Immigration

I picked up two professors from the Vilnius airport last friday and they asked me what is my view on the "immigration problem"

My answer was "what immigration problem?"

No seriously. I read on BBC that people in the US are all mad because someone translated Star Spangled Banner into spanish.

I seriously do not see what is the problem with that, and why anyone would care.

Yesterday my friend Fabian was turned down for a visa by our hardworking INS officers. He just wanted to visit friends in Minnesota who had even bought him a plane ticket! It was just a dream to see America and to spend time volunteering with a church there.

And they turned him down for no reason- he had all the documents in place.

Seriously seeing immigration from this side of the ocean will really make you change your viewpoint.

Every American is an immigrant from somewhere. Europeans benefitted from a time of realtively lax immigration laws. Isn' t it a bit racist to say "its ok for Europeans to have unrestricted immigration to the US, but as soon as it starts being Mexicans and Asians, then we should pull up the ladder after us"?

Todays immigrants also want to learn English. The biggest opponents to bilingual education are immigrants themselves, who desperately want their children to learn English. Many of the people trying to move to the US could write a much better essay in English than the average american could. remember too that it took the Europans often a couple generations to learn English when they first moved to the US.

ANd why should everyone have to learn English, and the lazy Americans go throughout the world just expecting everyone to know their language? I think immigrants to the US should learn ENglish yes, but i think Americans should learn Spanish as well. Spanish is the first language of 16% of our population after all.

In Finland swedes are only 5% of the population, yet over half of the finnish population can speak Swedish. THey are commited to honoring and respecting their minority populations.

It is WAAAAAY harder for a Finn to learn Swedish than an American to learn Spanish. After all Spanish is the easiest language in the world for English speakers to learn.

Nevermind the fact that states such as California Texas Arizona New Mexico and COlorado are only part of the United States because we sent an invasion army and surrounded Mexico City and threatened to burn it to the ground unless they ceded us those lands. The areas were most Spanish-speaking immigrants live were forcibly taken from Mexico anyway, and were in Mexican hands way longer than they have been in American hands. Look it up: it is called the Mexican Cession

It only makes everyones life more interesting and colorful to speak many languages and have a multi-lingual society.

America- no sea racista! Dije no a racisma! Commenca a apprender espanol! Es bueno para tu futuro y para el futuro de las genercaiones siguantes tambien!

(Pardon my Spanish, it is my 6th language, and has suffered in the time i have not been living in the states, as i have been concentrating on learning other languages)

My dream for America is that hard working people will freely be able to visit and work in the United States, the same way that Americans are able to freely visit other countries.

After all Americans, you could have been born an Albanian, as which you would "need a visa to go to the toilet" as my Albanian friend Marian once said.

Americans aren't inherently better than anyone else, nor do we deserve more than the Belarussians Albanians and Moldovans do. Nationalism is a very dangerous thing.

I step off my soapbox now.