the rix mix

(Thanks to Thinkprogress.)

I had an amusing encounter a few weeks ago with a man who spoke not a bit of English. He had a cellphone. If there had been more people on the street, his odds of meeting a Spanish-speaking person would've been better than 50-50 (& a marginal chance of someone with knowledge of Yiddish). The part of town I gathered he was trying to reach, about a mile away, is almost entirely Hispanic. His handicap (aside from almost certainly being here illegally) was that if he mistakenly walked a mile in the other direction he would be in a different world, an overwhelmingly English-speaking town, with a small town police dept. My city's middle class is anchored by Latin-Americans, Colombian, Venezuelan, & Cuban citizens of The United States, many speaking Spanish as their second language. They are immigrant-friendly. & why not? They profit from immigrants. Their honest advice to immigrants like the one I met probably begins with "aprenda el inglés." & I ought to learn to speak a little Spanish.

If your ambition is to be a busboy, or an underpaid landscape laborer working for a bilingual boss, or a non-union roofer without benefits, or an assembly line chicken plucker, & to ride a rickety bicycle to & from your job, & always be in fear of ICE, & anxious whenever you leave your ethnic enclave, & dependent on a translator when dealing with The Authorities, then don't bother learning English. If those prospects don't alarm you, then Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, & Peter Brimelow ought to, if you understood them. Don't count on liberal Anglos, 'cause amigo, I'm sympathetic & I couldn't explain how to get to that safe haven cafe somewhere beyond the county courthouse, & a lot can happen to you between here & there, not necessarily good.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