Valya’s Blog

This is driving me crazy! The discussion stemmed from a postmaster in England, who (himself an immigrant) refuses to serve customers who can’t speak English because they tend to slow down the line and infuriate English-speaking customers who are in a hurry.

There are so many ignorant assumptions going into the argument for “forcing” immigrants to learn English (or whatever the local language of the host country is). First of all, you cannot force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. After all, these host countries pride themselves in freedom of choice and expression, right?

Another assumption is that those people who do not speak the local language are choosing not to learn it. From my own immigrant experience I know that there are a million invisible reasons but very rarely is the reason that the individual is stubbornly refusing to put in an effort. Some of the discussion did go into the issues of cultural supression – for example in some instances women who are in forced marriages are held back by their own compatriots in order to control and suppress them – because language is power and liberation and would allow them to seek their rights.

People are just lazy?! Really!? An immigrant who took the plunge into moving to a new country (and often a new continent) went through a lot of trouble to get to where they are and have immense goals and aspirations. But the problem actually is that they work minimum wage jobs (like my father who started his career in the US working in a wood shop, wearing ear plugs 8 hours a day in the midst of loud machine noise). After a communication-deprived job for sometimes over-time, long days, they come home beaten and defeated, go to a restaurant where an arrogant owner sends them rudely away… well, what more in terms of motivation, energy, and drive do they need to keep defeating the continuing and omnipresent negative feedback and discouragement. How about some positive reinforcement and encouragement?

People are just stupid!? Wow! This has got to be the most ignorant (and stupid) assumptions! My parents were both engineers when we first arrived in this country, with nearly a decade of experience in the field. And I, at 15, was the only person in the family who spoke enough English to enroll my sister and myself in school. That was hurtful to my parents but they kept on pushing themselves and it did take them much longer to learn the language then their intelligence and already existing education would suggest simply because they had a family with young children to look after and they had to take those hard jobs that required no langauge skills and therefore offered to opportunity to learn English during the majority of their time in the work week.

People don’t want to learn it if they have been here for many years and don’t speak it yet!? Are you kidding? It took my father several years to become comfortable ordering a meal at McDonald’s simply because of the stigma of speaking broken English with an accent and because of his innate shyness. Nowadays, he is completely comfortable in any social situation and works as an engineer communicating constantly by e-mail, phone and in person with colleagues and customers. Should he have been kicked out of the country a few months, a few years into his experience because he was lagging according to some people’s standard?

People should go back to where they came from if they don’t speak the language after x amount of time? Hmmmmm… What if they are not here by their completely free will (the forced marriages come to mind, the elderly people whose children have brought them here, etc.)? What if they are a productive member of society within an immigrant community (essentially an island of culture and language within the greater host country)?

I dispise the argument from some who say “if I went to another country, I would definitely learn the local language.” It’s laughable because in my experience 99.9% of the time such assertions come from people who’ve never been abroad for longer than a vacation and when they did travel for vacation they went to places where English (or their comfort language) was spoken. And sure, maybe they picked up a dictionary and tried to order a meal in the local tongue. I wish they tried to get a job with a dictionary in hand. Or register their child for school. Or apply for healthcare insurance.

Oh, I also hate the “it’s simple, they just need to know how to order a (insert a culturally typical meal choice here).” Really? Well, I’d like to see that commenter go to Turkey and order a local customary meal, if that’s so simple. How about the fact that the “simplest” of things are foreign and completely strange here – cereal simply does not exist as a breakfast food (or any other kind of food) in many corners of the world. That’s pretty simple and basic, right? Microwaves. Clothes dryers. Dishwashers. Big Mac. Commonplace, simple things, right?

These arguments don’t even touch on the fact that we live in a global village today. The Internet, television, phones, satellites, etc. have brough US culture to the farthest, most remotes part of the world – or so Americans like to believe (don’t even get me started on the term US citizens like to use to describe themselves, ignoring the fact Canadians and Brazillians are also, technically, Americans). So, since our culture is so ubiquitos, why shouldn’t everyone else learn our ways? What about us learning all the other ways? I bet we’d get smarter, our lives will be more enriched, we will be more sympathetic, respectful of, and impressed with those of our compatriots who grew up speaking Swahili or German.

There was a gentleman who owns a Philly cheese steak food place and who hung a sign in his establishment that if you cannot order in English, you’d be served whatever was next on the grill, even if it isn’t what you intended to order. He thought that refusing the serve a customer because of language barrier was going too far, but his other customers would grow frustrated during rush hour if he tried to help one of the non-English speaking folks in line. OK, so those customers should take the effort to learn how to order a Philly cheese steak (the owner says it’s very simple – just choose what cheese you want on it and if you want onions or not, but then again, as someone who’s lived in the US for 12 years but only on the west coast, I’d be far more confused the immigrants who’ve lived in Philly for a few weeks and have had that local delicassy). OK, fair enough. But did the owner put in the effort to post that sign in the several languages that are most common to the local immigrant communities? That’s an actual question, I didn’t hear that detail in the discussion on the radio.

I could keep ranting on, but these are just a few of the conversations racing through my head (with myself and with some of the discussion participants while I was trying to calmly listen to all points of view in this radio broadcast.