Derb: Just FYI, the #1 advertiser on Spanish language television is the purveyor of a series of English learning tapes, Ingles sin Barreras. If you ever get a chance to see it, one of their ads portrays a Hispanic woman who doesn’t speak English, straining as she mops a floor in a drab, institutional building late at night. Then they portray the same woman, having learned English, interviewing for a job as a receptionist.
If Latin American immigrants are so dead-set against becoming Americans, the market certainly hasn’t figured it out.
You mention the 66 and 85 percent of Latin American adult immigrants who want their children to speak Spanish. The fact that people speak Spanish does not mean that they don’t speak English, that they don’t want to speak English, or that they aren’t trying to learn it right now. My parents wanted me to speak Spanish and whatever other language I could, and I don’t have a drop of Hispanic blood.
And as for Aztlan, even the illegal immigrants who come here are doing so to take part in our economy — not to segregate themselves from it. They come to make money, don’t they? Isn’t that where the “take away our jobs” line comes from?
I can appreciate the idea that unchecked immigration brings with it security concerns. But if Hispanic immigrants populate an area of Iowa that everyone else is fleeing as soon as they get a college degree, how is that threatening the Republic?