Should America Change The English Language

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Immigration Reform Should America Change the English Language Requirement? Quiero vivir y trabajar en los estados unidos! Tôi muốn sống và làm việc ở Mỹ! I want to live and work in America! No matter how you say it, I understand, I get it. I’m a natural-born citizen of the U.S. with no plans to leave. Despite some of America’s smudges and flaws, I love it here. I have never stepped out my front door into a war-torn street. I have never been persecuted for my religion, the color of my skin or my political preferences. My government, while not perfect, is not so mismanaged or so economically devastated that I couldn’t get help for myself or my family. People who do live in countries with these issues want to live and work in America…show more content…
Let me explain. As shift manager in a plastics factory, Gary supervises 81 employees, 19 of whom do not speak English and who comprise 23% of his workforce. When one of these employees (predominantly of Hispanic or Latino heritage, but also Vietnamese and Korean) needs to communicate something to him or to a coworker, they can’t do it without disruption. Shifts are all about productivity; the number of parts produced per shift (PPS). These numbers play a huge part in Gary’s yearly salary increase and Christmas bonus. When someone who doesn’t speak English has to shut down a machine, it stops making parts which lowers PPS. While the machine is off, the operator is searching for one of the four or five people who can translate. Once found, the translator also has to shut down their machine so they can both go find Gary, or whoever it is they need to “talk” to. Of course, the conversation takes time while English is translated to Spanish and vice versa, and only then can everyone make their way back through the plant to their machines; machines that have to warm up for 10-15 minutes before they can begin to operate properly again. Had everyone been able to speak English, what could have been handled in three or four minutes has now taken twenty minutes to resolve. Over time, those parts that are not being manufactured during all the wandering and…show more content…
Anyone can go online and see that there is already a great deal of federal funding set aside for English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction, but the passage of this amendment would create even more need. No doubt, tax money will have to be redirected in order to meet these needs, and there will be those who will resent that, but in the long run, I feel it will reduce spending in the areas of foreign-language translation services and

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