Tuesday, 16 December 2008
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If you could put any three laws into effect, what would they be and why?
1. English required for Citizenship. If you want to live here, Please learn the language. The government as it is has to pay extra for services in every federal agency to accomodate non-english langauge learners. We pay extra so that translators are hired and extra froms are available in every lanaguage required. it's inconvenient and it doesn't make sense. I believe as a requirement for citizenship people should at the very least be given a course in basic dialogue; they don't have to be fluent but they should understand the words coming out of our mouths. Street signs, basic terminology on forms, how ask and understand simple directions. English is not a hard language, we even have less conjugations than most of the others.
2. Set a Cap on college costs. Yes, yes, free market blah blah blah. Most of what we pay for in college is the name of the college; the prestige. Most of these college board members make several thousand dollars a year more than other people and yet they turn out grads with BA degrees with limited chance of being hired. My English 102 class and my History of the US class WAS NOT WORTH 10,000 dollars-- and that's after my education grant for another 10. The government should not have to be sending out grants like it's going out of style; if most of the US can't afford to go to college that's TELLING YOU SOMETHING GODDAMNIT.
3. Mattew Shepard Act. 1998 Mattew Shepard was killed in Colorado because he was gay. He was tied to a fence, beaten, tortured and robbed and then left for dead. He was a sophomore in college. The Current US hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation as a basis of a hate crime because many view this as a breach of civil rights. In other words people believe that they are justified in committing crimes against LGBT persons because of their sexual orientation. In 2007 this law failed to pass.
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Comments (3)
Wow this is a really great answer. I totally agree that if you become a citizen you should take a class to learn the language. If I ever moved somewhere like France or something I would learn French. Well I'm not sure about English being an easy language to learn since I would have to say that it would go in the hard category since we have words that are pronounced the same but are spelled different.
They really should do something about the price of school since it should be more readily available since many people just can't afford it. It is pretty sad that a person has to go into debt just because they want to get an education. Something should be done about that.
That was such a tragedy what happened to Matthew. It is just so sad that people are that stupid that they think it's okay to just do something like that to someone just because they happen to be gay. It just doesn't make sense to me. But there was also that guy in CO that admitted to hitting his girlfriend so they let him out and he ends up killing her. What a stupid screwed up world we live in especially the state of CO.
@barbaradesmond - Thanks for commenting! According to my language prof. English is an easy language to learn because we have less conjugations and forms than most other languages. However I've never succeeded in learning anotehr language...not have I been to Colorado so I can't say much about that.
While most people CAN afford community colleges, the price of University has sky rocketed because schools are in competition with each other; they're raising tuition to pay for beautification of campuses and hiring PhD professors with BS degree experience. While attending my 20,000 per year school our dean donated 5,000 of her money (out of pocket) to help underprivelelged students attend study abroad. Wasn't that nice of her? (+__+")
@FreakSaphhic - Lol... easy language my ass. I've been trying to learn it for twenty two years and it's still kicking my ass. So there are less conjugations; in most other languages, those conjugations are constant. English has archaic exceptions, random rules broken and tricks up god knows what.
As for the law itself, I agree in and of it's context. However, I've lived overseas too as an American who can't speak the local language-- which then means this law, in order for it to be less bigoted, should be, 'if you were planning on living in any country beside your own, one must learn to speak the language'. Ah, there you go, you personally might think this is a fair trade, but I've been around enough ex-pat kids to know; If an American goes over seas, the first words from their mouth are generally, 'SPEAK ENGLISH, does any one know how ***ing to translate?'
We take for granted how powerful English is in today's society, and while I agree it is important to speak it here in this country, I take a little offense at how you think that spending a little bit of government money on translators is a crime. Take it from me, if you live submerged in another country where the language is not your own, you'll /want/ to speak the language. But if you have no one to sympathize with you, talk dumb to you, or /translate/ for you-- well life in your new society is intimidating. And no one will learn if they are over intimidated.
Suppose then, all that up there was to say banning all immigrants without a rudimentary knowledge of English is harsh but understandable. Claiming that tax money should not be going toward aiding these people who cannot speak even semi-fluently, however, is ridiculous.
All other rules, I have no complaints. Lord knows I would do better if it weren't for my college gouging my out-of-state-pocket. And it's never right to discriminate people because of their history, genealogy or personal choices.