The United States of America has been seen as a blue-ribbon land of opportunity around the world,
it's where persons in comparatively impoverished places want to be, to secure a better lifestyle for themselves and/or their family.
Recently, there's been an
influx of Mexican immigrants (and people from other Latin American nations), in terms of who's coming to America.
This has stirred a lot of debate and conflicting reactions, on the part of the Americans.
Some call for harsher measures against immigrants, among them there are a few defining these immigrants as criminals, and there are other Americans feel such propositions are an overreaction to the new heightened pace of people entering the United States.
I always reasoned that the hostility by some of the xenophobic Americans (or really, a xenophobe of any nationality) was due to a fear of losing their own "American" culture.
In terms of cultural heritage, there are some things that are embraced and others that are left behind when moving to a different land.
Language, religion, familial relations and other mannerisms are seem to be the most evident in America, with language being the most obvious.
During my time on the internet, the topic of responsibility has come up plenty, and by responsibility I mean, who's job is it to be more accepting of the other's culture?
Maybe have said that the newcomers should learn English, not so much to "whitewash" them, but to be able to fully contribute to the American society.
Many conservative people like to tell tales of how much it must be costing us to print everything twice, once in English, again in Spanish, about how much it must cost to pay for interpreters and translators and the like.
While all that may or may not be true,
they bring up other "big picture" worries about the possible stubbornness on anyone's part.
One example stands pretty defiantly on the part of those who want to let people retain their culture. It's known now that the Irish speak English, despite their original language being Gaelic (referred to only as "Irish" in Ireland).
Some say the
Irish were supposedly forced to learn and adopt English customs in 1366, under the Statutes of Kilkenny, though some doubt that these Statutes worked as well as claimed.
While the effectiveness of those laws can help me determine whether or not state-sanctioned assimilation laws are for the better or for worse for Irish people, I'm sure I could find plenty of reasons for both sides, such as:
-Had the Irish language been left to it's own devices, it could have flourished into a pleasant local language. Similar to other non-colonist European countries. (I find a bit of a difference between languages that are passed on through colonization and those that haven't)
-There would have been a greater language barrier when the Irish arrived in urban centers across the United States of America, hoping to immigrate.
-It could have possibly been fodder for the conservative citizens to use for legislation that would limit or possibly even
remove some of the immigrants' rights.
Thinking about how the times were back then and how carried away the legislators could have gotten, it's not as unlikely as it'd be these days.
I'm sure someone has thought about this before, and I am sure they've proposed different solutions or assessments about issues like these,
since this is my blog and my place to deposit my thoughts I mind as well tell you what I think.
Culture is definitely a thing to be respected, and it has served its purpose to help people establish an identity.
But I feel that soon, when global communication is perfected and made so inexpensive that its available anywhere and everywhere (otherwise it's not possible), that the concept of so many individual and outstanding cultures should be retired for what used to be unachievable:
A global culture, and possibly, (but I'm not supporting nor protesting) a global government.
I've always perceived this step as a milestone towards progress for humanity.
Mostly because it's easy to discuss how racism and and intolerance has kept us behind for so long, and how if there were less racism and things to have to tolerate, the better we'd be equipped in order to live better.
I think I might discuss this topic further at a later point in time.
I feel its well done for my first post in about a month, particularly with my first thread on Ponychan hitting 200 posts in the next tab lol.
