--- "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This is true.  There is a long-standing
> Spanish-speaking population in
> the Southwest, especially Texas, New Mexico, and
> Arizona that long
> predates Anglo domination of those areas.  That
> Hispanic settlement is
> in the neighborhood of 350 to 400 years old, so you
> are certainly right
> your implication that Spanish has been spoken much
> longer than English
> in parts of what is now the United States.  To
> consider the descendents
> of these early settlers to be interlopers,
> immigrants, or in any way not
> as fully American citizens as anyone else is not
> only historically
> ignorant but insultingly jingoist.  Of course, it
> fits in very nicely
> with the Disneyesque Alamo myth (a little irony
> again).
> 
> Herb
> 
> Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:
> 
> >Omar,
> >
> >Note my posting to Jose on irony.  I'd go with 500
> years.  600 seems a
> >stretch.
> >  
> >
> My parents are in New Mexico. It was one of the
> first areas of European 
> settlement in North America. The locals still speak
> a peculiar kind of 
> Spanish, or so I have been told. Not everyone who
> speaks Spanish is a 
> "wet back". People in the Southwest seem to
> understand this.
> 
> Omar
> 
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I am an immgrant myself, a naturalized citizen, and I
don't believe the perspective you are presenting here
is fair.  To say that only immigrants from Mexico are
immigrants, and to say that only they don't have to
learn English is wrong.  It exludes other immigrant
groups.  Also the southwest, if any of you ever
actually spend time there, is originally native
american; how do you like the fact that because of
rhetoric like this, a Hopi person or an apache person
would finally leave the reservation, go to phoenix or
albaquerque, and not be able to find a job due to not
knowing Spanish?  How is that ever fair in America?

When you continually defend one minority group and
only one minority group, you are excluding all other
minorities.  English as the official language of the
United States protects all minorities and not just
one, as you tend to push for.

sincerely, an immigrant by the way.

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