emc/h1-b

[jerry]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Chambers" <jc at trillian.mit.edu>
To: <discuss at blu.org>
Sent: 26 June, 2003 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: emc/h1-b

> While this may  sound  reasonable  to  us  computer  geeks,
> there's  an  important reason why such legislation may well
> just silently disappear.
>
> A story that a lot of people in the gummint are  trying  to
> deal with:  A year or so back, the CIA admitted that they'd
> had recordings that should have tipped them off to the Sept
> 11  attack.   But  they didn't have enough staff people who
> were fluent in Arabic to listen to them and translate  them
> before the Big Day.
>
> Now, the  US  has  around  6  million  citizens  of  Arabic
> descent,  so  you'd  think  there  would  be little problem
> hiring Arabic speakers.  But there is a  problem,  and  the
> reason  is quite obvious:  the English-only approach of our
> school system.  The  result  is  that,  except  for  recent
> immigrants,  most  of  the  Arab-American  population knows
> Arabic only as a religious language, They are mostly  about
> as  fluent  in  Arabic as most Jews are fluent in Hebrew or
> most Catholics are fluent in Latin.  They can quote  a  few
> verses of the Koran, and that's about it.
>
> There is a very long  history  in  the  US  of  suppressing
> immigrants'   native  languages.   Children  are  routinely
> punished for speaking anything other than English. Very few
> texts  are  available  to  children  in any language except
> English.   The  result  is  the  well-known  phenomenon  of
> children who can hardly speak to their grandparents.
>
> This problem is not going to be fixed. In Massachusetts, we
> just  had  a referendum pass overwhelmingly that suppresses
> all bilingual education.  Educators are  looking  hard  for
> ways  around  this,  but  bilingual  teaching can't be done
> openly here any more.  Even  after  the  reports  from  the
> intelligence   community,   the  citizenry  does  not  want
> children growing up speaking Arabic, or any  other  foreign
> language.   Children  of incoming refugees will not grow up
> fluent and educated in their parents' languages.
>
> But, as people are fond of saying, we live in  a  different
> world now.  We badly need translators. A year ago we needed
> people fluent in Dari and Pashtu, but  where  do  you  find
> them  in  America?   If  you  do  find them, the widespread
> attacks on people with ancestors  from  that  part  of  the
> world  mean  that they aren't likely to be very cooperative
> when approached by  a  government  agent.   Some  of  those
> refugees  can  be  hired,  but it must be done with a great
> deal of care. And we'll always be fighting the general wish
> to suppress those other languages.
>
> The only practical way to find the translators we  need  is
> to hire them from outside, or from incoming refugees.  This
> means we need exceptions to the  anti-foreigner  employment
> laws that are on the books. It's not politcally possible to
> repeal such laws, of course, but quiet  exceptions  can  be
> made.  And those exceptions will affect a lot more than was
> intended.
>
> This isn't a good solution.  We in the computer  field  are
> seeing what a crude tool the law can be in such cases.  The
> H1-B and L-1 exceptions were  meant  to  handle  situations
> like  this.   But  they also mean that employers can easily
> fake a labor shortage in other areas to hire cheap workers.
>
> There is really no logical way out of this.  The only  good
> solution would be to switch our education system so that it
> strongly encourages keeping immigrants' languages alive, so
> we  have  Nth-generation  native  speakers  of at least the
> major languages in the world.  But this ain't gonna happen.
>
>
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>

> There is a very long  history  in  the  US  of  suppressing
> immigrants'   native  languages.

suppress? how?

Children  are  routinely
> punished for speaking anything other than English.

Not the schools I went to.

> Very few
> texts  are  available  to  children  in any language except
> English.   The  result  is  the  well-known  phenomenon  of
> children who can hardly speak to their grandparents.

That's because most people can speak or read some level of English here. If
you were to work in a predominately Unix shop, would you find a lot of
reference books on Windows?

>

The responsibility of keeping the so called immigrants' languages alive goes
with the immigrants' family - not the school systems or government. I am a
first generation Asian immigrant, if I deem that my heritage and or native
language is important to my children and a good job skill to have for the
future, I would make sure that any of my American born children learn it and
learn it well. I would be the one speaking to them in my native tong at home
and buying them text in my native language.

>The only  good
> solution would be to switch our education system so that it
> strongly encourages keeping immigrants' languages alive, so
> we  have  Nth-generation  native  speakers  of at least the
> major languages in the world.  But this ain't gonna happen.

This is not going to happen because it is a bad idea. The resource needed to
pull this off vs. the gains just does not make sense. The bottom lines is
the government is not or should not be the one responsible to make sure that
Nth-generation offspring is fluent in their ancestral language.