You’re starving. You walk briskly to grab a sandwich at Subway to satisfy your craving. You’ve got less than 10 minutes to request extra tomatoes, endure the disorganized queue for the toaster and scour the rack below for spicy Doritos. You’re antsy. Unfortunately, the last thing you need is unfolding before your eyes as another customer fumbles clumsily for exact change.
Or so you think.
A new employee enters the equation, and much to your chagrin, he doesn’t speak English. You point to the banana peppers futilely but the message gets lost in translation. Your patience hits its threshold. You storm off without your extra tomatoes and oil and vinegar in place of your typical salt and pepper.
Bleh.
Immigrants come to our country, take our jobs and have the audacity to refuse to learn our language. This pervasive sentiment captures a large chunk of the typical Joe’s hostility toward immigrants.
Many immigrants, documented or not, do not have the resources or the time to adequately learn English. But that’s pure (although accurate) speculation. Surely there are copious resources to learn — assuming they want to, right? The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials points out, “ … while large numbers of newcomers have tremendous motivation to learn English, ESL providers lack the funding to meet the demand for instruction.” The NALEO Education Fund published an eye-opening study detailing many challenges eager immigrants face.
But forget facts. Let’s Fox Newsify the argument, saying they’re all lazy and complacent and get away with speaking Spanish solely because they can. This is patently false, but humor me.
Who suffers the most? The immigrants. If they don’t dedicate the numerous hours it takes to learn English, they stunt their employment options — generally the primary impetus for moving to begin with — relegating them to low wage jobs. Many of these jobs preserve the price of goods at inexpensive rates. With the paltry wages many immigrants earn, those finger-wagging consumers save money everyday.
Or take a more self-centered approach. If all immigrants learned English, wouldn’t your typical English-only speaking American dread it? Do you really want to compete with bilingual applicants for the same job? In this economy?
The minor inconveniences we face attributed to language barriers should move us to empathy or humility instead of impatience or disdain. Many immigrants endured years of poverty, coming to America seeking economic mobility. Yet, too often the thanks they receive is haughty disgust or ethnocentrism when they deserve a helping hand or a smile.
But I’ll spare you the be-a-good-person shtick. You have a right to play hardball. If you frequent establishments where you encounter persistent language barriers — be a quintessential capitalistic American. Take your dollars elsewhere. There are no scarcities of shops or services in America that can satisfactorily provide for English speakers.
We’re far from a monolithic culture. Our diversity is admired across the world. The allure and beauty of America is in its freedoms. I love that we have Chinatowns where much of the bargaining is done in Mandarin. I love that I can travel to communities in the Southwest that speak entirely in Spanish. I cherish that Americans can be any ethnicity, speak any language and practice any religion or none at all. It’s nothing short of an irrational fear to expect Spanish to supplant English as the dominant language in America, no more than we’ll all become homosexual if we legalize gay marriage.
The rubbish of rich people scapegoating immigrants needs to stop. We’re all beneficiaries of the hard work of immigrant workers. Whether or not they speak the language we do doesn’t make their existence any less valuable than our own. It’s past time for these people to garner the appreciation and respect they’ve earned.
Conor Shapiro is a graduate student in the School of International Service and a liberal columnist.
edpage@theeagleonline.com
