The Wall

[Texsox]

But you keep leaving out the hundreds of millions of innocent American's who will end up bearing the cost of illegal immigration in the long run. As our Presidential candidates have pointed out on many occasions, social services aren't cheap, and neither is supporting another 100 million people to our south who pay nothing in taxes, yet are receiving American dollars as their second biggest national revenue source. Let's not play like this is just a benefit for the US with no cost to us.

 

Yeah innocent people are going to get harmed no matter what happens, but it also isn't the rest of the countries fault that a sector of our country based their economic status on illegal activity. If the standard is that you can't stop something that could economically hurt people, you are telling me that you shouldn't stop the illegal drug trade, pirating media, black market activities, car theft chopshops, etc. No, we have laws for a reason, and we shouldn't be held hostage to a small portion of our country who believes our laws are for everyone else.

 

I was referring to the legal tourists that visit here. Just like those camera toting folks snapping pictures of Buckingham Fountain and the Sears Tower, we get them too. It is a huge chunk of our economy.

 

You are so right about the social services costs, it is going to be huge. As soon as we finally get those jobs on the books, whomever is working them, will be taking those benefits. It is a huge cost and it has been avoided thus far by the hiring of illegals off the books. And a huge reason that politicians have not been proactive in solving this.

 

I'm curious about the money sent to Mexico, and this is more up yours and Kaps expertise. Mexican-nationals, legal and illegal are sending that much back. That would be after they pay their normal living expenses here in the US. This would be their savings. How is that different than you or I investing in an overseas market, buying a foreign car, clothes made in China, etc.? We report the foreign markets on the news, so I assume that enough Americans are investing in those markets.

[southsideirish71]

The economy is now global in nature, business prizes employees who can speak foreign languages. Would it not make sense that the current immigrants are facing a world where speaking English just is not as important than 100 years ago and any trends would reflect that? Don't we receive what we reinforce and reward?

 

I have worked for 3 international companies, 2 extremely large ones including a Dutch owned one. And one mid sized. At every one, the predominant language of the company was English only. It was rare to run into someone who cannot speak english. It was up to the location country personnel to be able to communicate in the local language. That was the entire reason that they were employed. I would say that only a small small minority of the executive or higher management teams could converse in more than one language. The international language is English.

 

 

[Texsox]

I have worked for 3 international companies, 2 extremely large ones including a Dutch owned one. And one mid sized. At every one, the predominant language of the company was English only. It was rare to run into someone who cannot speak english. It was up to the location country personnel to be able to communicate in the local language. That was the entire reason that they were employed. I would say that only a small small minority of the executive or higher management teams could converse in more than one language. The international language is English.

 

Exactly, and when you are employed in the US and need to speak to a foreign country, you would be speaking in that language. Look at all the US businesses that have subcontracted work to non English speaking countries. For example all the maquilla's here on the US need Spanish speaking employees to communicate with their plants in Mexico. We have a thriving call center industry here because of the number of Spanish speaking employees, Hotels.com, Ticketmaster, and many others all have call centers here.

 

No doubt that English is the language around the world, but English ranks third in the world for first language, behind Mandarin and Spanish. And it is always better to communicate in your first language, than second.

 

Imagine if you are a customer overseas buying American products or services, one employs someone who is fluent in your language as a native speaker, and the other does not. Who will you be more comfortable with? In business everyone is looking for an edge, and speaking the tongue is one of the edges in International trade.

[kapkomet]

Exactly, and when you are employed in the US and need to speak to a foreign country, you would be speaking in that language. Look at all the US businesses that have subcontracted work to non English speaking countries. For example all the maquilla's here on the US need Spanish speaking employees to communicate with their plants in Mexico. We have a thriving call center industry here because of the number of Spanish speaking employees, Hotels.com, Ticketmaster, and many others all have call centers here.

 

No doubt that English is the language around the world, but English ranks third in the world for first language, behind Mandarin and Spanish. And it is always better to communicate in your first language, than second.

 

Imagine if you are a customer overseas buying American products or services, one employs someone who is fluent in your language as a native speaker, and the other does not. Who will you be more comfortable with? In business everyone is looking for an edge, and speaking the tongue is one of the edges in International trade.

That's absolutely not true.

[Texsox]

That's absolutely not true.

 

In my years setting up international purchasing groups for companies, we were mostly speaking in that countries language. It was the clearest and most efficient manner. Typically we had to phone outside of usual business hours in the US, and it was far easier to hire someone in the US who spoke that language, than insisting our partners, who we wanted to keep as inexpensively as possible, to hire someone to speak English. We wanted people skilled in Engineering, material analysis, ISO procedures, etc.

 

When I was buying tooling in Taiwan, it was a huge asset having someone here speaking Taiwanese. They could consistently negotiate better deals than when we attempted to force them into English. Less problems too.

 

But your experiences must be different.

 

I forgot to add, you are correct in that all contracts and legal documents were in English, and I think we even had one or two in French also. But everyone was in English, it was the expected, customary, and my understanding ONLY legally allowed language for international contracts. But I'm certain one of our lawyers here could verify that.

Edited November 21, 2007 by Texsox
Added last paragraph

[EvilMonkey]

The only job I had where I dealt with someone outside the US I was dealign with a French company. All the sales people I spoke with, and the contracts person and the 2 engineers that we spoke with to make sure the product met the specs we needed spoke English.

[Texsox]

The only job I had where I dealt with someone outside the US I was dealign with a French company. All the sales people I spoke with, and the contracts person and the 2 engineers that we spoke with to make sure the product met the specs we needed spoke English.

 

Was that a good thing?