There is something ironic about US citizens whose families have lived
here for less than 400 years complaining about illegal immigrants...

Yes, there is. But never before have new immigrants so arrogantly
*expected* everything to be handed to them on a silver platter.

When my ancestors arrived in America, in 1852, they spoke only German. They
attended German language schools during the day, took English classes at
night, and lived in ghettos where they could speak their native tongue
comfortably -- not unlike the barrios of today.

But the difference was, NO ONE expected the American taxpayers to foot the
bill for their bi-lingual education. No one expected signage to be written
in both languages, at the inconvenience and expense of the natives. And
they certainly would never have dreamed of all the bi-lingual crap we must
deal with every day, from ATMs to voice mail systems.

Everyone understood that English was the coin of the realm They either
learned English within six months of landing at Ellis Island -- or they
failed. It was that simple.

AND they arrived legally, by the way. While this is apparently not a
difference that is appreciated by many today, in my book it's a HUGE
difference..

Every time I run a charge card through the machine at Target (or Wal-Mart),
and it wastes my time asking which language I want to read, I vocally
complain to the store employees. This is AMERICA, and the language here is
ENGLISH -- and I shouldn't have to TELL THEM THAT. The incompetent moron
who invented those infernal bilingual charge/ATM machines should be made to
spend all of eternity trying to figure out which button to push on the
menu...

Let me describe this issue in cold economic facts, rather than the emotion
of English versus Spanish: For every million shoppers who must spend an
average of 3 seconds (probably far longer) trying to figure out which button
to push (Spanish or English), that is 34.7 DAYS spent wasting everyone's
time in line, making a stupid, unnecessary choice.

(1,000,000 x 3 seconds = 3,000,000 seconds divided by 60 = 50,000 minutes
divided by 60 = 833.33 hours divided by 24 = 34.7 days)

Now, multiply that times 150,000,000 or so shoppers, and you can see we're
talking a HUGE economic impact -- and that's just one little question on one
little screen that we all must use.

It's insane, but it's the law -- and there's apparently nothing we can do to
change it.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"