ANOTHER FOUR YEARS of WHAT?
We happen to be in Houston this week licking my wounds from the election and baby sitting our youngest granddaughter. So far in addition to hoping I make it until 2016, I have watched another $50,000+ disappear from my retirement savings. The future is now controlled by the Socialist Democrats as we have over half of the people living off the government. The Republicans will make one last losing attempt to stop the change to a Socialist Democracy but when they get stomped in 2014 and lose control of the house it will be all over. This country has lost its will to be free while in search of Utopia that is merely a pipe dream.
The Republican party has died by self-inflicted suicide. The radical right of the GOP has never given up on overturning Roe vs Wade even though they have to know the women will never let this happen. Their last breath will be in 2014 when they lose everything one more time.
Look at the vote of the Hispanic population and it will eventually be the biggest voting block of the future. Change must happen and it will as they will have control of Texas in the next few years. If we don’t relax the immigration rules, the African-Americans will have to get off welfare and go back to work to educate and manage their healthcare. Without the Hispanics paying some taxes, they would be better off in the future to go back home as the welfare will be running dry.
I did a lot of work in Mexico and the Mexican worker there is a hard-working individual and is handicapped by having a lousy and crooked government to deal with. Now we have the same lousy and crooked government here to deal with.
What prompted me to write this article was an experience at lunch about 30 minutes ago in Baytown Texas. Norma and I went to visit a 96-year-old friend who is in an assisted living home there. On the way back to our daughters house, we stopped for lunch. The only language spoken by the people surrounding us was Spanish.
I worked in 32 countries to save enough to enjoy my old age. When I was in Japan it was my problem to communicate and everything printed was in Japanese. Same thing in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Norway, etc. They had no responsibility to make sure I could understand anything. None of these places were interested in changing their culture to satisfy my desires.
Why can’t someone in our government say whoa and explain that we accept them as Americans like we did the Germans, Polish, Italian and other immigrants that made this country great in the past. We do not print ballots in German or the other languages because these people wanted to be Americans.
I believe the American people would welcome anyone willing to work as an American. Why can’t the Hispanic people, who send most of their earnings back home, just agree to be Americans and all opposition would be softened? If they insist on changing America into a Hispanic country, they will never be welcome by the majority of Americans or by me.
We have spent billions pacifying Hispanics with special treatment and they continue to refuse to even learn our language, that is wrong and I could care less if you disagree.
I beg anyone who reads this article to comment on my suggestion, yea or nay, so some hopeful dialog will help wake up the people to demand that we establish English as our language. If we are going to have multiple languages accepted by our society, then make everyone learn Spanish and make it our official language. We are supposed to be one people, so let’s be one people again. Just do something to bring happiness back in America where people used to like each other regardless of where they were born.
Clyde Brewer
A Conservative View 
This is from your token Democrat. Rather than commenting on the recent election that has already been commented on ad nauseam, I’ll get right to the issue of Latino immigrants and language.
Let me begin with an attempt to allay your concerns about Latinos becoming a majority of the U.S. population. That simply isn’t going to happen. Our immigration laws, as ineffective and porous as they are, will not permit a sufficient additional influx of Latinos to result in anywhere near a majority of the U.S. population. They will, however, merely from relatively high reproductive rates increase as a percentage of the U.S. population and become an increasingly important political force. And, of course, in some of states like Texas, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, etc. they may soon be the largest single population group. While the numbers are impressive, they will not be sufficient to place Latinos in the majority nationally.
Your experience in Baytown is an interesting one, but I think the conclusion you have drawn from that experience doesn’t necessarily follow. You seem to believe that the people that were around you in the restaurant are more interested in getting non-Latino Americans learning to speak Spanish than Latinos are in learning to speak English. I believe that is a fallacious assumption. As you indicate in your blog, your personal experience has shown you that the Mexican worker is hard-working and industrious. My experience is the same as yours. In addition, I have found not only Mexican workers but Latino workers in general to be hard-working and industrious. And equally important, I believe, is that Latinos are family oriented, faithful, creative, and entrepreneurial. In other words, they are just the kind of people we would hope would want to come to the U.S.
If you and I are correct in our assessment of Latinos in general, then why would you assume that they would not desire to learn the language of the country that represents their best opportunity of any other in the world? Latinos generally appear to be intelligent people who understand better than anyone that any hope they have of moving forward in a meaningful way from menial jobs into prominent positions in U.S. businesses, military, politics, academia, etc. requires that they become fluent and knowledgeable in the English language. I suspect that every person in that Baytown restaurant would have said if asked that what I am suggesting is true.
Where I think your opinion and mine might converge is in the importance of making it as easy as possible for those folks to obtain the very best education we can provide them, not only in English but also in math, science, and the liberal arts. An increase in the numbers of hard-working, industrious, well-educated people with first rate language and communication skills may be just what this country needs.
— Glen
All fine and good (in response), but when will the ‘press one for English.. press two for Spanish’ end? That is extremely annoying. Why not press 3 for Mandarin… press 4 for Russian… ad nauseam?