assimilation of immigrants, yet you offer that "no one" really wants the problem to go away. We are talking about 21st century Earth, and not some fantasyland you just made up, right? As for the profit part, Strother, illegal immigrants' contribution to GDP is miniscule. Economically they represent competition for the very lowest economic tier of employment and I have seen estimates that show they are net consumers once social services are factored in. Trust me, if all eleven or twelve million illegal immigrants went home tomorrow, the economic chaos all you Bush liberals keep predicting would be embarrassingly absent.

That happens when you work long enough in a society dominated by a different language, different influences, etc.: assimilation.

Did your friend mention, by any chance, that Mexico requires aliens to learn Spanish if they are going to stay? Did you read the Fred Reed column I posted a while back? For the record, Mexico's immigration policies actively discourage assimilation on just about every other count.

Again, language has nothing to do with our immigration problem.

I don't suppose you care to offer any supporting evidence for that, do you? Where did you learn this technique, Strother? Do they teach a course in "Naked Assertion as Rhetoric" up at North Stokes?

For one thing, it goes a long way toward identification. If you're here and you don't speak English, there is strong probable cause for you to come under scrutiny. And before you start whining about tourists and new arrivals, I'm talking about practical situations here, not exceptions.

Addressing and fixing the immigration problem will eventually patch any language barriers that may currently exist...

And how, exactly will that happen? Magic? And of what, in your mind, does addressing and fixing the problem consist? Controlling the borders? Exactly how does that overcome language barriers?

...that is, unless companies like Steve's keep up what they're doing.

Right, I'm sure my company will go out tomorrow and incur the wrath of the FCC and the accompanying multi-million dollar fines. Get real, Strother.

"Mexican immigrants" use "gutter-speak"? All of them? Careful — that statement borders on sounding elitist, racist, and ignorant.

Only in your mind, Strother. Maybe while we're at it we should address your English language skills because I didn't say all Mexican immigrants anywhere. I'll be more specific, though, without exception, every Mexican immigrant I have encountered in the last ten years speaks the same non-Spanish when conversing with other Mexican immigrants. It is gutter-speak, just as the garbage that gangbangers in South Central LA use is gutter-speak.

That teacher isn't very good, huh? I assume that he/she only speaks euro-Spanish: not very effective for the job of an American ESL teacher.

Not at all, Strother. She just taught English and Spanish in Guatemala and Costa Rica for years and is considered on of the best ESL teachers in the area. She speaks several Central American dialects as well as fluent Latin. No, she's not very good at all.

Admit it, Strother, it's not Virginia's pandering that bothers you. It's the fact that she's a Republican and she isn't pandering to you. She isn't spouting some nonsense about multiculturalism and how it will magically cure all that ails us. She's not treating illegal aliens as a special victim class in need of liberal largesse, preferably funded by snatching profits from the hands of evil and degenerate capitalists.