in conjunction with coverage of the recent high-school marches here protesting the Senate immigration bill. The interesting article is a thorough discussion of Senator Frist, how he's perceived by party colleagues, and the strong implication that the immigration bill and accompanying demagogery is part of Frist's run for President.

And just as a side question, why and how should English remain our primary language? I spent two years in Peace Corps many years ago and often went weeks and weeks without speaking English. It was a strange sensation sometimes, but I could live fine that way. So if my part of the world shifts to Spanish-speaking, I'll pick up Spanish and speak that. The reply, I suppose, is that the immigrants coming into an English-speaking country should learn the language of the land, and for the most part they do, although we who are native speakers don't realize what a very difficult tongue we speak. Lathough I'd be interested to hear why we English-speakers shouldn't shift our language as more and more Spanish speakers move in. Many of us are, actually - I moved here to LA four years ago and am working on learning Spanish, and I'm not alone in that.

I firmly believe that a lot of the problems arise from the often sharp discomfort many people feel in situations where they are in the minority, whether ethnic or linguistic. And of course this can be complicated by the concern that "those people are talking about me." Usually not, but sometimes they are - so what? People sure talked about me when I was in the Peace Corps and the only American in a county of 145,000 people. It got annoying sometimes, and other times it was a good joke or conversation starter.

FInally, along the lines of immigrants adapting, here in Koreatown the bigger groceries have a number of latino employees, and not just clean-up or stocking, but working produce or meat counters. And to my amazement, these guys have learned Korean, at least to the extent that they can handle, say, a typical meat-counter conversation with customers who want a certain cut of meat prepared such-and-so. Incredible! My Peace Corps stint was in Korea, and Peace Corps gave us plenty of high-intensity language training, but Korean is nevertheless a very tough language. And here these guys are, from Mexico or Honduras or whereever, talking away in this tough language with customers who often don't speak that much English. People are just amazing!

Spanish speakers, adult and children, who are illiterate in their mother tongue.

My wife (who is a former Peace Corps language teacher) and I maintained a Korean-speaking household during our children's pre-school years. The kids had no problem picking up English anyway, although the schools decided to boost their ESL statistics a bit by having our kids in those classes - which was fine with us; a little one-on-one attention is beneficial. Now our (early twenties) kids still have some facility with Korean so they can speak with their elderly relatives, the lack of English in the early years at home presented no problem in pre-school, and their lives are richer for being (sort of) bi-lingual. But it's tough to keep that second language going in this country.

okay, I'm having problems with numerous other unfounded assertions about the evils of immigrants as well, but I'll leave that to others for the moment.

ILLEGAL immigration first is a civil offense, not a criminal offense. Second, immigration laws, rules, regulations of this country historically have been and still are capricious, arbitrary, and racist - and are even more so in their application by embassy and immigration officers. It's much easier to immigrate "legally" if you come from European countries or in past times were escaping evil communist governments. But to come to the US from Asia or Latin America is much more problematic, all the way from visa application to the test for citizenship.

emergency room & health care cost being a major component. As is often the case where we get blinded by our prejudices, the intuitive guess, the common wisdom, turns out to be wrong when one actually takes a look at some hard data. For instance,

http://uscnews.usc.edu/hscweekly/detail.php?recordnum=11482

and

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/25/AR2005072501482.html

Quoting the WP article a bit,

"Regardless of age, legal status or insurance coverage, immigrants, on average, receive about half the health care services provided to native-born Americans, according to findings released yesterday that immediately fueled the debate over tightening immigration policies.

Immigrants received an average of $1,139 worth of care, compared with $2,564 for non-immigrants, according to the analysis, published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The gap was especially pronounced among immigrant children, who received one-quarter the care given to U.S.-born youngsters."

we don't pick the bill for penniless undocumented immigrants' health care, because, for the most part, they don't get any health care. So what happens? They either get over the illness or trauma, it kills them, they go to see a practitioner within their community, or they hop back into Mexico for treatment. People with no papers are very slow to try to use the medical system, and so when they do appear they are more severely ill or injured.

to burglars and murderers, which some posters here have done. To reiterate - to enter the US without proper permissions and documents is a civil offense, not a criminal offense. Part of the demagoguery going on is blurring that distinction.

By the way, for those of you with access to the Los Angeles Times, this morning's paper has an excellent appraisal of CNN, especially Lou Dobb's, demagoguery on this matter.