re: #583 realwest

IIRC, and it’s late and I’m tired, immigrants to this nation had to learn english. period. The move to multi-lingual came with Spanish (only) speaking immigrants - some of whom (e.g., Puertro Rico) were American Citizens. For the most part, as was true of immigrants from other nations, they mostly relocated in “ghettos” in urban America and worked with each other to learn English, because they wanted to be Americans. When the Spanish speaking Immigrants came here, they too wound up for the most part in Spanish speaking Ghettos but someone warned them that if they gave up speaking Spanish and other things, they would lose their cultural identity and politicians JUMPED on this and, purely out of an intent to fill the rolls of voters they could count on, all of a sudden had bi-lingual educaton, signs in English and in Spanish and the like.
I don’t know if that actually helped them retain their heritage, I do know a LOT of them never bothered to learn english and didn’t assimilate very much at all.

I dunno. Thing is, I work with a lot of grandkids of SPanish speaking immigrants, who are perfectly assimilated (where it counts), and I’ve read too many screeds from the turn of the century about how the Jews and the Poles and the Italians would NEVER assimilate or learn English.