Katie Couric's Notebook: ESL Teachers Wanted

Should English be our official language? That's the case in 28 states. But Katie Couric says there's a problem: There aren't enough teachers to help immigrants learn English. (CBSNews.com)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• CBS
• News
• Katie
• Couric
• ESL
• teachers
• english
• language
• immigrants

[bootylicification]

3/3 C SPAN “Black Republican Forum” Session 2 (begin at 11:30) West said one of the 1986 caveats was to secure our borders, enforcement our laws, but we’re still talking about new amnesty like DREAM Act. We can’t allow local cities to make sanctuary cities policies, because they will bring our inner city turf wars to epic proportions by bringing in the drug cartel and Columbian gangs. (Mexican Gangs don’t recognize our borders established by the Treaty of Guadalupe)

.

Allen West 2012

[bootylicification]

2/3 In November 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.8% with 15.1 million unemployed. (15.1 million/9.8%) = 154 million are able to work in the workforce. 11,941,812 (or 11.9 million) skilled jobs provided to illegal immigrants. GOOGLE “illegal immigration counters”, the 15.1 million unemployed could take the 11.9 million available jobs. The unemployment rate could be reduced to 2.1% {{15.1-11.9)/154}

[bootylicification]

1/3 Immigrationcounters com 97% illegal immigrants are from Mexico. Illegalimmigrationstatistics org $1117 - The average amount you and your family paid in taxes this year to support illegals. 51% - The percentage of Mexican immigrant households that use at least one major welfare program. 28% use more than one.

[andrew49247]

"My position is one of pragmatism, not politics." If integration were so imperative for our society (to digress, I don't even think that's a fair statement, as I don't see how small communities of non-English speaking Americans would be entirely infeasible, e.g. Chinatowns and other ethnic communities, in which anybody can subsist without knowing any English), I don't see how facilitating the process with ESL classes would cause any harm...

[ahosek]

Czechoslovakia to the UK in the mid 80s without a word of English. But that's not the issue. I know that many on the American right see the "official language" as an issue to harp on about. My position is one of pragmatism, not politics. I don't think that anyone who doesn't speak English in the US is any less a citizen than anyone else. But something needs to jump-start the next generation's language skills. It sounds like tough love but integration is in everyone's best interest.

[andrew49247]

Oh? What country and language? Also, how old were you and what were your economic conditions at the time, if you don't mind my asking?

There are plenty of bilingual societies that aren't crumbling from a lack of patriotism...

[ahosek]

Actually I have - I did it. But that's beside the point.

Immigrant waves in the 19th century yielded English speakers within one generation. That is a tremendous asset for the country - it binds it together and creates a sense of "American-ness". If you use public funds to prolong this process, you're essentially condemning the children of current and future immigrants to live in a segregated society, with language as the dividing line. And segregation is a deplorable policy.

[andrew49247]

Have you ever gone to a country in which you know nothing of its language and tried to learn it on your own, ahosek, without any formal studying, all while working full-time?

It's not fucking easy, adults don't just magically become fluent if they want it badly enough.

[cameron6136]

IceX14,

The problem with your solution is that most American students, including you, would fail the test.

[IceX14]

Yeah I agree with the hand holding comment, instead here's a solution we should just send them back until they learn english to come back over here. They really should do a language test for people who want to come over here to live. Exceptions to this would be student visa's or on work visa's doing something productive for our world or country.