[Rhodes22-list] Reduce your federal income tax (political humor)

[Brad Haslett]

Bill,

It pisses me off every time I go to an ATM or call a phone tree and it asks
whether I want English or Spanish.  That being said, most cabbies in Beijing
are torqued over having to learn english for the 2008 Olympics.  Here is an
interesting perspective on native language.  BTW, I've ordered the Spanish
for Contractors CD for the boys on the beach.

Brad

------------------


May 30, 2006
 My History of English-Only*By* *Richard
Cohen*<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/richard_cohen/>

To understand something of the current immigration debate, it might help to
look at New York's Lower East Side in the early 1900s through the eyes of
Henry Adams, the great-grandson of one president, the grandson of another,
ambassador to Britain and, toward the end of his life, winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography. All those Jews sickened him.

"God tried drowning out the world once,'' he wrote in a 1906 letter, ``but
it did no kind of good, and there are said to be 450,000 Jews now doing
Kosher in New York alone. God himself owned failure.''

One of those "doing Kosher'' at that time was my grandfather, Rueben, a
part-time garment worker and full-time no-goodnick who placed his two boys
in an orphanage when his wife, Judith, died. When he came to visit, the
older boy had to translate for the younger. My grandfather never spoke
English and my father never spoke anything but.

You can understand Adams' distress. The Lower East Side of Manhattan was an
alien place. Its denizens spoke Yiddish. They were not Christians. They had
their own newspapers and theaters and political organizations and when they
rallied for one cause or another -- and boy, did they ever rally -- the
calls for reform or revolution were uttered in a foreign tongue. This pot
was not melting.

Now, of course, the Lower East Side is the East Village and it is cool and
hip and young and expensive. The grandchildren of those who did Kosher there
have scattered throughout the country and the English their grandparents did
not speak has been mastered and enriched by Bellow and Roth and Chabon and
Ephron, not to mention Irving Berlin, if you are that old, or Jon Stewart,
if you can stay up that late.

The current immigration fuss has engendered more sloppy thinking and
rhetoric than any issue in recent times. The descendants of immigrants wax
romantic, confusing legal and illegal immigration -- it's all the same. But
it is not. My grandparents were legal immigrants. They came through Ellis
Island, papers in hand. It was easier to do so then, but that is not the
point. The point is that they broke no law and, as a consequence, sought no
amnesty.

But this anxiety about the fate of English and its importance to the culture
does have its antecedents, although they are not, of course, exact. The
non-English-speaking immigrants of the 19th and earlier centuries could not
simply get on an airplane and return to the mother country for a visit. Once
they came to America, they usually stayed in America. This is not
necessarily true of Spanish-speakers, who can more easily visit Mexico or
another Latin American country. Still, the larger culture remains
English-speaking and its pull is like an ocean tide. It may take a while,
but it will get its way.

In Los Angeles, for instance, radio station KDL shifted in 2003 from Spanish
to English because the Latino audience it wanted -- the young -- was
increasingly bilingual and what's called "English dominant.'' English was
cooler, hipper and younger, younger, younger. Spanish was the language of
mom and dad, and nothing could be fustier -- or, in some cases,
embarrassing. The latter is why, to my regret, I peevishly ignored my
Yiddish-speaking grandmother, adamantly insisting she speak English instead.
I thought I was being very patriotic.

In New York City, the library system of a single borough, Queens, typically
has the highest circulation of any in the country. That's not because the
culturally ravenous Jews of myth and fact are continuing their reading
habits, but because of a much newer influx of Asians. Many of them read
exclusively in their native language, some in two and some, sooner or later,
in English only. The richness of Shakespeare's tongue, its universality in
commerce and business and, above all, in entertainment, makes it
unavoidable. Few things in life are certain, but death, taxes and English
certainly are.

It's reasonable, I suppose, to insist on English-sufficiency for citizenship
or, even, for a driver's license. But the nation's so-called "political
conversation'' can be conducted in any language -- just as long as it's
conducted. The Jews, the Italians, the Chinese, the Russians, the Germans
and all the other ethnic groups who once lived cheek by jowl in Manhattan
had a vibrant press and raised the roof with their political conversation.
Now their descendants rue, as I do, the virtual loss of a tongue. Henry
Adams need not have feared. I can read him but not the contemporaries he so
reviled.
mailto: cohenr at washpost.com < cohenr at washpost.com>* *

