Arizona passes law banning multilingual requirement for businesses

[Modelworks]

Good. Maybe at this rate I'll eventually not have to chose "English" every time I want to make a transaction with an automated system too.

LOL
Too true.

 

[Modelworks]

I don't have any links to back this up, so take it for what it's worth, but I think the problem we're seeing now is that the mechanisms that made the 'second generation' immigrants speak english (or for that matter, assimilate into society at large) have broken down for a variety of reasons. Parents back then knew that in order for their kids to succeed, they would need to speak english and assimilate.

This is what I see a lot too. The kids can speak english but not the parents.
One area it does hurt is employment. There was a job here at a local pharmacy that turned down several qualified people because with the spanish speaking population so high they made bilingual a requirement. You don't want to be telling a mother how to give medicine to her baby and have her misunderstand.

 

[OutHouse]

No one should be forced to speak any language

and government shouldn't be forced to accommodate non English speakers. that isn't their responsibility.

 

[MJinZ]

Is there a law that says private businesses have to give that option or do they just give that option so they can get Spanish speakers business? I'm betting it's the latter.

The best way is to default to English (obviously), and give Mexicans the button.

 

[woolfe9999]

While I disagree with some of these new Arizona laws, I do support this one. I see no reason any busines should be required by law to accomodate speakers of foreign languages. I see no reason everything has to be in two languages now. We should not be accomodating immigrants who do not want to learn English. We made no such accomodations for the waves of European immigrants who came to this country 90-120 years ago, and as a result, they learned English. Accomodations like this only encourage cultural balkanization within our borders. I have no problem with Spanish speaking immigrants whatsoever (so long as they are here legally), but I think immigrants need to learn English, not accomodated so that they don't have to.

- wolf