the groups "it's america, we shouldn't have to press 1 for english"

there's many groups like this one facebook, all with thousands and thousands of members.
and i'm just wondering, why does it matter if you have to press a little button for english? is that really gonna ruin your day?

 

its not going to ruin my day..
companies are just making shit more accessible to hispanics who are quickly starting to purchase more products and services in the US.

 

I just think it's funny all those people will scream I have the right to free speech.

 

"para espanol, oprima el locha" I hear that every time I call my account. For Engrish... jus press 1!

 

For Latin, press MMX

 

Wouldn't it be just as easy for them to make the announcement in spanish.....
I've run across a few companies that our starting to do that. I've got no problem pressing one but it seems if someone wants it in something other then our spoken language that should be their opinion.

 

Private corporations exist to serve their stock holders and customers. They have a strong incentive to offer their telephone services in any language their customers want.

Government has a duty to public safety and sometimes that requires having multi-lingual police and fire service. English is our national language, but we don't do much to require legal immigrants to learn English, we have looked the other way at the borders at the request of business who wants cheap labor, so we have millions of people who can't communicate well in the national language. If dispatchers can't relay reports of a crime or a fire because they are not fluent in Spanish, or other common immigrant languages, then everyone is society loses, not just the caller.
Wishing people could speak English doesn't fix the problem.

 

because they're fear mongering racists?

 

This is likely it...

Another segment of the population whose opinions are being orchestrated by such "peripheral visionaries" as Rush Limbuagh and Sean Hannity... keeping the population divided and at one anothers throat- perpetuating crises for the ruling class to exploit.

 

It still bothers me that many of the people that live in America with me think we live in a bubble that is immune to change and globalization.

We will not be the same country forever. Fact is that Latinos will be the numerical majority in the US before 2050 according the the Census Bureau. So, fucking get used to it, it's about damn time anyways.

 

I love that last part

 

Individuals tend to stick to their attitudes... we need to hope that succeeding generations will represent the needed changes in attitude moving forward. The bubble enabled by the relative geographic isolation from WWII and before has long since burst. I suspect that there are many imminent changes that none of us are prepared for that will have a huge effect on our standard of living... and they have little to nothing to do with other languages being spoken.

 

true dat!

I, for one, cannot wait!

 

latino includes portuguese speaking people, right?

 

yeah lol. though race and ethnicity are a social construct in themselves...i would consider brazilians, for instance, as latino due to geography etc.

 

I lived and worked in a town that was 60% Mexican American.
I met a lot of great people, made lots of friends. It's nothing to be afraid of. If we treat the newcomers well and do our best to help them adjust, it will be a wonderful future.

Republicans were talking out of both sides of their mouth. They gave the border to the coyotes (human traffickers) and criminal gangs, using the illegal influx to undercut wages for their cronies in business.

Comprehensive reform would protect high wages for green card and citizen workers, control immigration levels so that the school systems and hospitals could keep up with demand and schools could keep up with the demand for English language instruction. Tariffs would prevent companies from using overseas outsourcing as a means to bypass strict labor laws.

The social security system would benefit from an influx of young workers as long as they are here legally.

 

and remember that this land was native american's first....
i feel like they respected the land, each other, and the animals way better then anyone does today

 

In the broadest sense of the word, Latino could mean any person with cultural roots in the old Roman empire. That would include England, Romania, France, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, Greece, all of North Africa, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, the entire New World except for Aruba and Surinam.

Another term you don't hear as often is Ibero-American. Meaning a person with cultural, linguistic or ethnic roots in the Iberian peninsula. That would include the Basque peoples of Spain, but possibly not the Basque of France, Spaniards and people with Spanish cultural heritage in the New World, Portuguese and people with Portuguese cultural heritage in the New World.
I am not sure if Angola or Mozambique peoples who emigrate to America could be called Ibero-Americans. They may speak Portuguese and may be of African or European ethnicity.

 

I think one giant improvement to add to your list,GardenGuy, is to end NAFTA and all other failed neo-liberal economic tactics. If we end the push factors of immigration, there won't be such a problem trying to accommodate the large numbers of imimigrants.

 

NAFTA now looks like an economic experiment gone bad.
Aside from the better-known conservative vs. liberal debate, there has been a concurrent discussion between libertarians and statists. Most people don't like what happens when either extreme wins the struggle.

I am pragmatist with slight ideologue tendencies.

Pragmatism is what got Bill Clinton into that NAFTA mess, so I don't even push that doctrine too hard.