(c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group
On 6/27/06, Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:
>
> Herb,
>
> Clinton forced these people to make the desert crossings.  Prior to that
> they would have "stampedes" where literally hundreds of people would
> literally overrun border crossings.  A dozen might get caught, but the
> other 488 would be home free all.  There were cars, buses, minivans,
> waiting to take them further away right on our side of the border.  We
> built fences in the easy places, forcing them to now cross in the harder
> places.  Crossing was a piece of cake.  If you didn't make it in the
> morning, you could count on getting through in the afternoon.  They
> would commute back and forth across the border.
>
> It's harder now.  We didn't used to have 100s of people dying in the
> desert every year because they didn't have to cross over the desert.
>
> There are more foreign born workers currently in the United States than
> there are Iraqis in Iraq.  Rounding them all up and throwing them out of
> here is not practical--even Bush understands that.
>
> I'm not "for" "amnesty".  I'm not really "for" anything.  I know what
> you're against.  What are you "for"?
>
> Bill Effros
>
>
>
>
> Herb Parsons wrote:
> > Sorry Bill, but you don't know what you're talking about on this one.
> Border crossings have been unbelievably easy for years. We taught them all
> well in our last "amnesty" program. Bring your families, you stand a better
> chance of being allowed to stay.
> >
> > Where have you gotten the idea that border crossings have been more
> difficult (except for the past few weeks, of course)?
> >
> > Herb Parsons
> >
> > S/V O'Jure
> > 1976 O'Day 25
> > Lake Grapevine, N TX
> >
> > S/V Reve de Papa
> > 1971 Coronado 35
> > Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana Coast
> >
> >
> >>>> bill at effros.com 6/27/2006 3:16:16 pm >>>
> >>>>
> > Dave,
> >
> > Unintended consequences of making border crossings more difficult.  They
> > used to leave their families behind and return home during the off
> > season.  Now that we have made border crossing more difficult, they are
> > bringing their families along with them, and staying North of the
> border.
> >
> > Bill Effros
> >
> > DCLewis1 at aol.com wrote:
> >
> >> Luis, PT, & Brad,
> >>
> >> This is interesting.  Seems to me that if the IRS has issued an
> ITIN  for
> >> legal and illegal aliens, and the govt also has a summary of
> green  cards/work
> >> permits/whatever they should be able to identify illegals
> pretty  easily.  I
> >> wonder what the problem is?  Or maybe, as PT suggests, the  govt really
> doesn't
> >> care - just send $.
> >>
> >> Re Brad's dreams: I think I understand what he's trying to convey.
> These
> >> guys are reported to be very hard working and conscientious.  I've  met
> some
> >> and they seem like good people.  But there's another side to
> the  problem that
> >> he may not have observed.  Some years ago my wife and I  were foster
> parents
> >> for several years, as a foster parent you take kids into  your house
> until the
> >> adult parents can get their lives squared away.  Over  a period of time
> you see
> >> a number of "families" and kids.  We've  encountered what I'm sure are
> >> illegal aliens - ladies (kids are invariably tied  to the women) who
> came north
> >> because there are better social services and  physical infrastructure (
> e.g.
> >> indoor plumbing) and a government that will not  ask questions.  The
> ladies
> >> relating to foster care may have a variety of  children - I'm told that
> large
> >> families are a cultural thing.  Some may  work at regular jobs, but the
> ones we know
> >> don't, they subsist on the shadow  economy or mooch off one of the hard
> >> working guys Brad dreams about, or  both.  To an overwhelming extent,
> they subsist
> >> on the illegal cash economy  PT refers to.  These ladies, and
> especially their
> >> numerous children,   are a substantial burden (i.e. cost) to the social
> >> infrastructure.  For  example, as I recall, in Washington it costs
> about
> >> $12k/yr/student to support  the public schools - we know one lady with
> 5 kids and has
> >> not held a regular job  as long as we've known her; there's no way at
> all that
> >> lady makes any meaningful  contribution to the support the education of
> her
> >> kids - or anything  else.  I really doubt the ones I know of have ever
> paid any
> >> taxes, all  their work is in the shadow economy (i.e. selling bottled
> water on
> >> street  corners - turns out you can make a lot of money doing that in
> >> Washington).   The social services burden (schools, medical care, low
> income housing,
> >> police,  etc) didn't appear in Brad's dreams, but I think that's what's
> >> driving the  reaction to illegal immigration along the border and in
> Calif.
> >>
> >> One other insight: the prime driver to admitting illegals appears to
> me  that
> >> they are willing to work very hard and conscientiously at jobs many
> >> Americans disdain.  Basically, they are good people and they want to
> be  here.  But it'
> >> s important to understand that admitting these people,  especially the
> women,
> >>  has long term consequences ; they will have families  (large families)
> and
> >> the children may, or may not, be nearly as motivated as
> the  parent.  What I've
> >> seen is the children of dysfunctional  families, really matriarchies,
> >> fitting right into the underclass  culture that disdains any hard work
> and/or
> >> educational achievement.  This  is going to drive a geometric demand
> for even more
> >> social services   From my perspective, this is not a happy prospect.
> >>
> >> Dave
> >> __________________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >>
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