Submitted by Tricia Perry on Tue, 12/18/2007 - 2:58pm
in
  • Immigration News Daily has posted a couple articles related to
    the US as an English-speaking country. In Philadelphia, a well-known
    cheese steak restaurant is under review by the city's human rights
    commission for a sign that says "This is America - when ordering, please speak English." City officials are alleging that the sign violates the ban on national origin discrimination. On the other end, the blog has reported on an opinion in Newsday which argues that Immigrants would thrive with more English classes.
    The piece talks about the shortage of English classes on Long Island
    while also explaining how poor language skills have prevented
    immigrants from continuing to work in their previous professional
    careers:

Plenty of anecdotal evidence shows that these programs work. Two years
ago, for example, a Peruvian-born former computer programmer was stuck
on the assembly line at Love and Quiches Desserts, a Freeport-based
manufacturer. After he completed Freeport Adult Education's ESOL
program, he was promoted to supervisor.

In the Long Beach
school district, several women from Central America who were dentists
in their home countries but worked in dead-end jobs here boosted their
English and found jobs as dental hygienists.

Author Tara Colton makes a case for government investment in the
productivity of immigrants via language classes, noting that this
strategy enjoys bipartisan support:
 

This is a crucial problem, because the more fluent immigrants are in
English, the more they can contribute positively to society. This is a
point that all sides of the immigration debate agree on. Making this
improvement in the lives of millions of people living and working here
has got to be as vital as deciding whether to punish them for how they
arrived.
   

For business and government, it's also a matter of economic
development. Boosting workers' English skills improves productivity,
reduces turnover and helps growth.

  • Immigration Orange posted about the 'widow penalty' which ends the permanent residency process for immigrants whose citizen spouse dies within two years of marriage. The blog recommends contacting your public officials in order to end this "obscure interpretation of the
    Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)," examples of which are quoted in the post:

Marlin Coats didn't hesitate to jump in the
water to try to save two drowning teens caught in a riptide at San Francisco Beach Park.
He lost his life that Mother's Day in 2006, but because of his heroism those
two teenagers survived.  So why is the U.S. now responding to Coats'
ultimate sacrifice by deporting his wife Jacqueline Coats?

U.S. Army contractor Todd Engstrom of Illinois gave his life for his country when he was killed in Iraq, and now the federal
government is telling his wife Diana she too must go.
And so must Dahianna Heard of Florida,
whose husband Jeffrey Heard was shot in the head by insurgents
in Iraq.
What will happen to their children?

  • The 'Just News' blog reposted an article from the Omaha World-Herald about a family divided by US immigration policy. Joe Wood of Nebraska had decided it was time to 'do the right thing' and legalize his wife Laura Roldan's immigration status, so he, Roldan and their two daughters traveled to a US Consulate in Mexico to begin the process.  However, Roldan has been accused of fraud for giving a false name upon her entry in 2001, and barred from ever returning to the US.
  • Last up, it has recently come to the ImmigrationProf
    blog's attention that all four grandparents of Republican Presidential
    Candidate Tom Tancredo were immigrants from Italy. Author KJ links to a
    great article in Reason Magazine about the discrimination faced by Italian immigrants in the early 20th Century, along with how, in two generations, the American Dream has brought Tancredo to a place where he has internalized the same distaste for foreigners.